The "U" comes before the "I" in Communication.

OK, I apologize, that title was lame.

This post is more of a quick teaching/reminder and is geared more at married people but really it is a very good reminder for everyone in pretty much any situation where you deal with people.

It's no big surprise that people are made differently. My experiences, thoughts, shortcomings, hopes, dreams, family, environment, physiology, genetics etc., all define who I am...and your life defines you very differently than me.

My personality and life mean that I communicate in a certain style that is unique to me. My communication style is going to be driven by how I best receive communication. If I'm American, I'm probably going to prefer speaking and being spoken to in English. However, just as I have a language preference I have a style preference based on my life and personality.

I like to read but I don't generally read a lot of help type books. The reason I don't is that you read one and five years later you read another that totally turns around everything you read in the first book. So I don't put a lot of stock in them. However one that I really like and see as very useful, even necessary, is The Five Love Languages.

I won't spill the entire book because I don't want to simplify what I think you need to read, but after reading this book I examined myself and some of the people I deal with and I found out that sure enough these people all have a primary love language they respond too....what's more, they almost always communicate (output) in the same language they like to get (input). For example, one of my languages is quality time...if you want to speak to me, give me your quality time. Conversely, if I want to speak to you I'm going to want to sit down and focus on each other (quality time). You get the picture.

The problem is that we all have different languages here...not only that but we even have different "dialects" to our language. What "quality time" means to me may be different than someone else who is driven by it.

Here comes the rub in all this and the point I want to make. It does not matter how good you can communicate in your own language, if the other party doesn't receive in that language. You have to learn to speak their language or else every communication attempt you make is going to fail! If you don't learn their language, even your best intentions can turn into deep hurts.

This point is near and dear to my heart because I'm really dealing with it with someone in my life right now and I'm just learning what affect it's had on this relationship and I'm working on trying to fix it. Thankfully this other person is working hard on this too.

I tend to be logical and "man" driven. See a problem, discuss it (quality time) fix it with a solution using these steps. That's how I operate. However I have someone in my life who is not a quality time person and is definitely not a problem/solution driven person. This person is driven by acts of service and administration (and other things) and needs someone to empathize with her (if you've studied this stuff at all you can easily see this is a man/woman relationship!)

I love this person so much that when they have a problem or they are not being as effective and efficient as they could be, I try to "fix" their problem by telling them how to solve it. The hurt starts flying when this happens though because this person does not see LOVE or COMMUNICATION in this...she sees criticism and failure. Conversely this person tries to communicate with acts of service which don't really do too much for me, so I don't see those things as too big of a deal...which makes this person feel like she is banging her head against a wall. And she is! We both are!

We are both getting nowhere because we are not getting the kind of love and communication we need.

So that's my sermon for today, communication is only good communication if the other person can understand and receive it. It's not easy and sometimes it seems downright unfair but if you want to be understood by others, you have to learn to understand them.

BTW, in addition to the Five Love Languages, my wife and I (as if you didn't know who the other person was!) have been through a video set called "Fighting for your marriage". The videos are very cheezy and made in the 80's (you will see mullets and women's shoulder pads!) but if you can get past the cheez factor, there is some really good info in there on learning how to properly communicate, even how to properly "fight" when problems arise. It's also important to have an understanding of where that other persons strengths, talents, gifts and shortcomings are. Not to exploit them, but because these things can really give you insight on how best to communicate with someone.

That's it!

Currently Listening to: Radiohead - In Rainbows (still)

Later On, Further Out,
Chris Cummings