First Things First: Cracking the Communication Code

What does this statement mean to you? “I have nothing to wear.”

“Generally speaking, when a woman makes this statement, it means she has nothing new to wear and needs to go shopping,” said Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, speaker and author of Love and Respect and Cracking the Communication Code. “Men, on the other hand, mean they have nothing clean.”

Eggerichs contends that the interpretation of statements just like this one is the very thing that leads to unnecessary tension in many marriages.

“Men and women have these wonderful differences,” said Dr. Eggerichs. “In many situations neither one is wrong, just different. I often tell people that women look at the world through pink sunglasses and men look at the world through blue sunglasses. When people marry, these differences in interpretation can lead to conflicts, which create tension in the relationship and often lead to women feeling unloved and men feeling disrespected.”

Case in point: Let’s say that a woman tells her husband she feels fat and needs to go on a diet. Her husband goes to a bookstore to get a newspaper and notices a best-selling diet book. He buys it thinking he is helping his wife to accomplish her goal to lose weight. When he brings it home his wife starts crying and carrying on, asking how he could be so totally insensitive and off to the races they go. Now if her best girlfriend had brought her the same book and asked her if she wanted to do the diet thing together, the response would most likely have been completely different.

In a random study of 7,000 men and women, participants were asked, “When you are in a conflict with your spouse, do you feel unloved or disrespected?” Eighty-two percent of the men responded that they felt disrespected and 73 percent of the women said they felt unloved.

“We all need love and respect, even in the midst of conflict,” said Dr. Eggerichs. “But when a wife feels unloved she usually responds by being disrespectful. When men feel disrespected they usually act in ways that are unloving. It isn’t that the wife is intentionally trying to be disrespectful or that the husband is seeking to be unloving. A lot of this has to do with how men and women interpret behavior. I think many couples would be surprised to know that most men and women I speak with feel good will toward their spouse. ”

For example, when women sense that something isn’t right, they will ask questions. Men interpret questions as an interrogation and lack of trust. When men recognize that things aren’t going well, their natural tendency is to withdraw. Women interpret this as shutting down and assume that because he does this he does not value the relationship.

Whether you are married or single, there are things you can do to get off what Dr. Eggerichs describes as “the crazy cycle” in a relationship.

Check out their website loveandrespect.com