The Art of marital conversation

The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.
George Bernard Shaw

The day at work has been horrific. Emails never stopped. The voicemail light kept flashing. The boss needed the information yesterday. And to top it all off, you had a fight with your wife as you left this morning.

You feel the tension coming from the house when you get out of your car in the driveway. The kids are in their rooms doing homework and your wife approaches you and says the words most men dread: “we need to talk.”

It seems at this moment, most men have the fight or flight response. I can berate her about the timing of things, continue to insist that I’m right and she’s wrong. Or I can shrug it off and disappear with the TV, the Internet, alcohol, or the work I conveniently brought home.

What is it about talking that is so difficult for men? Granted, this does not apply to all men, but most have some trouble with deep conversation. Especially when it comes to conversing with our spouse.

A brief history

Men have been educated from birth to compete, judge, demand, and diagnose. We are very adept at seeing a problem that needs fixing and developing a way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, this fix is according to the man, possibly not taking into account those around him. This is due in part to our learning to think and communicate in terms of what is “right” or what is “wrong.”

To add to this, we often express our feelings in terms of what has been “done to us” rather than being independent of those around us. We mix up our needs and we ask for what we’d like using demands, guilt, or even the promise of rewards. This should come as no surprise since this is how many of us were raised by our parents.

At best, the basic ways men think and communicate hinder communication and create both misunderstanding and frustration. At worst, they can lead to anger, depression and even violence.

Communicating with your spouse do’s and don’ts

· Talk face to face. Anytime you are in a discussion with your spouse that is beyond the scheduling or surface level, do it face to face. If this is not possible, the phone will work, although this can limit the connection and increase the possibility of misunderstandings. Never try to cover deeper issues via email or text messages.

· Turn off other distractions during the conversation. If you’re working on the computer, minimize the work or better yet, shut the whole thing off. If you’re watching TV, turn it off. If you are afraid of missing something in the game, get Tivo.

· Don’t answer the phone. If it rings in the middle of the conversation, you have voicemail for a reason. Let it do its job.

· Take the time to listen to her point of view. You are only one part of the relationship. Consider her side of things and ask for clarity if you don’t get what she’s saying. You don’t have to agree with everything she says to still love her. But it will help to understand her if you listen.

· Forget about being right or wrong. As soon as the discussion turns to who’s right and who’s wrong, you’ve both lost. If you have an insatiable need to always be right when it comes to your spouse, riddle me this: what’s it like to be married to a loser? If you have to always be right, that makes your spouse always wrong. It’s not about right or wrong most of the time.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
Rollo May

The art of non-violent communication

Do you think it is possible to connect with what is alive in ourselves and in others from moment-to-moment? Dr. Marshall Rosenberg says yes. His non-violent communication techniques focus on how we express ourselves, how we hear those around us and how to resolve conflict by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.

In order to connect on a deeper level, we have to check ourselves throughout the conversation. Often, whenever our emotions spike during the discussion, we will change the subject or attack the other person in order to help us feel better about whatever is going on at the moment.

My grandfather once said that when a person involved in a conversation raises their voice, it’s no longer about what best for all involved and the current situation. It’s about their power and their pride.

The art of conversation at a deeper level:

· Focus on the intention. Most marital conversations can be simplified down into one of two categories. A chance to be closer together or a chance to be my own person. Humans vacillate between being too close together or too far apart. Conversations are often used to either bring us closer together or create some space between us. If what you are really wanting is companionship, understanding, compassion, then say so outright. If on the other hand you are wanting some space to chart your own course, speak up. Both connection and separateness are necessary parts of every relationship (for more information on this subject check out my Ebook, The Simple Marriage Matrix).

· Seek compassionate connection. This is done primarily by the conversations not being tied to a particular outcome, like being right or something you’d like the other person to do. Focus on being clear with your side of the conversation and then clearly hearing their side. This may mean you don’t agree. So what. You are two separate individuals. You are not going to see eye to eye on everything.

The conflict or issue may not be resolved, that’s not the point. A mutually satisfying outcome is where both people are heard and understood. Think of your conversations in terms of sex. When both people are satisfied, the connection is much deeper and lasting.

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
Robert Greenleaf

Corey Allan

 

 

GENERATION SEX

  Remember that Hilaire Belloc`s cautionary tale – Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch ones`s eyes? I used to love it as a child when telling lies was one of the naughtiest things you could do: Matilda ended up getting burned to death.

  These days, however, everything has changed and it`s the truths that children tell that make one gasp and stretch one`s eyes.

  A couple of years ago, my daughter Francesca, then aged 13, told me about a party she had been to one Saturday night.

  In the course of the evening, she came upon one of her friends, also aged 13, performing oral sex on a boy in the garden; the boy was standing and videoing the event on his mobile phone.

  My daughter, in whom the feisty gene has always found strong expression, pulled her friend off the boy, knocked the phone out of his hand and slapped him round the face.

  I apologise for shocking you, but then there are a number of things shocking about this event: the casual nature in which such an intimate act is performed in public, the young age of the participants and last, but by no means least, the fact that it is being filmed. This not only signals the boy`s disassociation from the physical experience, it also indicated his intention to replay the event and, no doubt, to share his triumph with his friends as one might brandish a trophy above one`s head for all to see.

  Nor was this the only such event on this particular evening. I am no prude, but Francesca painted a picture of Bacchanalia that certainly made me gasp.

  That week at school, when conducting a postmortem of their weekend as teenagers do (and always have done), the girls at her then school (she`s since moved), a private girls` school in London exclaimed: ‘Hurrah, now we are more slutty than Slutney’, the affectionate nickname of another school.

  Call me old-fashioned, but when I was a gal, sluttishness was not a condition one aspired to.

  That year, they were all dressing in Hooters T-shirts (the uniform of the well-endowed waitresses of a U.S restaurant chain whose slogan ‘delightfully tacky yet unrefined’ sums up its approach) and buttock-skimming shorts. They looked, as girls so often do, far older than their 13 years and not unlike the Playboy Bunnies who incensed a generation of feminists. (Interestingly, clothing depicting the distinctive Playboy bunny is highly popular now among teenage girls.)

  When one considers our society, it`s no surprise that our children have lost all sense of modesty.

  Not only do social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo encourage teens to share information about themselves; but when they are not taking their clothes off, their role models are spilling their guts about their ‘private’ lives all over the pages of every national newspaper, magazine and television. We have an immoderate interest in the private lives of perfect strangers. Pop stars like Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears expose the car crash that their life for all to see. Jordan, who won fame by revealing her breasts, has a documentary series where she and her husband, Peter Andre, discuss their sex life (or lack of it) in intimate detail.

  The Osbournes revealed all for our entertainment in their television series. Was this extraordinary exposure responsible in part for the subsequent drug and alcohol abuse of the two of their children who participated? One can`t help feeling it might have been. Their third child, Amy, wisely chose to stay out of the limelight. Whatever its exponents may say, reality television has a lot to answer for. I have been a documentary film-maker for more than two decades and am well aware of the power of the medium. Today`s teenagers are staring in the reality show of their own lives and doing all they can to make it as dramatic as possible.

  Where before mistakes we made when young – excessive drinking, acts of promiscuity – were quietly forgotten, now they are recorded and broadcast on the internet for all to see. From happy slapping to amateur sex videos (Paris Hilton rose to fame when a shamelessly intimate video of her and her boyfriend found its way on to the internet, a reality TV show followed, and the rest, as they say, is history).

  The sexualisation of our young is ubiquitous: boys caught cheating on their girlfriends on mobile phones, ritual humiliation and worse by YouTube (In February 2008, a gang of London teenagers aged 14 to 16 drugged and raped a woman in front of her children and then posted the film of the attack, videoed on a mobile phone, on YouTube), television programmes like Sex And The City with man-eating Samantha as the living embodiment of casual libidinous sex, all provide the back projection to our children`s lives.

  Instant fame is all. In today`s celebrity culture, no one cares how you made your name, as long as you`ve made it; there is no distinction between fame and notoriety. Do you really want things that you`ve done when drunk to be plastered all over the internet? These images are like puppies: they are not just for Christmas, they are for life.

  Would the 13-year-old girl administering oral sex in a London garden have done so if she`d fully considered the possible repercussions of the video the boy was taking of her?

  Once broadcast on the internet the images would have become available not merely to the boy`s friends, but to the whole world; to paedophiles and to prospective employers in the future.

  In her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Cultre, Ariel Levy writes about the American experience, where many a young girl`s dream seems to be the desire to dance around a pole or cheer while others do. She says that feminist terms such as liberation and empowerment, that used to describe women`s fight for equality, have been perverted.

 Now the freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough – now it can mean the freedom to an exhibitionist.

  During the same summer as the party my daughter had told me about, she casually mentioned at a lunch gathering of family and friends how another of her friends allowed boys to ‘touch them up’. There was a sharp, shocked intake of breath around the table; the casual use of language and the public mention of such an act astonished us. Although many of us might have engaged in such activities at a similar age, none of us could have imagined discussing it in front of our parents` friends.

  It is precisely this erosion of the boundaries of privacy and the absence of taboo that is so shocking about today`s teenagers. Modern technology allows children access to images and information we, as children, could scarcely have imagined.

  You want to see a naked girl? Click on to the internet. You want to hear exactly what your friend got up to the night before? Log on to Facebook. Not only will their boasts tell you that they are recovering from the excesses of the night before, there will be the pictures to prove it.

  In today`s world of fast information and access to all areas, too many – particularly the young – are having to up the stakes to chase their particular dragon and get the high they crave. Sometimes they are so busy creating drama and tension in the movie of their own lives that they`ve forgotten to be human beings.

  A video I was told about shows how far things have gone: a dying woman lay inert on a street while a man urinated on her, saying as he did so: “This is a YouTube moment.”

  When I was young, secretly looking up the word ‘penis’ in the dictionary and sniggering was how we got our thrills. This is small beer for today`s children: the girls especially, who, where once they might have struck a pose in front of mirrors on the privacy of their own bedrooms, now exhibit themselves scantily clad in hookers` poses in photo albums on social networking sites.

  There is something about the one step removal into cyber space that allows people to behave even more outrageously than they might in person. Now, even this boundary is becoming blurred.

  Perhaps it`s the freedom or lack of boundaries they`ve learned from virtual reality that give them permission to behave with such frightening lack of inhibition in person. That and the demon drink, for today`s teenage girls drink in a way we rarely did.

So how much are the parents to blame? Those of us who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies will do almost anything to appear ‘cool’ to our children; we certainly don`t wish to come across as some sort of Mary Whitehouse scandalized by today`s youth. Nor do we wish to appear as joyless, men-hating feminists, although many of us remember that we fought hard for the right to do as men have always done.

One can`t help but wonder what happened to feminism and its lessons. On the one hand, girls drink like men; on the other they dress in a manner that invites sexual objectification. Do these young girls even know what feminism is?

  According to a sample group of 17-year-olds I spoke to, there are enormous double standards between the sexes. Boys treat sex as being a sign of ‘laddishness’ and masculinity, they say; promiscuous behaviour on their part is an achievement. Girls, on the other hand, are caught between a rock and a hard place. “Boys demand that they go further before they are ready; if they do, they will quickly be labeled as sluts, and gain a reputation as an easy target, so that drunk boys will seek them expecting that they we`ll be easy to get off with. If they don`t, they will be labeled as a frigid and become instantaneously unattractive; most boys won`t bother investing time and energy flirting with a girl if they think there is little prospect of pulling.

  “Girls I know often get drunk and allow themselves to be touched up at bus stops or up against walls,” says my daughter, Francesca. Many of her classmates, she says, have been sleeping with their boyfriends since the age of 14 or 15.

  “Peer pressure has always been a persistent factor of teenage life. The stakes are higher now and teenagers, not surprisingly, have become even more competitive and paranoid. They may often find themselves in situations they are not equipped to deal with.

  The internet personae that children create turn them into avatars – online personae – in their own lives and diminish their empathy for each other. It becomes hard to tell what is real and what isn`t.

  Facebook has an application called the Honesty Box, which invites you to send and receive anonymous messages to discover what people really think of you. The application`s blurb declares triumphantly that messages cannot be removed: “Once you send a message, it`s forever.” Thus has bullying moved from the playground into cyber space? The implications of all this behaviour are far reaching. A survey about violence in teenage relationships released last month by Women`s Aid and Bliss magazine found that nearly a quarter of 14-year-old girls who responded had been pressured into engaging in sexual activity with somebody they`ve dated.

  According to the survey, boys see girls as sexual commodities and one in four 16-year-olds had been hit or hurt in some other way. Many felt it was OK to hit a girl if she`d been unfaithful. It also found that more than half of 14 and 15-year-olds have been humiliated in front of others by someone they were dating.

  “There used to be a stricter and more regulated approach to bringing up children,” says Dr. Pat Spungin. “Parents should take back some of the control they`ve ceded.” We don`t say “no” enough, so vulnerable girls don`t have enough experience of saying “no” themselves.” This is not to say that we should be condemning teenagers for being sexual and proposing that they take chastity vows and attend purity balls as is fashionable in parts of the U.S.

  However, we do need to consider what is appropriate behavior and to help our teens ensure that ill-considered or drunken acts which are sometimes a part of growing up won`t come back and hurt them in the future.

  There have, of course, always girls and boys who are sexually precocious. When I was in the fifth form (Year 11) at my girls’ grammar school, I remember a classmate going to Majorca and returning to boast that she`d slept with six boys in a week. Luckily, neither she, nor they, had the pictures to prove it. These days they might well have had.

  The girls who are most vulnerable and have the most desire to be liked are the ones who are tempted to cross these boundaries.

  Of course, others will have similar stories, and it is symptomatic of a worrying tendency among our teens to live their lives in an inappropriately public arena where they reveal far more of themselves, both literally and metaphorically, than is wise.

  Barack Obama recently commented on the fashion among young men for wearing their trousers low on their hips: “Brothers should pull up their pants you`re walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing. (Some people might not want to see your underwear – I`m one of them.)”

  Few would wish a return to the hypocritical constraints of life before the sexual revolution; however, the trouble with the pendulum is that it has a habit of swinging too far the other way.

  Perhaps it`s time for everyone to pull up their pants and show each other a little more respect; and, since we are supposed to be the adults, it has to start with us, with how we behave, how we draw boundaries and what we put in our newspapers and magazines and on our television screens.

 Olivia Lichtenstein, Daily Mail, 2009