George Bernard Shaw said "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." I tend to agree. How many times have you said to someone, "What am I, a mind-reader?" or "How could I have known that? You never told me." These are the common denominators which must be established first, in order to communicate effectively with someone else:

Whether or not you want to talk to them. I mean that in a half-comical way. There are people with whom communication is either a one-way street, or a 16 lane highway with seventeen exits in twenty directions. And all the street signs are in some language you don't recognize. . .and maybe you're running low on gas.

At any rate, these sorts of people exist, and it is often counterproductive to attempt a mind meld with them. Barring that, there are the ones with whom you can have a productive discussion, and these are the ones to whom I refer.

What Is True. When someone says something is true to them, this may not be true to us, so we can't use the qualifier "This is true" as a touchstone. We must define the differences. Your truth is your truth, and mine is mine, and sometimes that twain never meets. Likewise, to say "This is almost universally true" is in itself an oxymoron, as "almost" implies that it is sometimes NOT true. Universally true, then, to me, means something that is true no matter how you turn it; that which remains true from beginning to end, in all situations, and all renditions. An example perhaps: "Water is always wet."

Which leads me to:

Defining Meaning. Good communication is less about saying what you mean, and more about defining what you say. So often, the communication issues that arise are directly due to the many permutations of what we mean when we say the same thing. All of us have filters in our brains. These filters are created as a product of so many things - our understanding of the world and our place in it, our upbringing, our experiences, our metabolic makeup, our personalities, the way we process information. This is not a new idea. Songs that say "you say taMAYto, I say tomAHTo," and movies like He Said, She Said, and the fact that we compartmentalize everything from politics to religion to what sex means, to what love is - illustrate this universal truth. One Universal Truth, paradoxically, is that your truth may not be someone else's truth. I have found it useful to ask a person, "What is your definition of that?" in order to clarify the subtleties

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Effective communication in a lesbian relationships?
We want to hear your view. Write now!