While I do believe that love conquers all, maintaining marriages aren’t that simple. Even well meaning couples who truly love each other may end up drifting apart because of unprocessed and unaddressed resentments.
In this video, we discuss how miscommunications between husband and wife can lead to these build up of resentments.
The focus here are the personality differences between the couple that lead to miscommunication. In the broadest sense, it is how well meaning messages (verbal or actions) can back fire and appear as a challenge or even a threat to the receiver.
The one presented in the video is the classic introvert vs extrovert exchange where the introvert feels attacked (ie: “you are overruling my decisions”) while the extrovert feels ignored upon by the other’s lack of response. In this example, we can see how both well meaning parties end up being misinterpreted by the other.
These personality traits (introversion/extroversion) influences the way one communicates and the same time influences our expectations in social exchanges.
These personality traits have been with us since childhood and it would have been adjusted to blend in with the environment then; such as interactions with the family and with school friends. Personality is just who we are and we attract (and repel) personalities that fit and don’t.
I would say that during the dating days the introverts would find the energy of extroverts exciting, while the extroverts are intrigued by the deep and mysterious world of the introvert. Usually these differences do not trigger such defensive response; however, in marriages, the couple is placed in an extremely close (familiar) relationship that one can barely have a break from. So what happens? The frustrations and resentments from the differences only keep building up (from the misperceived messages) and most of the time the people within the system are not aware of it.
Awareness is key.
This is one of the main things we establish in marriage therapy. Once the couple becomes aware of this reality (and this should have been brought to light during pre-marriage preparations), each person can deliberately prepare for such exchanges to occur.
One of the things they can do is to shift their expectations to cater to the messenger’s personality and not of their own. This process of grace and empathy humanizes the messenger to the point that one naturally becomes less threatened. A lot of the husbands have found ways to navigate around their wife’s inquisitive and challenging approaches because they are more aware of where she is coming from.
Ask yourselves, what happened? Or what entered this relationship that started off from love and excitement? Could it be that all these build up of resentments came from unprocessed and unpacked moments from miscommunication?
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