Effective Relationship Communication,
                                                               by Phoebe Fox

 

The deal was that you would clean the bathrooms if someone else would agree to take out the garbage.  Now here you are needing to throw something away, and the kitchen trashcan is stuffed to overflowing.  What happened to the agreement?

You flip on the light switch over the kitchen sink and nothing happens.  No light.  You had the conversation, and someone said they would take care of it in a minute, but that was over a week ago and still -- no light.  Someone says they forgot, but you remember, so what happened to the conversation? 

You go to the refrigerator, thinking you will make a snack of the leftovers you brought home from the restaurant last night, only to discover someone else beat you to it.  Wait a minute, that was your entree.  You were the one who remembered to carry the to-go box home in the car.  How could that someone else think it was okay to eat your leftovers? 

You go to your bathroom and sit down.  When it's time to get up, guess what?  You are greeted by the sight of a mere cardboard roll hanging next to you.  Now you are stranded, and you know who the last person in here must have been.  What could they have been thinking? 

What do these four incidents have in common?  They are all the result of a breakdown in relationship communication. 

Here are four ways to solve these communication problems: 

1.  Separate tasks from emotional issues.  It is easy to interpret a lapse in performance as a reflection of how the other person feels about you, but DON'T DO IT.  Remind yourself of the last time you forgot to do something you intended to do, and let it go.  Often a gentle reminder will get a better result than a full-blown fit will get you, anyway. 

2.  If a task is clearly more important to you than it is to the other person, then YOU do it.  Don't wait on someone else to take care of it for you when their sense of urgency about it may differ from yours.  If the thing is a daily aggravation to you, don't get mad -- get busy and take the few moments necessary to correct the situation yourself.  Remember that if this particular item is that big of a deal to you, it is probably not a good idea to delegate it to someone else in the first place.

3.  If you perceive your leftovers as an area of territorial respect, then you had better let the other person know it up front.  Why?  Most people don't have much of a stake in what's left in the fridge from one day to the next.  If your self-worth is somehow wrapped around the existence of yesterday's take-out, then maybe the problem isn't with who ate the leftovers. 

4.  And now for the big one:  what about the paper problem?  Men and women have been disagreeing about this for decades.  Men say that women use more paper and therefore it is only fair that we change the roll more often.  Women say that men jumping up and going on about their business is just one more way of them demonstrating that all they have on their minds is what's important to them, and leaving the next person stranded doesn't even enter their minds. 

So what is the answer?  The only fair and considerate solution is this:  If you use the last of the paper, replace the roll.  Before you go off to conquer new worlds, take care of the paperwork in your real world.  And no fair leaving a sheet and a half behind for the next person to contend with so you can say you didn't actually use the last of the paper.  What is the fair amount of paper you can leave behind?  Whatever amount it would take for you to take care of your behind, and you know perfectly well that you couldn't take care of yours with a sheet and a half.  Or even three or four.  So get up and deal with it.  It doesn't take that long, and the peace of mind you save may be your own.   Click here for Phoebe's column on Love.