My Experience: Psychologist Dr. Neill Neill maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He focuses on self growth, healthy relationships and life enhancement after addictions. He is the author of Living with a Functioning Alcoholic - A Woman’s Survival Guide . Get his free report on "Personal Change." You will receive by email each new article he writes.
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Developing communication skills in marriage is a very important step toward maintaining a happy marriage. When you as a couple have taken on a pattern over time of not talking an issue through to some sort of resolution, and you want to change that pattern to save your marriage, what can you do?

Marriage relationships can be tricky. The suggestions below apply just as much to the one who is stuck in terminal rightness as to the one who doesn’t talk. The former is the bully. The one who doesn't talk can be either keeping the peace or bullying the other through silence.

If you find yourself with some variation of this in your marriage, you are likely in a lonely and unfulfilling place.

To understand what to do about it, think back to the very beginning of your relationship when you did talk freely with each other. You enjoyed listening to one another. Yes, you did talk and listen because that was the only way available to get to know each other. Furthermore, it was the getting to know each other that led to your finding you liked each other, and ultimately, committing to each other.

A million things can come along to interrupt the initial pattern of talking and maintaining good listening skills —jobs, children, financial stress, hobbies, new friends, education, illness, deaths and old family patterns—in other words, life.

I hear repeatedly from couples in trouble excuses like, "But I know what he’ll do," "I know what she’ll say," "I know what he’s thinking," and "That’s just the way she is." With each such claim, the other sits in total frustration for being so misunderstood.

What is totally missing from statements like these is any acknowledgment of the fact that we all grow and change throughout life. They are reacting to what they remember, not what is now. They cannot possibly know what is now, if they do not have communication in their marriage.

I watched a man once rail against his wife for her nasty treatment of him over the weekend. She sat calmly until he finished his tirade. Then she said, "I was out of town all weekend." Undaunted, he retorted, "Yes, but that’s what you would have done if you had been home."

Fortunately, even in cases this extreme, there may be a solution short of separation and divorce, especially if other marriage-enders such as infidelity or disdain are absent. Your solution is to set aside the lie that you already know your partner, and then get to know them.

Eileen and I have been talking with each other for thirty years and we still learn new things about each other almost daily. If we are apart for a few days, we have a lot of catching up to do. So how could you possibly be up to date on whom your partner is if you have not been communicating?

You liked each other once when you were doing lots of talking and listening. The chances are you will connect again if you get to know each other again. Get into each other’s head and heart. How does the world look through their eyes? As you get inside of your partner’s world, what are you learning about yourself? Share this.

It is possible, of course, that when you truly get to know each other again, you will make the mutual decision to part, but now you can do it with dignity and respect.