Importance Of Communication To A Successful Relationship

A good communication is an essential ingredient to any successful relationship, regardless of whether or not a couple has different religious backgrounds. Communication skills are important in at least two fundamental ways. First, effective communication enhances a couple 's ability to understand one another. Effective communication, for example, allows individuals to more clearly express or articulate their needs and desires, which in turn, makes it easier for a partner to be responsive to those needs. Greater understanding of our partner also fosters greater intimacy or sense of connection. Being able to share our faith with our partner, for example, can help a couple strengthen their spiritual intimacy.

Second, effective communication skills help couples work through the inevitable problems and conflicts that arise in all intimate relationships. Strong communication skills, along with the problem-solving skills discussed in the next unit, will facilitate couples working through many issues, including issues that interchurch couples frequently face. Good communication skills, for example, can help couples from escalating a disagreement into a major conflict.

The receiver may not be paying attention, and may miss important verbal or non-verbal parts of a message. This could impact how the information is interpreted. Even if the receiver attends to all the verbal and non-verbal parts of the message, he or she may still not accurately decode the intended message. Individuals often use their prior knowledge about their partner or situations to help interpret the meaning of a message. This prior knowledge can actually distort the decoding of information if it is based on biases or erroneous assumptions. A wife who is accustomed to hearing critical comments from her husband may assume that his current message is also a criticism, even when that may not have been his intent in this particular