- updated: Jun. 05, 2025
“Better communication” is the most common goal couples tell me they hope to achieve from couple counseling. What I think they really mean is more “effective” communication to reduce relationship conflict, anger and hurt feelings.
Fortunately, as a trained actress, psychologist and mediator, I know a great deal about interpersonal communication (IC). So lets’ look at what IC entails.
IC is commonly described as being both verbal and non-verbal. That old adage, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” is certainly true. Among the “how’s” are vocal qualities such as volume, tone, pace, timing, and musicality. Other non-verbal “how’s” are observable behaviors such as posture, proximity and the sender’s movements. When a message is delivered can also be quite important.
Unfortunately, two other extremely important elements of IC are rarely considered. The first is the sender’s motivation for engaging someone else. Why does he or she want to communicate? Why is the sender driven to engage the receiver? The second crucial feature of IC is the receiver’s response. IC is two-way. Both sender and receiver are responsible for IC, each having equal responsibility for the quality and effectiveness of the engagement. IC, then, is the how, what, when and why of a sender’s message, as well as the receiver’s response.
Truly effective IC can be quite challenging. That different people often perceive and interpret the very same message quite differently, is evidence of how even non-conflicted, daily IC can go awry. Indeed, it’s not unusual for a sender’s real motivation to be partially or completely misunderstood by the receiver! Therefore, more than anything, effective, “better communication” requires the sender to be as mindful as possible of the likely perceptions of their receiver, so a desired response is reasonably predictable. And, it is the receiver’s responsibility to react with respect and relative calm, questioning the sender about the meaning of a message, if it is subject to misinterpretation, emotion-laden, disrespectful and/or blaming. But, there’s more about responding/reacting in another post.
So, if senders hope to elicit a desired response, they have to be honest with themselves about what kind of response they actually want (deep down). Do they want to be soothed? Praised? Acknowledged as right? To win the fight? To release intense emotion? To be validated as the wronged party in the conflict? To hurt the other person’s feelings? OR ….Do they want to initiate and sustain a mutually respectful, calm, non-blaming collaborative problem solving discourse that preserves the relationship?
When emotions are high, it’s tough to be respectful, calm, non-blaming and collaborative. But, someone has to be. I can help with that, if you’re willing.