How to Get a Partner to Understand You

Source: Photo by Keira Burton from Pexels

Couples seek therapy for a variety of reasons, but the problems they struggle with frequently stem from a breakdown in communication. Research shows that about a quarter of those in couples’ therapy complains that their partner simply doesn’t understand them.

In response, therapists often teach their clients communication skills. For example, speakers are told to use “I” expressions rather than “you” expressions: “I feel angry when…” versus “You make me angry when…” Likewise, listeners are told to paraphrase and repeat what they’ve just heard to make sure they understood.

It may seem commonsense that you need to express your thoughts and feelings if you want your partner to understand you. However, in our real-life interactions with our intimate partners, we often fall short of the mark.

Why We Fail to Express Our Thoughts and Feelings

There are many reasons why communication can break down between intimate partners. For one thing, the notion that your spouse should be able to read your mind is quite common in our culture. In fact, close couples are quite good at intuiting each other’s thoughts and feelings, at least during mundane interactions. However, this mindreading ability largely breaks down when it’s most needed, namely during conflict resolution.

Another reason that communication breaks down is that we fail to take our partner’s perspective. Things that may seem completely obvious to us may not be so to our partner. We think a particular issue “goes without saying,” and we assume our partner knows what’s on our mind, when in fact they have no clue. A good rule of thumb here is that you should assume nothing is “obvious” and instead be explicit about everything.

Finally, communication can shut down because the listener doesn’t want to hear what the speaker has to say. This is usually because they perceive the message as threatening either to themselves or to the relationship. Research on conflict resolution in intimate couples is mixed on how often this happens, but it certainly does happen on some occasions.

What One Partner Said and What the Other Partner Heard

Although therapists have been teaching their clients commonsense communication skills for decades, until now there has been little research on just how effective these are. To fill this gap in our knowledge, Dutch psychologist Laura Sels and colleagues undertook a study of real-life communications in 155 mixed-sex couples. They recently published the results of this study in the Journal of Family Psychology.

In this study, the researchers were interested in measuring two outcomes, expressivity and empathic accuracy. Expressivity refers to how clearly the speaker presents their thoughts and feelings, while empathic accuracy refers to how well the listener understood the speaker’s intentions.

The naïve view of communication is that the speaker sends a message, which the listener then receives. In reality, however, communication is far more complex, for at least two reasons. First, speakers often don’t send messages that clearly express their intended meaning. And second, listeners need to interpret the meaning of the message, which they usually do from their own perspective rather than that of the speaker. In fact, studies show that empathic accuracy in exchanges between intimate partners is only around 25 to 30 percent, suggesting that a lot gets lost in translation.

Testing Commonsense in the Laboratory

For this study, each partner selected several “hot topics” from a list, one of which was randomly selected. The couple discussed this issue for 11 minutes and tried to come up with a solution. They were left alone, but their conversation was video recorded.

Afterward, each partner watched a recording of that conversation. Every 90 seconds, the video paused, and the participants answered several questions. If they were the speaker, they indicated their intended meaning and whether they felt they had communicated it clearly. If they were the listener, they explained what they thought the speaker had intended. They also noted how threatening they felt the message was.

Because we often don’t know how well we expressed our intended meaning, the researchers also had four objective observers rate the expressivity of the speaker at each pause in the tape. Not surprisingly, speakers tended to rate their expressivity higher than the objective observers did. Furthermore, the listener’s empathic accuracy was greater when objective observers rated the speaker’s expressivity highly, but not necessarily when the speaker believed they’d been clear.

The researchers also separated statements into expressions of thoughts versus feelings. Past research has shown that speakers tend to use more words when expressing thoughts than when expressing emotions. Furthermore, listeners rely more on the speaker’s verbal expressions when interpreting their thoughts, but they depend more on their nonverbal expressions, such as body posture and facial or vocal cues when interpreting their feelings.

Mind Reading Essential Reads

How Mind Reading Suffers in Borderline Personality Disorder

How Well Can You Read Your Partner's Mind?

Thus, the researchers surmised that clear expression would be more important for conveying thoughts than feelings. However, this was not the case. Rather, listeners were more accurate in understanding both thoughts and feelings when the speaker expressed them clearly—as judged by the objective observers.

Finally, the researchers conjectured that empathic accuracy would decrease when the listener felt threatened by the speaker’s comments. When the participants viewed the video of their conversation, they indicated how threatening they felt the conversation was at that point. An analysis of the data showed that the listeners interpreted the speaker’s message just as accurately regardless of the perceived threat level of the content.

In the end, this research demonstrates the importance of expressing yourself clearly and directly. Discussing contentious issues with your partner can be very stressful, and it’s always tempting to avoid direct communication to keep from hurting your partner’s or your own feelings. However, hinting or beating around the bush won’t solve the problem, nor will assuming your intentions should be obvious, or that your partner should be able to read your mind.

Instead, conflict resolution requires straightforward communication about what’s on your mind and patiently listening to what your partner has to say. Like cleaning a wound, it may sting for a while, but the momentary discomfort marks the beginning of the healing process.

Facebook image: Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock