Over the past 35 years of working with couples at all stages of their relationship I have seen that many couples who come in for communication deficiencies engage in what I call “circular arguing”. Circular reasoning is where one partner brings up an issue (usually when irritated) to get change for and the other partner hears a completely different issue and argues back about that. For instance, if a partner says “I can’t stand it when you constantly nag me!”, and is basically requesting to be asked for things in a different way, and the other partner hears “Stop asking me for things I don’t want to do!”, and responds with something like, “Well if you weren’t so lazy I wouldn’t have to!” The issue of how to ask for things gets lost in the issue of how lazy or not lazy the partner is. There is no resolution with Circular Arguing and each partner usually walks away feeling misunderstood and rejected. Neither feel heard and cared about. Asking for what you need and adding a “hearing step” can remedy this kind of fruitless bickering and increase rather than decrease intimacy.
Another frequent issue I see in couples is a lack of understanding about information processing differences between partners. Some people process information “externally” and some “internally”. External processors need to get thoughts out of them to come to an awareness of what they think/feel. They need to “talk through things” or “write it out” to understand their own needs and feelings. External processors see words as “tools” to get to what they feel and often start with things like, “I hate you when…..” and get eventually to the summary at the end, which is their true feeling like, “Well, I don’t hate you but I get really frustrated when….”. For someone who processes internally, because they need to think their thoughts through thoroughly before expressing them, words are symbolic. Words have great meaning (unlike the tools externals see them as), so they try and not say anything until they know what they think and feel. Internals “flood” (can’t think) with too much stimulation and get anxious when pressed for an immediate response, exacerbating their inability to gather thoughts. Having a working knowledge of these differences and adjusting important conversations around them helps couples both express and hear their partners more clearly and thus avoid unnecessary conflict.