Ways To Strengthen The Communication Lines Within Your Marriage

A strong marriage is made up of a few different key components, but the foundation of a strong marriage is always communication. Without proper and effective communication, you could be on two different pages and get into a lot of trouble such as financial trouble, legal trouble, or trouble within your relationship. In fact, quite a few marriages fail just because they do not know how to effectively communicate with their spouse. Once a couple starts getting off-track with their communications, it is easy to stay off-track, creating a lot of negativity and within the relationship.

It’s funny because so many couples jump into marriage and plan out every single detail of their wedding, to a T. But, what they don’t plan is their future life together. Instead of being picky about the flower arrangements, or the color of the petals lining the aisle, why don’t you be picky about how the rest of your life is going to look like? Preparing for your actual marriage, instead of your wedding day, is much more significant, especially in the long run, but unfortunately, this does not happen very often and couples jump into marriage, without any experience or knowledge when it comes to effective communication.

If you are already married and you realize that you can improve your communication skills to help your marriage flourish even more than it currently is, I have some tips for you to help you along that journey! These are some of the ways that we have strengthened the communication lines within our marriage and I hope they help you out, as well. Of course, keep in mind that building communication and creating a beautiful marriage takes time and hard work – it won’t happen overnight. So, be patient and do your part and you will improve each day.

Be Accepting And Willing To Listen

First things first – you need to be accepting and willing to listen, if you want to improve the lines of communication within your marriage. You both need to be on the same page and you both need to want this. Your partner needs to feel accepted, in order to be ready to improve communication within your marriage. This means that you need to show them that you are listening to them and that you are willing to meet them in the middle. Avoid interrupting them, fighting back immediately, and getting angry with them. Instead, wait for your turn to talk, try to think of a positive way that you can rephrase your words (if you are angry), and discuss a few options that might work for the both of you before jumping to conclusions. One your partner feels accepted when he or she comes to talk to you, it will become much easier to effectively communicate and improve the communication lines within your relationship.

Counseling

Don’t be afraid to get help when it comes to navigating through the journey of improving the lines of communication within your marriage. If you are worried about talking with someone else about it, don’t be! Counselors are skilled at helping you heal, strengthen, and improve your marriage. They have dealt with situations just like yours in the past and know the effective ways to help you improve your marriage and improve your communication skills. Marriage counseling is just one of Ray of Hope Counseling Services’ strengths and expertise. You are able to get marriage counseling in one of their seven convenient locations in Georgia, or if you live out of the state, or if you are too busy to go in, you can also do your counseling session online, which I thought was really neat! Ray of Hope Counseling Services says, “For some people, couples counseling may transform their relationships and their lives; for others, it helps them solve a specific problem and move forward with more confidence and less anxiety. In a typical session, your counselor may ask you questions so that you can talk about what’s going on and how you feel. They may also offer you advice or ideas to try at home.” Founder and Clinical Director, Lynn Umstead is an expert when it comes to couples counseling, relationship issues, premarital counseling, and more, so you know that she will help provide you with the best and most knowledgeable solutions to your communication issues and needs.

Talk About What You Need To Improve On

You can’t start improving your communication lines or anything within your relationship, for that matter without knowing and talking about what you need to improve on, individually and as a couple. For example, if you know that you are really bad when it comes to getting emotional and starting to yell, then maybe you can communicate that to your spouse and let them know that you are trying to improve on that aspect of your communication, but that they might need to bare with you as you work on it. But, if your relationship is majorly struggling with communication as a whole, that is a conversation that you need to have together where you sit down and figure out what you can improve on as a team.

Go On A Teamwork Retreat

The last tip that I have for you today is to consider a teamwork retreat. I remember that when I was in school, we went on a teamwork retreat and it was so fun! We bonded as a team, improved our communication skills, and had a blast doing it. There are so many options for teamwork retreats in the area and just North of us, in the mountains, as well.

This is a guest post by Alex Berger.