Meaningful Living

Common Communication Errors That Can Hurt Your Relationship.

Phaytea’s Pulse is participating in the A to Z Challenge for April 2018. The Theme is ‘Building and Sustaining a Meaningful Relationship’ and ‘Common Communication Errors That Can Hurt Your Relationship’ is our entry for letter C. This challenge will run for 26 days in April except Sundays. Please stop by the blog daily for subsequent posts as we read the letters of the alphabet together. Enjoy.

Everyone agrees that communication is a vital part of any relationship. This cuts across all relationships – from the way we relate with friends, family, colleagues and ultimately the person we wake up next to every morning. There is no bias here, but if you have someone who you spend most of your day with, chances are you won’t always be pleasant.

There will be times when you will both step on each other’s toes. How do you communicate at this point? Do you use words loosely? Do you forget to respect each other? Do you scream above your voices until the neighbours start interfering?

Related: Boundaries in Relationship.

If you fall out with an acquaintance, you may not see this person in months but for your partner, it is a different ball game. You will be in each other’s space daily, this is why it is important to communicate properly in a relationship without burning bridges.

Related: Communication (Words Are Not Enough).

While trying to emphasize on importance of healthy communication in a relationship, my mum would say, there cannot be two captains in a ship. When one person is hot, the other should be cold and vice versa. True words, but as humans, we all know how difficult it can get to always be the ‘bigger’ person.

A Perfect relationship may be far-fetched but healthy communication really dampens a lot of things. When two people work as a team, the dreams become reality much quicker and I feel like the smallest team to nurture is between two people.

Since our aim is to build and sustain a meaningful relationship, an effective way to start is working on communicating better.

In this post, I will be sharing very common communication errors that can come back and bite us in the butt. The effect of poor communication is like a disaster waiting to happen.

  1. The first is a tip from counselling class. Avoid using words like ‘You Always’, ‘you never’. Generalizing the outcome of an issue makes it feel like the other party never gets anything right.
  2. Avoid the Silent Treatment. Talk about issues as it happens. Keeping things in mind is dangerous for you and those around you. The day you decide to speak up, a lot of things might go wrong.
  3. Pay Attention to the Tone of your Voice. A forceful tone might not be seen as domineering.
  4. Being outright insultive. Why bother say things when you know you most likely will have to apologise the next minute.
  5. Name calling/impolite remarks albeit jokingly. Unless this is a normal thing in your household, don’t go about saying things like ‘you are silly’, ‘fish head’ etc. Be sure your partner is fine with it.
  6. Making negative and hasty conclusion about your partner and having to apologise when you find out your are wrong. When this is continuous, it starts to create a strain in the relationship. Related- Assumptions In A Relationship.
  7. Aggressive conversation starter. There’s a post with pointers on how to break the ice here.
  8. Being emotionally abusive. Avoid being condescending, Do not talk bad of each other’s interest.
  9. Listening to react instead of listening to understand.
  10. Selective hearing. When you decide to listen, listen to everything. Do not pick what suits you better. Talk about how both party can come to a compromise.

Communication has not happened if the desired result is not achieved. Strive to avoid trigger words that can cause more harm than good.

Share your thoughts

Can you tell when you are no longer communicating?

What other communication errors should we avoid?

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