To communicate well involves two harmonizing factors.
First, I need to explain what I am thinking and feeling to my spouse, and I need to ask for and listen carefully to what my spouse is thinking and feeling. This seems so simple, so obvious, but it is not. Here's why:
Men and women not only have different anatomies; they have different hormones and their brains light up in different areas when they're assessing and problem-solving. Spouses often communicate the same truths in a different way. How often has one said to the other "But that's what I said!"
Spouses are from different families. Each family has its separate unique birth order, history, customs, culture, values, and vocabulary. Spouses don't speak each other's family's language. How often has one spouse compromised with the other by saying something like "I'll celebrate St. Joseph's Table for you, but only if you celebrate Dyngus Day for me - even if I don't like fish and you loathe pussy willows!" Or - "You are a typical older child - you are so overly-responsible! But then, I'm such a typical middle child, - totally rebellious. How did we ever get married? Better yet, how can we make you being responsible and me always wanting to forge a new path work for us?"
And we each have our own separate personalities and spiritualities, so we don't speak the same language.
Recently a man confided in me about a particular action his wife had taken. He listed for me at least six different motives for why she had chosen to do this. He was very concerned. This decision of hers was influencing their family life and their prayer life.
"You haven't asked her why she's doing this?" I asked.
No, he hadn't asked her. He thought that he knew her so well that he had the situation all figured out.
"But you need to casually and calmly talk to her about this and ask her why she's doing this," I said. "Over donuts and coffee or wine and pasta. You can't presume to read her mind. She very well may have chosen to do this for a reason that you'd never think of in a million years."
Secondly, to communicate well, I need to ACCEPT what my spouse is thinking and feeling and my spouse needs to ACCEPT what I'm thinking and feeling. Spouses have different "takes" and emotional responses to events, people, politics, religion, movies, music, sports, etc. Composing and playing a symphony requires that each spouse leaves the other free to be who he or she is. This is especially important if the person who evokes different thoughts and reactions in the other happens to be a relative or close friend. Yes, there can be a loneliness about having such divergent opinions, but the reach to embrace the other makes especially beautiful harmony.
In even the littlest encounters between my husband and me on an ordinary day, we can misunderstand each other totally. One of us gets annoyed over something and makes a smart remark, and the other one looks up in amazement and says "But that's not why I did that or said that" or "But that's not what I meant!" It takes a constant vigilant attentiveness to what we do and say and what we DON'T do and say for our relationship to remain in harmony.
Even to making sandwiches. One day I made sandwiches for lunch and suddenly saw a quick disappointment on my husband's face, which he then concealed.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Nothing," he answered chivalrously.
"Come on! I saw that look!"
"Well," he said slowly, "it's just that my mother always used to cut our sandwiches in the opposite direction. And - "
"Go on - "
"If you put the mustard on the cheese instead of on the ham, the mustard will soak into the bread instead of running out on the side and making our fingers sticky."
After fifty years of marriage he tells me this! Easy fix. I cut the sandwiches MY Family's Way one day, His Family's Way another day. And the mustard goes on top of the cheese because my husband is right about this. Anything to prevent sticky fingers!
Or - in his family, his mother shopped but the men did not help in carrying in and putting away groceries, or in preparing meals. Then again, she did not work outside the home - she was a professional homemaker. I have worked outside the home, so my husband and I have needed to talk through why it was important that he help me carry in and put away groceries, or set the table, or help with the meal. If both of us worked outside the home, we both needed to work together inside the home for a fair distribution of household work.
Every challenge, every crisis which forces a couple to confront their differences is an opportunity for couples to create even more melodious music together or to produce meaningless dissonance. But two people who healthily communicate can view a crisis as an "apprenticeship in growing closer together or learning a little bit more about what it means to be married." (Pope Francis) Every challenge, every crisis, brings with it the opportunity to search for hidden dissonances in a marriage, and to have the courage to both ask for and give forgiveness. In fact, in some way or other we need to forgive each other and (also ourselves!) every day - through the grace of our God who aches for us all to be one in Him.
Pope Francis gives an incisive look at how a crisis is a challenge to a marriage:
"Faced with a crisis, we tend first to react defensively, since we feel that we are losing control or are somehow at fault, and this makes us uneasy. We resort to denying the problem, hiding or downplaying it, and hoping that it will go away. But this does not help; it only makes things worse, wastes energy, and delays a solution. Couples grow apart and lose their ability to communicate. When problems are not dealt with, communication is the first thing to go. Little by little, 'the person I love' slowly becomes 'my mate,' then just 'the father or mother of my children,' and finally a stranger.
"Crises need to be faced together. This is hard, since persons sometimes withdraw in order to avoid saying what they feel; they retreat into a craven silence. At these times, it becomes all the more important to create opportunities for speaking heart to heart. Unless a couple do this, they will find it harder and harder as time passes. Communication is an art learned in moments of peace in order to be practiced in moments of difficulty. Spouses need help in discovering their deepest thoughts and feelings and expressing them. Like childbirth, this is a painful process that brings forth a new treasure."
In my experience, people withdraw in order to avoid saying what they feel because of fear: they fear that their loved one will react in anger, misunderstanding, or rejection. This fear comes from how others have reacted/responded to their honesty in other times and other places. After all, revealing our deepest selves - what we think and what we feel - is akin to getting emotionally naked in front of someone. We shiver at the thought of the cold air blown in our direction by others from our past. Yet what beautiful music that spills over and through a couple when they hand over their fragile emotionally naked selves to each other and are received with generous, awe-struck hearts!
A marriage which is a beautiful symphony orchestrated by God has four distinct movements, each of which contains the kernel of a crisis. Each movement and crisis can become an opportunity for a couple's new "yes" to God, to each other, and to their marriage:
In the beginning, a "new" couple challenges each other to accept their differences and to disengage from their parents. Life is no longer about "This is how my parents do it;" it becomes a constantly growing and evolving melody of "This is how WE do it."
Raising children necessitates that the couple change the lifestyle that they've just worked so hard together to develop! And the children's needs cause bewilderment, exhaustion, strain, frustration, and even tension between parents. Two lovebirds freely choosing when to go to bed, when to take care of the bills, when to go out on a date morph into a busily buzzing even unnerving hive of activity - and love has to stretch to encompass it all with grace.
If a couple does not have children, they still need in maturity to find a mutual focus outside themselves to widen and deepen their capacity for sacrificial love. Some cause they can both work on together. A couple's eyes begin by looking at each other. At some point they need to look together out into the world so that the Dynamic Duo can take care of others.
An "empty nest" means that the couple redefines their relationship. Suddenly they look around their house - and it's silent and they're alone. They may look into each other's eyes and think "Who are you? I've barely had time to look at you these past few decades!" Or - each person may look at him/herself and think "Who are YOU? I've barely had a chance to get to know and recharge myself these past few decades!" Or - they may also look at each other, sigh happily, and begin to relax and truly enjoy each other's companionship.
Retirement pushes a couple to learn how to live together almost 24/7 in a whole new way and to rediscover the shared interests and goals that brought them together in the first place, and/or to rediscover new ways to share life together. A house can become a territorial battlefield, if both spouses don't communicate about what to do, who will do it, what will be done alone, what will be done together, - and how much of their shrinking income to spend doing it. At the same time, the need to care for aged parents or an aging ill spouse requires new commitment and often hard decision-making, causing guilt, depression, and fatigue. Yet new silence and lack of busyness in a home also means new time and space for prayer, for growing spiritually, for the leisure of new, more meaningful conversation and communication.
In this symphony for the ages, a married couple produces a wholly new, wholly unique work of art with their shared lives. It's a work of art which pleases God immensely. Yet during the composing and the playing of it, this symphony's music has reached a far vaster audience than the couple themselves. Everyone who has come into contact with them has marveled quietly at their loving unity of purpose, has been inspired by the quality, the depth, and the breadth, of the orchestral music that flows miraculously from the love of only two people in their shared life.
But then, there have been three here. For God has always quietly and lovingly conducted their symphony, has clarified the score for them, has kept the various instrumentalities of their communication in tune.
The world needs couples who are symphonies of love. Because through them and in them, God Who is Love becomes manifest. God who is Love is made real in the flesh, the blood, the sweat and the joy, the pain, the tears, the triumph of their unified life.