Why Couples Have Difficulties Communicating In Marriage

by Lester Rennard

For any counselor or therapist who spends time helping couples to resolve issues in their marriages, one of the most frequent complaints that is expressed usually by wives goes like this, 'I don't understand why my husband and I cannot communicate together, and so I do not feel connected with him.' If you are a wife, you can relate if these or other similar words have ever escaped from your lips. If you are a husband, chances are they might by now become a song and a dance that constantly ring in your ears.

Why do couples find it so difficult to practice meaningful communication in their relationships? Why is it that some men have a tendency to tune out the voices of the women in their lives instead of eagerly listening to what they have to say? Since men and women are wired differently and therefore receive and transmit information with all its nuances not exactly alike, how can they find harmony and satisfaction despite their differences?

We all may agree that effective communication is vital if there is to be a spirit of understanding in the most intimate of all human relationships. A wife feels 'connected' with her husband when they are able to communicate together and she feels that he listens, understands and values her, including what she has to say. If he tunes her out when she's trying to communicate with him, she interprets it as rejection and that she is not valued and therefore finds it difficult to feel any meaningful connection with him. Men, however, generally do not need to 'communicate' to feel connected. As long as they feel respected, validated, valued for their contribution and can get their physical needs satisfied, they are connected.

From time immemorial, men have always expressed frustration in regard to how their wives go about the business of communicating. The main complaints involve the style, volume of information and their choice of timing. It is generally believed that women have three times the number of words in any given day as men do. When they get together at the end of their day and she needs to unload, he has already used up his stock of words for that day and has very little to contribute to any meaningful conversation.

If couples are sensitively aware of this disparity between the sexes and genuinely care about each other, they would be one step ahead in their quest for meaningful communication and connection. Since a woman is not always looking for a solution to a problem when communicating with the object of her affection, a man can best satisfy her desire for connection by just listening, with interest, to her. She will feel satisfied, even when her husband only has a few words to contribute, if she sees him showing attention and interest in what she's saying.

Men, it appears, are programmed to go into a heightened mode of problem solving whenever a woman wants to talk. When she informs him that she wishes to talk, he automatically begins to surmise that she is about to share some problems for which he will need to offer solutions. As she begins and continues to talk, he selectively listens for clues as to what the problem is and sometimes is impatiently wishing for her to 'get to the point' so that he may pronounce his solution and get on with his life.

If she is just wanting to talk in order to find connection, she will observe his impatience through his body language and become frustrated. She may then either withdraw or go into an attack mode forcing him on the defensive. If we follow this scenario to its conclusion, the conversation will usually end up in argumentative expressions of anger, recriminations and resentment.

Couples who are mature, caring, selfless and who seek to understand each other will be more likely to experience satisfaction in their relationships. They are the ones who will make sacrifices to learn and experiment with techniques to improve on their relationship in general and their communication in particular. They will seize all opportunities to learn more about the needs of each other and rather than allowing their differences to divide them, they use them to build and enrich their lives.

As further enlightenment on this subject matter, a recent study from the University of Sheffield in the U.K. found one reason why men have difficulties listening to women. The reason, it claims, is that because of a difference in size and shape of the larynx and vocal cords between the sexes and affecting the range of sound frequencies, a female's voice is more complex than a male's. Men's brains are designed to hear women's voices as music rather than speech. When a woman is speaking, a man uses the auditory part of his brain that processes music, not speech, to figure out what she is saying and therefore has a much harder time understanding. He does not have the same problem listening to another man since he uses a different mental process that recognizes a man's voice as speech.