The Overwhelming Importance of Emotional Communication in Relationships
When you live and do life with another person in close proximity, whether it is in marriage or partnership, it can be a perplexing blend of wonderful and hard. Especially in marriage, when you’ve formed strong emotional bonds through the euphoria of dating, engagement, and wedding, it can be frustrating when it seems that the person you wanted to build your life with is not who you thought they were. A key to navigating this challenge is emotional communication. Emotional communication is crucial to strong relationships and can both heal and strengthen relationship bonds.
What is emotional communication?
Emotional communication goes deeper than just being honest about your feelings. It’s first discerning the difference between what you’re feeling now and the underlying emotions that may be driving those feelings. Then, once you understand those feelings and the emotions that are at the core of the issue, you have to find ways to both communicate honestly and also agree to listen compassionately to your partner. It requires vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and sometimes a little bit of creativity. It can also be initiated proactively instead of reactively.
Emotional communication requires vulnerability, and vulnerability is based on trust. Trust is built over time but is unfortunately broken in an instant. Your partner or spouse needs to know they can trust you with the small and big things, so being a trustworthy person means demonstrating through action that you can be relied upon, that you can keep confidences, and that you care deeply about their health and wellbeing, even when you don’t quite understand. You are rooting for their success every day. That kind of trust will naturally beget vulnerability, and there are ways to demonstrate trustworthiness that we will talk about shortly.
Emotional communication requires emotional intelligence. The ability to know oneself and understand our own emotions and core values takes some effort. We don’t live in a world that prizes slowing down, being introspective, and considering what we’re feeling or thinking and why. Live counter-culturally and do the work to understand what makes you tick. This is part of emotional intelligence, but the other part is learning to read people. With time and observation, and with good listening skills, you can begin to read body language and tone of voice to know how someone else might be feeling. You also begin to understand how what you do or say and how you do or say it may impact other people, whether you intended to impact them or not. Once you begin to learn and grow in emotional intelligence, it can sometimes feel like a special power to read and understand other people. And when used correctly, it can enhance any relationship.
Emotional communication sometimes requires creativity. Building trust is foundational to emotional communication, and sometimes it requires a little bit of creativity. It requires learning about the other person in the relationship as well as learning about yourself and finding ways to communicate their love language in a way that they will receive it. For example, if your spouse or partner receives love through words of affirmation, it may be sufficient at first to voice appreciation for a clean house, take time to listen, or offer a compliment. But at some point, learning exactly how your significant other feels most accomplished and offering your admiration for that becomes crucial. They want to know that you see them and affirm them for the core of who they are.
That’s just one example, but another would be finding small, meaningful ways to communicate to your partner that you not only see them but value them every day is important. Send a text. Buy some flowers. Make breakfast in bed for no reason and with no strings attached.
Final Thought: Be Proactive instead of Reactive
When you find yourself in a heated disagreement about something petty, you can almost be sure that there is an underlying issue not being addressed. However, for physiological reasons, you will be unable to identify that issue in the heat of the moment. Having the wherewithal to know that you are engaged in a petty disagreement takes effort, but once you have identified the craziness, take a moment to separate, allow your fight or flight instinct to calm down, and reassess what might really be going on in your mind. Allow your logical brain to take over so that you can discuss what is happening with your spouse. The work will be worth it, and you may even have fun doing it.
https://www.gottman.com/blog/category/love-relationships/
https://www.gottman.com/about/research/couples/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201412/4-ways-improve-your-emotional-communication
https://www.conovercompany.com/the-importance-of-emotional-awareness-in-communication/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-realworldcomm/chapter/6-3-emotions-and-interpersonal-communication/
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/imperfect/2017/01/how-to-communicate-your-feelings/
https://iceeft.com/what-is-eft/
https://www.gottman.com/blog/what-makes-love-last-building-bridges/
https://www.apeacefullifecounseling.com/emotional-communication-couples/