Marriage Counseling

How often have you had a fight that felt like a tug-of-war, with each of you pulling as hard as you can for a different position? If you are like most people, fights like this don't feel good. And, not only do these fights feel particularly bad, but they also are usually quite ineffective at changing either person's mind about the issue at stake. One of the reasons this approach often fails is that each person is fighting so hard for his or her position that the other position seems like it is not being taken seriously.

One of the most common sources of misunderstandings and fights in the couples I see comes from an assumption that our partner is understanding what we communicate the way we intend them to understand it. You may be familiar with a game called “telephone”, in which a message gets passed orally from one person to another – often, the message has been completely transformed by the time it reaches the last person.