How Does Your Communication Compare to Other Couples?

Communication Survey Results

Relationships Work

We recently surveyed our relationship community to find out just why conflict and communication difficulties cause the greatest pain in our relationships. And we wanted to know how we can be of greater service to you in decreasing the struggle to express yourself, be heard and understand your partner.The Communication Survey Results are in: Who Participated?

• Responses came from 43 people, 70% married or in committed relationships, 86% female and 14% male.

Given that most of our Facebook Fans are women, this is a pretty good representation for men’s participation, and shows their interest in working on relationships. There are many men out there who really do want to work diligently on relationships, though this may contradict the prevailing assumption of our day.

• Ages of responders ranged from people in their 20’s to people in their 60’s with 37% in their 50’s, 28% in their 40’s and 21 % in their 30’s.

In our view, this reflects that couples in their 20’s may be less aware of the need to work on their relationships; couples in their 30’s are busy with children and career with less time and energy to devote to their relationships.  As couples enter their 40’s more time becomes available, and awareness of the relationship grows as marriages struggle and mid-life crisis sets in. This only increases with couples in their 50’s as children launch and couples’ focus is back on their marriages. By their 60’s most people are in for the long haul or have separated/divorced if that was their path.Here are the highlights:

• The highest percentage of people rated their communication “Fair” and a total of 47% said their communication was either “Fair” or “Poor.”
• The largest groups of people report either having communication difficulties several times/week or not often, with 71% of couples reporting communication difficulties at least once/week.

So you are not alone out there with communication difficulties. We have them too and we have learned how to embrace them and work them through. And we have practiced for 23 years. We are here to help you learn the tools.

• The ranking of difficulty in communication from most difficult to least difficult was:

1.     Expressing thoughts/feelings2.     Avoiding conflict3.     Understanding each other’s point of view Listening4.     Conflict escalating5.     Empathy6.     CompromisingIt surprised us that women would identify “expressing thoughts and feelings” as most difficult, since women verbalize a lot. We wondered whether this represented that women found it most difficult “to be heard and understood” by their partner and, as women often do, turned it around to blame themselves, i.e. “I have trouble expressing my thoughts and feelings.”

• 58% said they have conflict at least once/week.

Research shows that there is a moderate level of conflict that is good for a couple since it shows that they are engaged in the relationship. However too much conflict leads to distance and too little conflict means someone is not speaking up.

• 43% of couples said they don’t resolve the conflict.

• 67% don’t resolve conflicts if you add in the number who “agree to disagree.”

Since the #1 reason couples divorce is “the inability to resolve conflict,” this is a challenge that needs to be addressed. You must learn how to resolve conflict to have a healthy, connected long term relationship. We will help you do that.Coming back together after a conflict:

• 30% of couples kiss and makeup
• 41% change the subject
• 22% don’t come back together
• 19% pretend nothing happened and
• 11% have sex (sorry guys-looks like make-up sex is not that common).

It surprised us that only 30% touch and the rest avoid the conflict after it’s done.The top 3 areas of conflict are:

• The quality of our emotional connection
• Money
• Sex

 Research shows that Money and Sex are the two biggest areas of conflict for most couples (in that order). Looks like for our group the #1 is achieving the emotional connection that makes you feel close to your partner.

• When asked who is better at communication, 38% said they were about the same and 58% said me!

We believe this reflects that fact that the people who are involved in our Facebook community desire good communication and put forth the effort to learn more about it.

• Ranking, from most to least, the helpfulness of the various ways we interact with you – our community – people said:

1.   You Tube videos of us talking about relationship issues2.   Written articles in eNewsletter3.   Our TeleClasses4.   Our Blog Posts5.   FB conversation on Fan Page6.   TwitterMore videos, articles  and teleclasses to come. Please let us know how we can be of more help to you or what ideas/questions you have for us to serve you.