Bad Communication in Marriage? How to Fix Communication in a Relationship Based on Real Marriages, Real Stories
Are you wondering if you are experiencing bad communication in marriage? I know I have personally marveled many times at how hard it can be to get on the same page as my husband.
Here at wivestribe.com, we collect true stories from real married women about all kinds of issues, and from them we’ve learned a lot about how to fix communication in a relationship. Here are the overall lessons we’ve learned about how to fix communication in a relationship:
- Find your voices and use them! It’s good to wait until you’re both cooled down to discuss a problem, but a lot of bad communication in marriage (and even divorce) comes from keeping your problems buried and not saying anything at all.
- Accept and respect your differences. As soon as you stop thinking of your partner as being a “bad” communicator or being “wrong” in the way they do things, the better. You both have different experiences, childhoods, and completely different worldviews, and that is okay.
- Become an unstoppable team. This will help you pick your battles, so your arguments only have to do with ways you hurt one another, and never to do with anything outside your marriage.
- Reach out to an unbiased third party. If you’re unable to get on the same page or understand one another’s worldviews, counseling can be extremely beneficial just to have someone uninvolved help you understand where your spouse is coming from.
Read on below about these wives’ real challenges and how they improved bad communication in marriage.
Find Your Voices and Use Them
“At one point in our relationship, he told me he only kept me around because I was pretty, but that he was going to change me … With time, I started to think of myself differently. I didn’t feel good about who I was because of the things he wanted me to change … I just felt like I was losing myself. Like I was becoming this insecure person and that my self-perception depended on my husband’s approval of me. I hated it. I hated it so much. I saw that I had become passive and submissive.
… After all these years of marriage, I have learned that most of our problems have come from our inability to communicate with each other. We were both communicating, but just not in a way that the other person could understand. My first reaction when faced with contention is to run away.
In my mind, when I come back, the fight should be forgotten and we should move on like nothing ever happened. I had this idea because that is what I grew up watching my parents do.
For some reason, my insecurities kept me from saying anything when we fought. I can still feel myself start to shut down and it’s as if my lips become stuck together. There have been many fights where I would just sit in silence and take his criticisms. My head would be storming with comebacks and excuses, but I could never bring myself to let them out.
His reaction is different than mine. He doesn’t run away and hope the fight blows over. He prefers to buckle down and talk about things until we figure it out. He could sit and talk for hours, and he wanted me to talk back so we could figure things out, but I couldn’t do that. My silence would make him angrier and more frustrated. In his mind, how were we supposed to get past these fights if I wouldn’t communicate with him?
Our fights could last for days of us just not talking to each other and sleeping in separate rooms until someone finally went up to the other and just apologized.
It took a lot of time to learn how to communicate with each other. I had to find my confidence and voice when we fought so we could work through the problem and I could explain my side of things. He had to learn to be patient and not jump to anger so I wouldn’t shut down and stop speaking with him.
We have both learned that if we are frustrated about something, we bring it up in a lighthearted manner that doesn’t make the other feel targeted. Bringing things up during pillow talk is never a bad idea. It’s a place where neither of us feels judged or targeted when we need to talk to the other about something.
As we learn how to communicate with each other, I have begun to find myself again. I no longer feel like I have to hide my opinions or thoughts. I’m starting to feel like I can be me again around him.
I love being able to communicate with my husband now, and I feel like we can talk about anything without the other getting hurt or starting a fight. No matter what we go through, we always come out stronger after our fights. We feel like we know each other a little better each time. I love my husband, and I love the couple we have become together. We build off of each other and have learned that just appreciating one another can be enough some days.” –Anonymous
To fix communication in a relationship, it is pivotal to explain what’s going on inside your head to your partner. If you don’t, they can assume the worst and get angry or discouraged.
Explain everything. Say things like “I love you a lot, but I feel like you don’t respect me when you tell me my opinion is wrong,” or “I’m just upset right now. I’m going to go for a walk and come back to talk about this in thirty minutes, because I feel like you don’t love me right now.”
It can be hard to be vulnerable, but you saying what you’re actually feeling is going to relax your partner and help you communicate better in marriage.
Accept and respect your differences
“I started to sink into a slump of depression. I felt as though everything I was doing was pointless if it didn’t include becoming pregnant. My loving husband, who is naturally a very optimistic person, started to become a little bit of an enemy for me. He has always been a positive person, and this was no exception.
In his best efforts to comfort me, he would tell me that it was not my fault, and he was totally happy to adopt. While both of these statements are very true and highly honorable of him, at the time I didn’t see it that way. All I wanted was for him to agree that it wasn’t fair that we had to suffer through this trial and curse the whole process itself. Luckily for me, he never did.
We had decided not to tell family and friends that we were trying to conceive so we faced this trial together just the two of us. He became my rock and the only way that positive thoughts came into my life about the situation.” –Anonymous
It is challenging, but accept that your brains work differently.
I know it was hard for me personally to understand that my husband raises his voice when he gets upset. That just wasn’t acceptable to me.
But as soon as I gave up the notion that he was a bad person and accepted that he saw what he was doing as his natural reaction to contention based on his unique experiences, we did so much better. We both were able to improve and explain how we preferred to communicate.
Become an Unstoppable Team
“Most of the time we couldn’t be in the same room, because if we were in the same room for too long we would just end up in a fight. I remember I would be in the same room and then leave to give him space so we didn’t end up in another fight.
Sadly, this went on for 3 years. Divorce conversations would come up because it seemed like we really couldn’t stand each other.
It’s so difficult to suddenly be with a complete stranger with a different personality, culture, way of thinking, and different ways of saying and doing things.
We both have strong personalities and this caused more fighting. We each had a vision of how things were supposed to be, but they weren’t the same. We each wanted every little thing our way, and we each tried to put our foot down and teach the other how things were “supposed to be.”
Like I said before, those first three years were really hard. We learned the hard way. We understood we had boundaries and learned each other’s. We learned when not to push each other’s buttons, we learned to:
- Pick our battles
- Understand each other
- Speak each other’s love language
- Understand one another’s personalities
- Give each other space
- Respect likes and dislikes
- Respect one another in general
- Be patient with one another
We learned how to become one.” –Anonymous
The idea of “becoming one” with your spouse is so powerful and can absolutely repair poor communication. When you take your spouse’s side whenever you can, you eliminate so much bad communication and so many arguments.
When your spouse complains to you about someone at work and you say, “They’re right, you know,” you establish an atmosphere of distrust, which will definitely play into your communication in the future. Create an atmosphere of trust by forming a team with your spouse and taking their side every time. Then when discussions about your own relationship come up, the argument won’t escalate or be as emotional.
Reach out to an unbiased third party
“But then I started to get blamed for things. I wouldn’t give my opinion as it seemed I was shut down a lot…
My husband was there but he wasn’t. I brought it up to him a few times, and in the moment, we would see where I was coming from. He saw that unfortunately, he was putting me aside like his parents always did to him.
He would do better for a few days, but then always go back to how he was. He would minimize me.
I suggested he go back to therapy but he would just do the same thing. He would try really hard for a few days, then go back to himself. We were co-parenting roommates. That’s what we had become…
After a very difficult night I finally told him, “either go back to therapy or I want a divorce.” I told him if he didn’t start going within the week, then I was done.
It seemed to finally hit him how bad it was and how bad he was. So, he did.
Within the week he started therapy again. But because of our argument, I realized I was still dealing with some anxiety and depression that came on during my first pregnancy that I thought I had resolved.
I started therapy too. It wasn’t couples therapy. It wasn’t us having a problem with communication. It was that we both had so many problems personally that together we were doing horribly.
My husband is still doing extensive therapy because of his childhood. And I am doing therapy from trauma from my childhood that came up because of my pregnancies…
The other person couldn’t resolve it, we had to resolve it ourselves. Because we are working on ourselves, we are also able to work on our marriage.
I think that was part of our big problem. We lost part of ourselves in our marriage and we stopped being friends. Our main focus was taking care of our kids and STAYING married. We weren’t being husband and wife.
We had to start to do the same things that made us fall in love. We had to work on our friendship. And also spend time on ourselves so we could give more into each other’s lives. But I can honestly say this is the happiest I’ve been since the honeymoon phase wore off.
It wasn’t just my husband. He did need therapy and I’m glad he got it, but it was us. We now spend more time together, dating and being friends.
We both have trauma to deal with but that’s just it, we are dealing with it. We are changing and improving.” –Anonymous
You may find that going to couples’ counseling regularly is extremely beneficial to your marriage. If that’s the case, keep doing it! For other couples, one or two sessions might be the springboard you need to understand one another and begin a new chapter of communication in your marriage.
We hope you’ve learned something from the four tips we’ve gleaned from just a few of our amazing true stories about how to improve communication in a relationship.
Other ways to improve bad communication in marriage include:
- Setting aside a quiet, peaceful time and setting to discuss problems logically and not emotionally
- Giving it at least twenty minutes before speaking when you’re angry
- Work together to stop name-calling, shouting, criticizing
- Stick to simple complaints and use “I” statements (“When this happened, I felt like…”)
We completely understand that it can be challenging to get started with using more vulnerable communication in marriage. However, open and vulnerable communication is the key to making marriage work.
Sometimes a little more education can make all the difference in your marriage.
Read more about this incredible course below.
“Your Spouse Is Lying To You About The Reasons They Want A Divorce…
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