by Adele Gregory

Created on: November 03, 2008

We all agree that relationships benefit from good communication, but keeping the channels open and positive isn't always as easy as it sounds. It can take a certain amount of self-confidence to stray beyond your comfort zones, a willingness to trust your partner, and a bit of self-discipline to ensure that discussions stay fair and constructive.

Good communication can be an upward spiral. The more you share with your partner, the greater the trust will be between you and the easier it becomes to discuss things. Lack of communication can create a negative loop. The less the two of you communicate, the more you will be left to work out on your own which can undermine teamwork and increase the risk of misunderstanding. Below are some common pitfalls which divert discussions away from an honest and open exchange of ideas and can eventually cause one or both partners to close off.

Acting on Assumptions
Most of the world's cultures have the concept of 'respect'. But as any traveler will tell you, when it comes to actual behaviors what is acceptable in one country can be offensive in another. A similar type of 'culture-clash' can happen in couples. The flash points often involve abstract concepts like love, care, consideration, respect etc. 'Support' is a good example. To some people support equals 'help' while for others it's closer to 'agree with'. So to be supportive, a helper will intervene which can seem unsupportive to an agreer as challenging his or her way of doing things. Conversely an agreer will show support by expressing confidence in the partner's ability to manage which a helper can mistake for abandonment.

The best way to avoid these misunderstandings is to keep assumptions to a minimum - fill in all the blanks and intervening stages when you want your partner to understand how you feel, even if they seem obvious to you. Define complex terms and find out how you each is interpreting what's going on before you start lengthy discussions.

Thinking in Opposites
True communication can also be inhibited by relying too much on 'compare and constrast' so that you try and squeeze yourselves into either total agreement or polar opposites. In many cases, however, it's not so simple. Far from being a case of night versus day, optimist and pessimist or change versus routine, the real picture can be more like night versus orange, optimism versus planning, or changing one thing versus changing something else. In other words, your positions may be different but they are

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