30 – Communicating Little Stuff

Details, Details - A good relationship requires good communication of day to day stuff. What time will you be here? What do you want for dinner? How long will your car be in the shop?
In the many years we have been married, some of our crabbiest days have been on days off. If I was working Monday through Friday, Shirley would begin to compile a mental list of things she wanted me to do or things she wanted us to do together on Saturday. Of course, I had a mental list of my own, that began with sleeping late. The problem would come when we failed to communicate our expectations. We each had at least 10 hours of expectations crammed into 12 hours of daytime. We could have done everything on her list, or we could have done everything on my list. We just couldn’t do both. A short talk, sometime during the week, about what we had planned for Saturday would have eased the tension that seemed to mount during the morning on Saturday when we discovered we were not on the same page.
There is no great skill required in telling someone what time you will show up or what you have planned for Saturday. If you respect each other you will inform each other of the things that are going to have an impact on your daily lives. Perhaps there are a few reasons, though, that keep people from communicating the little details.
· Past conflicts make some people “gun shy” about communication. If we had a big fight the last time I brought up the fact I was going golfing, maybe it would be easier to just slip out and go without saying anything. The problem, of course, in this approach is that it increases conflict and tension in a marriage.
· Some people may be so wrapped up in their own thoughts and needs that they simply fail to think about how their plans impact their spouse. When you are married, you are no longer two but one, and you must think about how your plans impact your partner.
· Some people, especially the newly married, may feel like it’s demeaning or unnecessary to discuss their plans with another person. They may have struggled with their parents for independence when they were teenagers and now feel that grownups don’t have to discuss their plans with others. If you have this attitude, you need to drop it and recognize that good communication is essential to a healthy marriage. You cannot make your spouse feel respected while leaving him or her in the dark about your plans that impact their life.
We have met with couples that were crying out for better communication in the details of their lives. One or both of them felt disrespected because of the things they weren’t told. Sometimes, though, one or both felt like having to tell their spouse what they had planned was a form of imprisonment. Being married involves becoming one and you need to share with each other these little details.
You may need to look at the calendar together once or twice a week to see what you have planned for the next few days. Taking just a few moments to do that may pay for itself many times over during the week. You may spend two minutes eliminating some conflict that would have taken you two hours to fix later. You will find that your life is more in order, and your appreciation and understanding of each other is greater.
If you are going to get home later than expected, give your spouse a phone call. We have so many methods of communication available today, there is no excuse for failing to communicate.
If you have committed to do something with your spouse, take that commitment very seriously. Don’t let something else get in the way without discussing it with your spouse. Once I had told Shirley I would watch our children while she got her hair done on a Saturday. The commitment seemed like a small thing to me. So when one of the guys called to ask me to go play basketball, I said I would without discussing it with Shirley. This was much more upsetting to her than I expected. I would have been much better off watching Shirley getting her hair done, because I ended up on crutches with a bad ankle sprain. (I did it playing basketball, Shirley didn’t do it.)
Some couples who find it hard to communicate about the details of life, may distance themselves from each other to make it seem as though their lives are in order. They may each eat by themselves, each pursue their own interests, go to bed and get up alone without communication. They may find themselves living in two separate worlds where they only accidently bump into each other. This isolation may reduce the conflict they once had, but it falls very short of the plan God had for marriage when He talked about two becoming one.
Talk About It – How can you improve your communication of the details of your life? Would you benefit from a weekly discussion of what you have planned for the coming week?