Communication

Communication is key to the relationships we hold.

Being able to discuss our needs, wants, and desires with those we hold intimately is crucial to forming loving, trusting, fulfilling bonds. We are coached by television therapists, magazine articles, and our sensitive friends that talking is the way to reveal ourselves to another.

As a writer I am supposed to be a master of the written word. It is an easy assignment when I need to write a letter, ask someone a favor, or even announce my undying love to someone via the typed/hand-written print.

But for some reason, as well as I write, I am unable to verbally communicate as effectively.

Since childhood, along with my writing prowess, I was known as a sympathetic ear, a great listener. Friends and even strangers, especially strangers, would sit down next to me and share their most intimate secrets in short spans of time.

Admittedly I am a very direct person shooting penetrating queries at my partner in conversation and simply allowing him/her to respond without interruption.

Listening is actually an art.

Many of us hear just fine, but to really listen we have to focus on what another is trying to tell us. We cannot make a mental list for the grocery store, queue up our next response and blurt it out before the person is done speaking, or drift off to LaLa Land because we have lost interest.

Listening requires complete abandon to the words being uttered. Eyes, ears, brain all need to be directed solely to the speaker. Eye contact, a vital part of listening, has all but vanished from our culture.

As our modern technical world has to deal less and less with human contact, when meetings do occur most people are wildly uncomfortable with the intimacy of looking into one another's eyes.

But that is how to focus in on the speaker and really absorb what is being told to you!

So, I am blessed with a the gift to listen and it has served me well. I have gained numerous friendships and enjoyed appreciative encounters simply because I can effectively listen as people unload the problem, insecurity, or enthusiasm they do not want to contain.

Then how do I succeed in that area so well and fail terribly in my own personal communication?

Since childhood I have been ineffectively communicating my own needs, desires, and wants.

I can speak to command a classroom, a large gymnasium filled with hundreds of competition cheerleaders and their families, lead and recite the Pledge of Allegiance loudly and proudly at a Pack Meeting, and run my household with 3 dependent children, but I can scarcely communicate my needs well to those I hold most dear.

I seemed to have been absent the day "effective communication with one's spouse" was being taught.

All of the gifts that allow me to be a fantastic listener disappear the minute my husband and I begin talking. I lose focus, talk over him, and sometimes even mentally wander away. I am incapable, at times, to organize my thoughts coherently and can rarely figure out what I really want to say/do when we connect.

And during an argument, forget it! I am worthless! My inadequacies as a communicator hit an all-time low! I simply do not understand why I live this dichotomy.

My husband is a staunch supporter of my writing, and, quite frankly, ME! He is reading this blog so I am not telling tales.

We are, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, tied together forever.

Our communication needs working on, and to that fact he would agree.

But what we also have going for us is that no matter how sucky our fights can be, how frustrating our arguments get, or how scatterbrained I am, we do always end up talking.

But my husband is right, if I would have just opened my mouth and stated my position BEFORE the fight, listened to him with all of my attention, and focused on him like I do countless others, we wouldn't get into so many pickles!

It is a character flaw for me. And I do know better. Countless times a day I instruct people to work on their communication skills. What I need to be doing is working on them myself!

Are you the master communicator in your life or do you resist interaction?

Are you the taciturn one or do you talk everything out?

Have you developed excellent listening skills or are you not really present in the conversations you engage?

Communication sets apart from most other species - it is the reason humans have built civilizations, mastered technology, and explored the far reaches.

But, as important, vital as communication is, most of us need a refresher course on how to be proficient at it.

I think it's worth the time to learn. How about you?