There’s honestly nothing more frustrating than having a misunderstanding, especially if it’s with someone you care about. The burning sensation in your throat, the uncontrollable urge to pull out your hair and scream hoping it’ll make them listen. Sometimes, you just want to take them by the arms and shake them, hoping that would somehow get your words across. But then you don’t do it; or you do and you realize that doesn’t work — they’re not some toy or remote that needs a brief shake to work again.
Underneath all the wishing and urges is a thought that grows stronger as you diver deeper into the argument: you can’t make them understand you.
This realization doesn’t come alone. It’s a “buy one get a couple free” package. First comes the hurt, then the anger. You search for who is at fault, where it went wrong, but then you did everything like you were meant to do — at least that’s what you tell yourself. You weren’t rude, you weren’t shouting — at least not at the beginning — so what exactly went wrong? Wasn’t communication supposed to be the key?
Is communication really the key to a successful relationship?
. . .
As much as I’d like to tell you otherwise, the answer is, yes. Communication really is the key to a successful relationship, effective communication. So much for the buildup, right? You’ re probably asking yourself:
So why do we still argue?
I asked myself this same question over and over whenever there was a misunderstanding between myself and anyone I considered close. My answer always ended up being,
Because we are different.
It would be foolish to expect to be identical to someone you took an interest in (unless you’re mechanized clones). It doesn’t take away the shock that comes at the realization, especially if it was your first argument.
My next response is fear. Fear that this difference might spell the end of our relationship because, let’s be honest, we humans are a very proud and stubborn species. Chances are the misunderstanding might not get cleared up depending on its degree and the maturity of the parties involved.
So, often, I would resign myself to fate. Let whatever wants to happen, happen.
After all, I tell myself; I communicated. I did everything I was supposed to do.
It would take me a long time and about two years of Human Understanding classes at my university to get what I’ve been missing: the communication process wasn’t isn’t complete without understanding.
. . .
For communication to occur a sender needs to pass an encoded message successfully across through a channel for a receiver to decode, after which the receiver will then send a feedback. If it does not relate the feedback sent, then the process was not effective.
In simpler terms, if you try to get your point to someone and they didn’t understand it, effective communication did not occur.
What is Effective communication?
The only difference between effective communication and the simple communication we all know is that while the former requires the intent of our message to be understood, the latter doesn’t exactly require anything.
So you can mumble and grumble all day in your house and your partner will probably know you’re distressed, that’s communicating. They won’t know why. They might even assume you’re talking to yourself, or trying to remember the lyrics to the song you just heard (speaking from personal experience). That doesn’t mean communication didn’t occur, it did, whether or not the receiver properly understood it.
That being said, effective communication has a lot of barriers. Alot of things can stop your message from getting passed across properly, but most times the actual issue isn’t that they misunderstand the message. The actual issue is that the person you’re talking to does not agree with you.
Most times, we focus more on being right than being understood. Even when it’s clear, they completely understand the message, the argument still continues because: we want to be right, not understood.
We want to be right, not understood
Like I said earlier, we humans are a proud and stubborn species, so this will be a hard pill for us to swallow. I know it was for me. You can understand where someone is coming from perfectly and still not agree with them.
When you realize this, you realize that what you’ve been engaging in is actually persuasive communication.
The thing about persuasive communication is that you are trying to change the way a person thinks. Unless you’re a magician or some kind of mind manipulating siren, persuasion is difficult. Even experts do not do it at a certain go. This is because our beliefs, ideologies and mindset are the very foundation of who we are.
Accepting you not needing to be right to be understood makes communication much easier than you would imagine. Accepting you not needing to agree with someone to understand them is what makes us able to live amongst people of varying personalities and lifestyles.
It’s our human superpower.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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