Are you communicating with your spouse? Communication is given much lip service, no pun intended, by relationship experts. While most couples understand that communication is important for a long lasting and healthy relationship, its definition eludes them. Conceptually, the need for effective communication in healthy relationships is clear. However, applying good communication skills is far more challenging. Why is this? For starters, in order to use effective communication, we have to know what it means. Is talking good communication? Is listening good communication? While these are important elements of effective communication, they are not solely effective. There are several levels of communication that need to be understood before success with it is possible. The following paragraphs highlight several main tenets of healthy communication including the three levels of understanding, content and process, and perception.

The three levels of understanding

Everyone wants to be understood. We are validated when we are understood. We feel important when we are understood. And most importantly, we feel wanted when we are understood. Like the term communication, understanding has a complex definition. Most of us believe we know its meaning, but in my experience as a relationship counselor, many couples cannot recall experiencing true understanding by in their relationship. As I have helped couples navigate through relationship problems stemming from poor communication, I have traced many of them back to a lack of understanding of each others’ needs and wants. From a basic awareness of what your spouse is asking to the most complex and dynamic meaning of his or her needs, understanding is of paramount importance in a healthy and communicative relationship. My work has opened my eyes to three levels of understanding that I believe if achieved, can mend the most damaged relationships and strengthen healthy relationships.

Level 1

Level 1 understanding is quite simple. If you hear your spouse and can reflect back to him or her what he or she says, you have achieved level 1 understanding. This means that you are listening with undivided, or minimally divided attention, and you are generally concerned with what your spouse is trying to tell you. Your ability to reflect back their words or ideas reflects your willingness to pay attention to their thoughts, wishes, ideas, or concerns. This creates the foundation for levels 2 and 3 understanding.

Level 2

This level of understanding is where most couples are deficient and, as a result, where many problems often arise. To achieve level 2 understanding, couples must have some capacity to have empathy for their spouse’s position, feelings, and experience. To be empathic toward your spouse you have to be able to truly have a sense of what he or she may be feeling or experiencing. This requires your reflection on their experience and putting yourself in their position to imagine what the feeling is like. At this level you should be able to discuss and process your spouse’s experience and offer feedback and support in a way that will deepen your connection and create an environment safe for open expression of all emotions. Expression of emotions in a safe environment will build confidence in your relationship and prepare you for level 3 understanding.

Level 3

The third level of understanding requires not only an empathic gesture toward your spouse, but also a true experience of their emotion. Reaching this level is extremely challenging but ultimately rewarding. To some contemporary relationship experts, feeling your spouse’s feelings may suggest that codependence exists in your relationship. The term codependence received much attention in the previous two decades but has gradually faded as pop psychology has taken a back seat to real psychological interventions. In brief, codependence suggest that when couples share the feelings of their spouses, they have no sense of self and only feel what and when their spouse feels. The goal of interventions with codependent couples was to create boundaries between their own feelings. While this is definitely important to maintain independence and avoid enmeshment, like most things in our society, it was taken too far and actually had counterintuitive effects on relationships. Couples became fixated on having their own feelings and distancing themselves from the feelings of their spouses. Yes, this created independence and self preservation, but also resulted in spouses alienating themselves from each other. To achieve level 3 understanding you have to embrace the feelings of your spouse and actually experience them. As a couple you are one, and as one you experience and work through the same feelings, no matter who owns them. Healthy couples can share feelings, be in tune to their spouse’s feelings, help process their spouse’s feelings, and maintain fluid boundaries to continue self-preservation in a way that does not alienate their spouse. Having no sense of what your spouse is feeling can be as equally damaging as taking on your spouse’s feelings as your own so your spouse does not have to own them. Those with level 3 understanding have the ability to take on their spouse’s feelings, work through them with their spouse, and discern who owns them in their efforts to provide support.

Content and Process

The content of what we are saying is rarely, if ever, as important as how we are saying it. The process of our communication, or how we say something, has great significance in our relationships. If you say hello to your spouse in an angry tone, the feeling it will elicit will be much different from what he or she may feel with a loving hello. This is a simple example of how entire conversations are often held between couples. As human beings we are as in tune to the feelings we get in a conversation or dialogue as we are to the content of the discussion. In personal relationships we are more in tune with the process and feelings of our conversations than the content of our interaction. If you pay attention to how you are saying what you want to say, you may find that your spouse is more receptive and understands you better.

Perception

The old saying goes “perception is reality.” There is truth to this in relationships. I have often counseled couples who argue about different topics in the same discussion. How is this possible? It’s easy-they have misperceived what their spouse has said and react to their perception. Their perception is loaded with feeling usually from both here and now experiences and experiences from the past. The feeling is expressed in the here and now argument. This creates a dynamic in which each participant reacts to real feelings from the past and present and protects him or herself with defensiveness and anger, which fuels the argument further. This pattern continues until one submits, the couple stonewalls each other, or they avoid the point altogether, and often continues into the next discussion or argument. If you want to eliminate this pattern, clarify, clarify, clarify. Let me explain. You think your spouse has said something that has offended you and your typical reaction would be to defend yourself. You initiate an argument that persists into the next day or even later. This continues and you both feel more distant and helpless and misunderstood. The feelings are powerful and maybe disproportionate to the event but are nonetheless present. You feel that you can’t get your point across or be heard. The anger builds and you are likely to react to your spouse in your next argument with residue from this one as you have done many times in the past. How could this have been alleviated with clarification? Here’s how: when you believe that your spouse has said something with the meaning you have assigned, simply ask what he or she means and relate what you heard and how you experienced the statement. This will allow you to hear the meaning from his or her perspective. You can then compare it to what you believe he or she was saying. Your perception will be supported or confirmed.