Download Chapter 10, Managing Conflict in Marriages and Families

Chapter 11
Communication in Relationships,
Marriages and Families
Chapter Outline
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Characteristics of Cohesive Families
Communication and Couple Satisfaction
Stress, Coping, and Conflict in Relationships
John Gottman’s Research on Couple
Communication and Conflict Management
Gender Differences and Communication
Working Through Conflicts in Positive
Ways—Ten Guidelines
Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
Characteristics of Cohesive
Families
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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
Six Qualities of Family
Cohesion
1.
2.
3.
Communicate appreciation for one
another.
Have a high degree of commitment to
promoting one another's happiness and
welfare.
Arrange personal schedules so they can
do things together.
Six Qualities of Family
Cohesion
4.
5.
6.
Are able to deal positively with crises.
Have some spiritual orientation.
Have positive communication patterns.
Children, Family Cohesion,
and Unresolved Conflict
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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.
As We Make Choices: Communicating
with Children—How to Talk so Kids will
Listen and so Kids will Talk
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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
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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?
What is it important to listen to children?
Why does how we talk to children matter?
Communication and Couple
Satisfaction
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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.
Four Types of Marital
Relationships
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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
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.
As We Make Choices: Ten Rules
for Successful Relationships
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Express love verbally.
Be physically affectionate.
Express appreciation and admiration.
Share more about yourself with your
partner than with any other person.
Offer each other emotional support.
As We Make Choices: Ten Rules
for Successful Relationships
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Express your love materially.
Accept partner’s demands and put up
with partner’s shortcomings.
Make time to be alone together.
Do not take the relationship for granted.
Do unto each other as you would have
the other do unto you.
As We Make Choices: Ten Rules
for Successful Relationships
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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
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Experts advise relationship-focused
coping
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
Stress, Coping and Conflict
in Relationships
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Learning to express
anger and dealing with
conflict early in a
relationship are
challenges to be met
rather than avoided.
A key to effective conflict
management is to share
events in friendly,
supportive ways so that
arguments occur within a
context of trust.
John Gottman’s Research on
Couple Communication and
Conflict Management
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The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse
 Contempt
 Criticism
 Defensiveness
 Stonewalling
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.
5.
6.
Stating “I can’t take you seriously when
you act this way.”
Using the hit and run tactic of filing a
complaint and leaving no time for a
resolution.
Saying “okay, you win” without meaning
it.
Stress, Coping and Conflict
in Relationships
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All couples experience conflict.
How conflicts are addressed and resolved
depends on how secure mates feel in
their relationship.
Gender Differences and
Communication
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Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t
Understand argued that men typically
engage in report talk, conversation
aimed mainly at conveying information.
Women are likely to engage in rapport
talk, speaking to gain or reinforce rapport
or intimacy.
Stonewallers
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Chronic stonewallers
may fear rejection or
retaliation and therefore
hesitate to acknowledge
their own or their
partner’s angry emotions.
Use I-statements, avoid
mixed messages, focus
your anger on specific
issues, and be willing to
change.
Working Through Conflicts in
Positive Ways—Ten Guidelines
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Express anger directly and with
kindness.
Check out your interpretation of other’s
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
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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.
Be willing to forgive.
End the argument.
Changing Fighting Habits
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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
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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.
Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
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Third step: improving our own:
1)
emotional intelligence – awareness of what
we’re feeling so that we can express our
feelings more authentically
ability and willingness to repair our moods
healthy balance between controlling rash
impulses and being candid and spontaneous
sensitivity to the feelings and needs of others
2)
3)
4)
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)
 Teaching clients more effective and
supportive communication techniques.
The Myth of Conflict-Free Conflict
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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.
Many observers strongly criticize the way that American
culture tends to equate love with infatuation, or chemistry.