Download Chapter 10, Managing Conflict in Marriages and Families

Chapter 12
Communication in Relationships,
Marriages and Families
Chapter Outline






Characteristics of Cohesive Families
Communication and Couple Satisfaction
Conflict in Relationships
Gender Differences and Communication
Working Through Conflicts in Positive
Ways—Ten Guidelines
Toward Better Couple and Family
Communication
Characteristics of Cohesive
Families



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.
Six Qualities of Family
Cohesion
1.
2.
3.
Communicate appreciation for one
another.
Arrange personal schedules so they can
do things together.
Have a high degree of commitment to
promoting one another's happiness and
welfare.
Six Qualities of Family
Cohesion
4.
5.
6.
Have some spiritual orientation.
Are able to deal with crises.
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.
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?
What 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.
Four Types of Marital
Relationships

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
Emotional Climates of
Committed Relationships
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.
Conflict in Relationships

Passive-Aggression: Expressing anger
indirectly

Sabotage: Getting revenge or “payback”

Displacement: A person directs anger at
people or things that the other cherishes
Positive Results of Good
Listening
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Listening shows love, concern, and respect.
Avoiding interruptions prevents sending
messages like, “You’re not worth listening to.”
You discover how things look from your
partner’s point of view.
Your partner takes over as the final authority
on his or her own feelings.
You set an example for your partner to follow
in listening to your feelings.
As We Make Choices: Ten Rules
for Successful Relationships





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





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



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?
Conflict and Love


All couples experience conflict.
How conflicts are addressed and resolved
depends on how secure mates feel in
their relationship.
Dealing with Conflict


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.
Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse
Research identified predictors of divorce:
1. Contempt
2. Criticism
3. Defensiveness
4. Stonewalling
5. Belligerence
Gender Differences and
Communication


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.
Managing Conflict


Whoever is voicing a
complaint might do
so gently, whereas
the receiver needs to
be willing to listen.
Both partners need to
do what they can to
deescalate the fight,
but not to avoid their
conflict altogether.
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.
Stonewallers


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





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





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



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.
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
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)
Facts about Families: Relationship
and Family Counseling



Can you think of a specific example from
your own experiences when couple or
family counseling was helpful?
When it could have been helpful?
Can you think of examples when couple
or family counseling might be less than
helpful?
Many observers strongly criticize the way that American
culture tends to equate love with infatuation, or chemistry.
The Myth of Conflict-Free Conflict




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.
Quick Quiz
1. The emotional bonding of family
members is referred to as family
a) strength.
b) construction.
c) cohesion.
d) justice.
Answer: c

The emotional bonding of family
members is referred to as family
cohesion.
2. When a person expresses anger at
someone but does so indirectly rather
than directly, that behavior is called.
a) authoritarianism.
b) displacement.
c) sabotage.
d) passive-aggression.
Answer: d

When a person expresses anger at
someone but does so indirectly rather
than directly, that behavior is called
passive-aggression.
3. Which of the following is NOT one of the “rules
for a successful relationship,” as discussed in
the text?
a)
Be willing to challenge your partner’s
demands and question his/her
shortcomings.
b)
Share more about yourself with your
partner than you do with any other
person.
c)
Express your love materially.
d)
Do not take your relationship for
granted.
Answer: a

“Be willing to challenge your
partner’s demands and question
his/her shortcomings” is NOT one of
the “rules for a successful relationship,”
as discussed in the text.
4. Contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and
stonewalling are all examples of what social
psychologist John Gottman referred to as the
a)
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
b)
major threats to communication
breakdown.
c)
Four Riders of the Communication
Barrier.
d)
primary ingredients of impending
divorce.
Answer: a

Contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and
stonewalling are all examples of what
social psychologist John Gottman referred
to as the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.