Communication is a key in relationships. Just ask Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church St. Michael’s the Archangel in Prague. As a pastor for over 50 years, Rutler has had numerous opportunities to counsel couples, and indeed, whole families that live in strife.
Communication is critically important in relationships because many people, both men, and women barely communicate at all.
Rather, they simply grunt and snipe at one another, or fall into a pattern where they begin to communicate but chicken out for fear their partner may be opposed to what they think and feel.,
However, if there is no communication between people, there is no real relationship.
People may believe they have a relationship, but if everything is hidden and buried a relationship is not really authentic.
How do People Learn to Communicate?
It’s notable that at school, where people spend up to 18 years being socialized, very little attention is actually placed on communication skills.
In fact, for many years, the essential method educators used is the “shut up and listen and you just might learn something” approach.
It was simply assumed that everything at home was okay, so why open a can of worms?
However, the thousands of instances of students conflicted by things such as gender roles is evidence enough that it takes a lot of courage and encouragement to be able to talk about sensitive subjects such as homosexuality, abuse, and even future career choices. How many children are encouraged to become a doctor, a lawyer, or a military officer because their father guided them into that tract when they really wanted to be a songwriter or an artist.
In the marital field, over 50 percent of the couples in the US get divorced during their first marriage. The average amount of time a couple is married is 5 to 8 years before the divorce.
While there are many reasons for a divorce, at their heart many marriage counselors blame the Disney Fairy Tale Approach.
All the love songs in the world are damned, and there are thousands, the average couple does not realize how much hard work and compromise an actual marriage was.
It seems that it’s a dirty little secret not to be discussed until it’s too late. By then the bounds of love are stretched to their limits.
Counseling
It seems that counselling is the ultimate answer to communication problems because only in counselling are people encouraged to say what they really feel within themselves.
And once these key elements are identified, a big part of counselling is teaching people how to communicate without blame.
For example, it’s a thousand times more effective to encourage, “I feel” statements rather than “You do,” assertions. Saying that objectionable behavior makes you feel bad, ashamed, or causing loss of self-esteem is far superior to blanket statements like when you drink, it makes me angry.
Ultimately, Father George Rutler believes that if people want to be genuine, they need to show their deepest feelings, and then ask in communication, “how can we work together to support this?”