Stop criticising and start communicating Susie & Otto Collings
Communication in relationships is a funny thing…and is arguably the most important skill to cultivate, learn and grow if you want to have an outstanding relationship. If you’re spending most of your time criticizing, shaming and blaming your partner, you’ve got some communication issues you need to work on in your relationship.
No one ever taught us how to “be” or “act” so that our relationships would work out great and stay that way. In most cases, our parents didn’t know any better themselves, and we certainly didn’t learn about how to create a great relationship in school!
Fast forward months/years later and you find yourself wanting to say what’s going on inside you or what’s important to you, yet you feel stuck, confused. If your communication is strained or non-existent, you’re most likely on your way to a relationship full of upsets, anger, judgments, assumptions, conflicts, misunderstandings, drama and pain. And you’re wishing your relationship could somehow be better. If you have a partner who is ‘closed off’ to you for whatever reason, this can create a distance between you as well as be emotional and physically draining. With this kind of a drain, it makes it difficult to connect and have any kind of true cooperation, closeness, connection, or intimacy.
On the other hand, if your communication flows and you are both open to each other, even when it’s not easy, you’ll be amazed at just how incredible your relationship can be. However, most people focus on withdrawing, retreating, pleasing, backing off and in general “walking on eggshells” which doesn’t work and here’s why:
Most people come to a breaking point within themselves and decide “Enough fighting! I’m going to say what I think or just keep quiet to keep the peace.” This is not constructive, and will take you in the opposite direction, away from what you want. Instead of creating more closeness, connection and harmony in the relationship, they become angry, demanding, hostile, belligerent, forceful, grandiose and superior in regards to how they talk to and treat other people.
Acting in this way will certainly make you feel more powerful, but it won’t help create the love, intimacy and connection in your relationship that you really want. The “magic key” to communication in relationships that leads to more closeness is to spend your time, effort and energy focused on creating what you want instead of what you don’t want.
This sounds so simple but most people (and couples) don’t do it. Many people spend the bulk of their time and energy blaming, judging, criticizing, manipulating, trying to prove their “righteousness” and making their partner wrong that they lose sight of the real goal in relationship and focusing on how to create that. What happens next for most couples is usually one of three things:
• They decide to do what it takes to draw closer together,
• They stay stuck in their positions and decide to leave the relationship totally and separate or divorce,
• One or both partners decide they don’t want to fight anymore so they withdraw from the conflict enough to ‘keep the peace’ and keep the relationship going. But in the process, something tragic happens…
In their attempts to ‘keep the peace’ and keep the relationship going, one or both of the partners starts “walking on eggshells.” Before you know it, the passion, life and energy just gets sucked out of the relationship and leaves them wondering “What happened to our love.” One of the most important things one can do to create a closer and more connected relationship is to learn how to start communicating to connect.
Imago Relationship theory explains why the differences which often lead to issues and frustrations in a relationship are actually a natural part of our growth process and how we communicate with each other. When we select a partner, it is the result of an unconscious match between a mental image of our parents/caretakers, created in childhood (called Imago) and certain character traits of our attracted partner that we identify with.
Come join us on the “Introduction to Imago” mini Workshop and learn about your own Imago.