Communication and How the Lack of It Ruins Your Family

No matter how misanthropic, sociophobic, or introverted you are, communication is vital for you. Even those who have never needed it much can’t do without social interaction. And who do we spend half of our time with? That’s right! With our loved ones! This means that, in the family, you either communicate with each other or your social unit simply ceases to exist.

Unfortunately, it often happens that due to the lack of time, work, personal problems, or just simple inability to adequately interact with each other, communication between spouses becomes a formality, with occasional phone calls and cold, unemotional text messages. Naturally, this only exacerbates the alienation, preparing fertile soil for insults and misunderstandings. Formal communication leads to formal relationships. And formal relationships push people away from each other, gradually fading to the point when the damage can’t be undone.

How to bring communication back

To return that warmth and intimacy to the relationship, you’re going to need a lot of time, effort, and, most importantly, your desire and patience. Your partner won’t change just because you want it. This will happen only after you begin to change, take the first step, and start to show sincere interest, attention, and care. Try sharing your feelings and emotions and don’t be shy about it. Emotions are important when you live with a person you can’t remain indifferent to.

Over the decades, we’ve become very good at controlling and hiding emotions. That’s our way to protect ourselves when we’re afraid that our feelings might be hurt. Protecting ourselves, we hide in a shell, and when one person hides, so does his partner. As a rule, this happens so suddenly that we can’t even tell who decided to hide first. But if you’re planning on saving the family, this doesn’t matter because both of you feel lonely and hurt. Each of you wants to step back and prove that you’re independent, but deep inside, you suffer and seek spiritual intimacy but not with the partner but somewhere on the side: in a career, friends, etc. Because each of you no longer feels like your relationship will work.

The main thing is to stop building walls around yourself and approach your loved one. They never stopped being close, loved, and loving. The thing’s that, through the prism of daily worries, you ceased to feel their love as vividly as before. But the feelings didn’t go anywhere! So put down your weapons and declare a truce!

1) In order to form a need for communication, you just need to start communicating again. For example, call each other at the end of each day and have a chat.

2) At home, keep talking about books, movies, your plans for the future, duties, whatever. Discuss anything; just don’t be silent.

3) Show at least twice as much care and attention as you have ever done before.

4) Tell each other what you want to hear. Tell how much you love and miss each other and how sorry you are for not communicating enough.

5) Try to spend more time together.

6) If you expect more from a partner than you’re willing to give yourself, you’ll never make a relationship work.