Comments on: What to do when your partner isn’t interested in communication

By: carien

carien — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:56:11 +0000

i have learned it in my life, that comunication is the key of a successfull relationship whether you are married, or not.

i have been with my long distance relationship with my partner as a adult(from angola to sa) and we(i) have tried hard, i will ask him a question since we have so many issues that even though i ask it and try to communicate he will either get angry and say you are asking stupid questions and walk away. Is this all signs that we can not communicate.? after 7 years of divorce and no kids that he has with his ex wife he still look after her in our house at the ocean and she drives our luxury cars and she is looking after the bills and not me clearly shows that he wants more than 1 woman in his life and will never be happy without one of us? doesnt make sence and then they will we have feelings for eachother but not the same love feelings that me and him has, thats pretty much words that a woman should read between the lines, theres no benefits that site? doesnt sound like if all of these are hassles and i cant comunicate with my partner regarding these questions that buggs me, do they realy care about comunicate with the new partner if the old one is so deep stil in the picture? clearly then i think that comunication lack so much then that can things ever work out.

By: Glowing Face Man

Glowing Face Man — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:04:50 +0000

I feel really lucky that my girlfriend is also very big on communication and openness. Thanks for this great article.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:47:07 +0000

Yey! Communication goodness.

By: Pace

Pace — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:25:58 +0000

@Chris: Expressing your true wants and desires in spite of being afraid of rejection — that doesn’t sound like the easy answer to me, in fact it sounds downright scary! I agree, though, that it’s very important. I’m very happy to hear that you’ve found a partner with whom you can share that level of openness and honesty.

@JoVE: I agree that wanting to improve things can sometimes be papering over some underlying problems. And I totally agree on your suggestions of first being honest with yourself and then being honest with your partner. But I disagree on the sentiment of “if nothing was wrong, why would we want to change something.” In my experience, that’s where some of the best personal growth and relationship improvements have come from. Things were good, nothing was wrong, and we found ways to make things even better. (:

By: JoVE

JoVE — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:48:50 +0000

I also think we often lie to ourselves about why we want to do things like improve our communication. We say there is nothing wrong but really, if nothing was wrong, why would we want to change something. Maybe nothing is so wrong we are thinking about leaving the relationship. But there is a lot of clear water between that kind of wrong and nothing being wrong.

So maybe the first thing is for the person who wants to change things to really look inside themselves and figure out what is wrong and how wrong it is. Maybe it is only a little wrong. But then when you ask your partner if you (collectively) could work on communication, you can be honest and say “I’m mostly happy in this relationship but there are some little things that are making me uncomfortable or unhappy and I think that if we worked on our communication, those could be fixed pretty easily and then our relationship would be even better.”

Because really, if you ask all the while reassuring them that nothing is wrong, who can blame them for not wanting to do any work fixing something that isn’t broken.

By: Chris Cade

Chris Cade — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:02:28 +0000

In my experience, all communication problems stem from the same source: Fear that if we express our true wants and desires, we will be rejected.

So, my wife and I have figured out the easy answer – put our wants and desires out there, warts and all, without judgment, and see what happens. We might end up staying together, we might get a divorce… but at least either way, we’ll know what we want and need, and be on the same page about whether or not we can provide it for each other.