According to marriage and family therapists it’s not only a lack of communication that causes family unhappiness, but also bad communication. To keep that from happening in your family, let’s look at some of the things that are vital for good communication in strong relationships.

Listen up

Communication involves two steps; talking and listening. When communicating with your partner you must avoid the trap of focusing on talk to the exclusion of listening. Listening conveys messages of caring and respect.

Listening also increases understanding. Active listeners notice facial expression, body posture, and voice tone as well as words. They nod or say "okay” or "go on” or something to indicate their attention. And really good listeners are able to sift through what they hear.

As the nineteenth-century English novelist Dinah Maria Mulock Craik explained: "Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a fruitful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

Sometimes communication in marriage can be a mine field simply because couples don’t take time to listen to each other.

And with time, a conversation between a couple will reduce to, "Is something bothering you?” and the response often is likely to be, "I don’t know” or "nothing.”

Of course something is bothering the person in question. And of course, he or she knows what it is! Let’s take for example Bob and Ann. Bob had been irritated all evening.

He had snapped at Ann a couple of times over nothing and had been unusually quiet the rest of the time. Of course, Ann was disturbed over this. Naturally, she felt hurt and resentful toward Bob.

However, her resentment was based on the assumption that Bob’s irritation and negative behaviour were directed toward her. She decided to see if Bob was really angry or upset with her or if something else was going on.

She said, "Bob, you’ve been acting bad tempered tonight. Is it because of something I’ve done, or is it something else? Do you feel okay?”

Bob then shared with Ann that his budget had been cut at work, and because of the cut, he would have to sack a friend who works in his office.

He was not upset or angry with Ann at all. If he had not clarified the meaning of his communication, she would have misinterpreted Bob’s behaviour and may have reacted in a way that would only have made their evening worse.

If your partner does start talking about their problem, make sure you listen without passing judgment. If you get contentious with them, they will shut up for good. But if he or she not ready to talk yet, give them time.

Unclear messages can often be clarified by saying, "I’m not sure I know what you mean by that” or "This is my understanding of what you mean...Is that correct?”

Say what you mean, mean what you say

When its time do the talking, be as straight forward and direct as possible. According to Joe Beam, the author of ‘Becoming One: Emotionally, Spiritually and Sexually’, communication should be characterized by honesty and openness.

Your partner ideally should be your closest friend, but this may be friendship can easily be weakened by talking to others. If your partner hears something about themselves from his or her friends, your relationship is in trouble.

As soon as a partner suspects that his husband or wife isn’t trustworthy with what he or she shares or who they are, the intimacy of that marriage or relationship is as good as over. One of the cruelest things you can do to your partner is to spread their secrets around.

Boys talk

Another major problem in husband wife communication is that a woman may want to have conversations with her husband that resemble conversions with her girlfriends. This isn’t going to happen.Your husband is a man, and men talk differently. For instance, men by and large don’t like their choices to be challenged.

"Women ‘should’ on men a lot, and men don’t like to be ‘should’ on. You can improve the quality of your marriage by 20 per cent if you avoid saying, ‘You should ….’ to your husband,” says Dr. Kevin Leman, the author of ‘Making Sense of the Men In Your Life’.

"Quite frankly, to talk to a man , you need to learn to shut up ,be nonjudgmental ,and quit trying to interpret what he means,” he reaffirms in his book.

To compound Dr. Leman’s argument, nobody enjoys being challenged in a relationship. And as a couple you should be able to find a common ground without challenging each other.

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