At some point, most couples will struggle to effectively communicate with one another. Balancing the needs of each other, work, and life adds stress to every relationship. Which is why learning how to effectively communicate is so important. Most people have heard of the four horsemen of the apocalypse when it comes to the end of times. Modified from this, there are four areas of communication that can spell the end of a relationship — criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Avoiding the four horsemen of the apocalypse in your relationship can help you improve your communication efforts.
Don’t Criticize Your Partner
One of the first signs of a doomed relationship is when there is nothing but criticism. Criticizing your partner is completely different than providing constructive feedback or voicing a complaint.
We’ll take this as an example. Say you and your partner agree that if one of you is running late, you will call or text. One night, your partner is running behind and is late by an hour. If you are just issuing a complaint, you may say, “We both agreed to call when we are running late and I got really scared when you didn’t call.” However, a criticism would sound more like, “How could you be so forgetful and selfish to not call me, I was really scared when I didn’t hear from you.”
While both versions may sound the same, the latter places blame and shame on your partner. In order to improve your communication, you can work on how you word things.
Don’t Treat Your Partner With Contempt
When you treat someone with contempt, it means you are doing it out of spite, anger, and being mean. Whereas criticism questions your partner’s character, contempt approaches the relationship as if you were superior.
Contempt often comes in the form of trying to “compete” with your partner. If your partner comes home from a long day at work and wants to relax, you may try to compete with them by listing why your day was worse. “You think you’re tired? I had to do x,y, and z, then come home and cook dinner. It must be nice to want to relax, I can’t believe how pathetic you are being.”
Everyone has bad days or long days, and this is one of the quickest ways a downfall in a relationship happens. Instead of being mean, competing, and comparing your day to theirs, recognize that in their own way, their day was equally hard. When you have compassion and understanding in your relationship, it will go a long way towards the relationship lasting.
Defense Is Not The Best Offense
Going on the defensive is often a direct response to criticism. Feeling called out or ridiculed, we often jump at a chance to defend ourselves. Unfortunately, most people to go on the defensive by using excuses to justify their behavior or actions. And often times, they will try to place blame on the other partner.
Most couples will inevitably argue about small stuff that doesn’t really matter. If your partner questions why you didn’t take the garbage out this morning, you may become defensive and say, “I was in a rush to get out the door and besides, you were home too, why didn’t YOU take the garbage out?”
Don’t Shut Your Partner Out
The last horsemen of the relationship apocalypse is stonewalling. Stonewalling is when you or your partner completely shut down and stops responding. For some, this may seem like a perfect way out of conflict and arguing, but it actually does more harm than good.
This directly shuts down any lines of communication that could be made between your partner. Stonewalling is often the very last horsemen that will put the final nail into the coffin of your relationship. It’s often the direct response to the criticism, contempt, and defense. So by the time one partner has decided to shut down, the communication lines have already been damaged.
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Balancing your love, work, and life is a delicate dance. It is no wonder that couples argue, place blame, and shut down on one another. However, there is always hope that you can learn to effectively communicate in your relationship. Reach out to our office so we can discuss how to open the lines of communication up in your relationship to let it thrive again.
