Are You Good At Communicating?
Katherine Poor
Instructor: Katie Rosenthal
COM200: Interpersonal Communications
5/4/2015

Have you ever told your partner something and thought yourself that they didn’t understand you? Or that maybe they were just ignoring you? Well, according to the article Close Relationships Sometimes Mask Poor Communication by, Health day, most couples do not communicate with their significant other as well as they believe. Matter of a fact, some communicate better with strangers than they do with their loved ones (Healthday, 2011). Why do you think that is? Miscommunication is very common for a few different reasons. One of the reasons is the assumption that your loved one understands you well enough, that they should know what you mean. Another reason, is based on the assumption that your partner should understand you through your tones and emotions. However, there are some ways that communication problems can be fixed. Furthermore, according to Health day most couples tend to believe that they communicate better with their spouses than they actually do. This causes a problem with communication, because they are often set to believe that their spouse knows what they are talking about all the time; such as when they make subtle hint’s (Healthday, 2011). However, we often forget that we get so preoccupied in our own daily life, we stop paying close attention to what our loved ones say. It is so easy for this too happened because couples tend to live busy lives, struggling to manage paying bills, tending to children and working. This has happened to me before, with my fiancé and me working so much we tend to lose communication with each other. There are times where I swear that I have told him something, but he insist that I hadn’t. This often leads to arguments, where we are eventually able to work it out. However, it is important to be able to find time to spend with your significant other to build communication. I have personally had a lot of misinterpretation due to subtle hints. Such as; when my fiancé hints to me that he wants to spend more quality time with me, but I get so caught up in everything else that I unknowingly ignore him.

In addition according to Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance by, Bruce Bowers, Ireland and Pennbaker stated that “Conversation partners' related use of function words—such as pronouns, articles, conjunctions, prepositions and negations—augurs well for mutual romantic interest and stable relationships” (Bower,2010). Couples who share the same style matching mechanism are more likely to understand each other. Results have shown that if couples are sharing the same language mechanism while talking they are more likely to be paying close attention to the other one. According to Bower, two people who hate each other are more likely to pay close attention and understand completely what the other one is saying due to matching language styles (Bowers, 2010). A situation that I can relate this too is, when me and my fiancé fight because he misinterprets the meaning behind why I said something in the tone that I did. Misinterpretations is a conflict for so many people, but there are way to solve them. I personally have been in situations where my significant other did not understand me. According to Bevan and Sole, there are a few steps that you can take to become a better communicator. One of the steps is take responsibility for your communication problem. Each