Communication in Relationships, Marriages and Families

Chapter 11
Communication in Relationships,
Marriages and Families
© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Chapter Outline
 Family Cohesion and Conflict
 Communication and Couple Satisfaction
 Stress, Coping, and Conflict in Relationships
 John Gottman’s Research on Couple
Communication and Conflict Management
 Gender Differences and Communication
Chapter Outline
 Working Through Conflicts in Positive Ways
—Ten Guidelines
 Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
Family Cohesion and Conflict
 Family cohesion: Togetherness, the emotional
bonding that couples and family members have
toward one another
 A family can have too much cohesion (an
enmeshed family) or too little (a disengaged or
disconnected family).
 Experts advise a balanced level of cohesion—one
that combines a reasonable and mutually satisfying
degree of emotional bonding with individual family
members’ need for autonomy.
Characteristics of Cohesive
Families
1. Communicate appreciation for one
another.
2. Have a high degree of commitment to
the family group as a whole.
3. Spend dinner time together, celebrate
holidays and birthdays, spend leisure
time together.
Characteristics of Cohesive
Families
4. Are able to deal positively with crises.
5. Have some spiritual orientation.
6. Have positive communication patterns.
Children, Family Cohesion,
and Unresolved Conflict
 Regardless of family structure, a family
characterized by warmth, cohesion, and
generally supportive communication is better for
children.
 A home characterized by significant,
unresolved, and ongoing conflict negatively
impacts children.
 Conflicts can end in constructive ways from the
children’s perspective.
Children, Family Cohesion,
and Unresolved Conflict
 Close sibling relationships can provide helpful
emotional and practical support over the life
course.
 However, perceived differential treatment
among siblings leads to sibling conflict and
underlying resentments that can linger into
adulthood.
As We Make Choices: Communicating
with Children—How to Talk so Kids will
Listen and so Kids will Talk
 Helping Children Deal with Their Feelings
 Engaging a Child’s Cooperation
 Instead of Punishment
 Encouraging Autonomy
 Praise and Self-Esteem
 Freeing Children from Playing Roles
As We Make Choices: Communicating
with Children—How to Talk so Kids will
Listen and so Kids will Talk
 What bit of advice in this section might you
choose to practice when communicating with
the child(ren) in your life?
 Why is it important to encourage children to
talk?
 Why is it important to listen to children?
 Why does how we talk to children matter?
Communication and Couple
Satisfaction
 Couples demonstrate different relationship
ideologies—expectations for closeness
and/or distance as well as ideas about how
partners should play their roles.
 Couples also differ in their attitudes toward
conflict.
 What matters is whether the partners’ actual
interaction matches their ideology.
Affection and Antagonism
 Researchers Ted Huston and Heidi Melz
classified marital relationships into four types:
 Warm or friendly – High at showing signs of
affection, low on antagonism
 Tempestuous or stormy – High on both
affection and antagonism
 Bland or empty shell – Low on signs of
affection and antagonism
 Hostile or distressed – Low on affection but
high on antagonism
Communicate Positive
Feelings
 Positive affect: The verbal or nonverbal
expression of affection.
 Divorce can be predicted by examining how
well spouses show they are interested in each
other.
 Partners should respond positively and
enthusiastically when something positive
happens to the other one.
Couple Conflict
Even the happiest and
most committed
couples experience
conflict. Research
shows that an
essential
characteristic of happy
couples involves
disclosure of feelings
and showing affection
for one another.
Facts about Families: Ten Rules for
Successful Relationships
 Express love verbally.
 Be physically affectionate.
 Express your appreciation.
 Help the relationship or family to become
an emotional support system.
 Express your affection in material ways.
 Accept your family members’ shortcomings.
Facts about Families: Ten Rules for
Successful Relationships
 Do unto each other as you would have
the other do unto you.
 Share more about yourself with your
partner than you do with any other
person.
 Make time to be alone together.
 Do not take your relationship for granted.
As We Make Choices: Ten Rules
for Successful Relationships
 Often, we read a list like the previous one
and think about whether our partner or
other family members are doing them,
not whether we ourselves are.
 How many of the items on the list do you
yourself do?
 Which two or three items might you begin
to incorporate into a relationship?
Stress, Coping, and Conflict
in Relationships
 Experts advise relationship-focused coping
 Conflict in Happy Marriages
 Conflict should be viewed as challenges to be met
rather than avoided
 Anger should be expressed directly
 Indirect Expressions of Anger
 Passive-Aggression: Expressing anger indirectly
 Sabotage: Getting revenge or “payback”
 Displacement: A person directs anger at people or
things that the other cherishes
John Gottman’s Research on
Couple Communication and
Conflict Management
 The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: contempt,
criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
 Gottman later added belligerence as one of the
“horsemen.”
 Stonewallers may fear rejection or retaliation and
therefore hesitate to acknowledge angry
emotions.
© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in
whole or in part.
Tactics Used by Fight Evaders
1. Leaving the house or the scene when the
fight threatens.
2. Turning sullen and refusing to argue or
talk.
3. Derailing arguments, e.g. “I can’t take it
when you yell at me.”
Tactics Used by Fight Evaders
4. Using the hit and run tactic of filing a
complaint and leaving no time for a
resolution.
5. Saying “okay, you win” without meaning
it.
Positive versus Negative
Affect
 Negative affect—high-intensity (e.g., belligerence,
contempt) and low-intensity (e.g. anger, sadness).
 Refusing-to-accept influence—one partner does not
consider the other’s complaint and escalates the
fight.
 Positive affect typically deescalated conflict.
 Anger is not the destructive emotion in marriages—
contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness are.
Gender Differences and
Communication
 Women tend to act as “relationship barometers.”
 Expressions of love are defined and perceived
mostly on feminine terms (e.g., verbally).
 Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t Understand
argued that men typically engage in report talk
(aimed mainly at conveying information) while
women are likely to engage in rapport talk
(speaking to gain or reinforce rapport or intimacy).
Gender Differences and
Communication
 Female-demand/male-withdraw pattern—men tend to
withdraw when faced with a complaint from a partner,
while women do not
 In heterosexual relationships, women bring up issues in
the relationship 80% of the time; 85% of stonewallers
were men.
 The female-demand/male-withdraw pattern leaves both
partners feeling misunderstood, decreasing marital
satisfaction.
What Couples Can Do
 Be gentle when raising complaints
 Communicate care and affection to reduce
anxiety
 Learn techniques to reduce anxiety in oneself
 Accept influence from each other
 Do what is needed to deescalate the argument;
this does not mean avoiding the issue
altogether
Working Through Conflicts in
Positive Ways—Ten Guidelines
 Express anger directly and with kindness.
 Check out your interpretation of others’
behaviors.
 To avoid attacks, use “I” statements.
 Avoid mixed or double messages.
 When you can, choose the time and
place carefully.
Working Through Conflicts in
Positive Ways—Ten Guidelines
 Address a specific issue, ask for a
specific change, and be open to
compromise.
 Be willing to change yourself.
 Don’t try to win an argument.
 Practice forgiveness.
 End the argument.
Changing Fighting Habits
 The key to staying
happily together is not
avoiding conflict but
dealing with it openly and
in supportive ways.
 Doing so involves
listening.
 The goal isn’t necessarily
agreement, but
acknowledgment, insight,
and understanding.
Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
 Keeping a loving relationship or creating a
cohesive family is not automatic. Doing so
requires working on ourselves as well as
on our relationships.
 First step: Consciously recognizing how
important the relationship is.
 Second step: Setting realistic expectations
about the relationship.
© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or
posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
 Third step: improving our own:
1) emotional intelligence – awareness of what
we’re feeling so that we can express our
feelings more authentically
2) ability and willingness to repair our moods
3) healthy balance between controlling rash
impulses and being candid and spontaneous
4) sensitivity to the feelings and needs of others
Relationship and Family
Counseling
Relationship and family counseling is a
professional service having two goals:
 Helping individuals, couples, and
families gain insight into the actually or
potentially troublesome dynamics of
their relationship(s); and
 Teaching clients more effective and
supportive communication techniques.
Relationship and Family
Counseling
 The Mayo Clinic Staff suggests asking lots of
questions of prospective counselors, for instance:
 What is your educational training?
 How much do you charge?
 How long is each session?
 Counseling will work only if both members of the

couple are motivated to improve; it will not “save”
a relationship in and of itself.
Family Well-Being Depends on
Positive Communication Habits
 Conflict itself cannot be free from conflict.
 Some individuals have a partner who
chooses not to learn to face conflict
positively.
 Not every conflict can be resolved.
 If an unresolved conflict is not crucial, then
the two may have to accept inability to
resolve that issue.

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Chapter 11

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