Important Things to Communicate Early in a Relationship

24.01.2018

Love is the most beautiful feeling that a person can experience. Good, strong, trust-based, and respectful relationships are the guarantee of happy family life. Mature couples, who have already made mistakes or faced problems, approach them with wisdom and awareness. They prefer to discuss important potential problems and serious changes in life with their partners in advance. In order for the relationship to develop properly, both partners should look in one direction and stay true to common values. Some matters don’t seem convenient to discuss, but you still should pay special attention to them and find out your partner’s attitude towards them before you go further.

Communication in a relationship: what makes it work

Have you ever thought about what you bring into your relationship? And what does your partner bring? When two people build a strong union of hearts, they both bring their past, habits, and manner of communication with them. Two different lifestyles, two life experiences, and two fates merge into one. But if each of the partners doesn’t have the communication skills and the ability to understand their loved ones, they won’t be able to find a common language. The ability to communicate with your partner, taking her individuality into account, is one of the fundamental requirements for becoming “that special someone.” Lack of communication in a relationship is the most frequent marital complaint that psychologists and family therapists face.

Viable, full-fledged relationships develop in couples who share their feelings with each other and have a high degree of openness towards their soul mates. The main problem of decaying marriages lies not in sexual life. Spouses just don’t know how to communicate.

What makes communication work

Ability to share feelings. Why is communication important in a relationship? It demonstrates your ability to talk freely about your feelings. Intimate thoughts, deep grievances, and great joys are necessary for a healthy climate in a relationship. Learn to talk about what you feel, not just what you think. Getting to know each other's emotions is the door to psychological intimacy. If there’s no regular expression of feelings between the spouses, they will remain beyond love and intimacy. To make communication work, the conversation should go beyond daily routine and include an exchange of opinions and feelings.

Honesty. A healthy relationship includes good communication, fairness, and trust. You can’t communicate without trust. And trust can’t exist without honesty. Speaking the truth in a relationship means taking your partner’s feelings into account. There are a lot of barriers on the way to honesty. Risks are one of them. Romantic relationships should be based on absolute openness and honesty. This can be difficult to achieve because honesty is associated with the risk of being rejected in exchange for truth, but it’s vital for the development of a relationship.

What does communication mean?

Communicating means sharing yourself with your partner. Such dialogue is a vital necessity for couples at early stages of a relationship. Discussing something personal is a difficult task that makes people feel vulnerable. However, relationships can’t exist without problems, and discussing them is the only way to resolve them. If one of the partners doesn’t want to communicate, there will be no solution, and the existing problem will deepen and spread to other aspects of the relationship, especially if one partner persistently and constantly refuses to discuss certain issues.

Why is communication important in a relationship? When there’s no communication, one of the partners has a strong desire give up all the attempts to reach out to his or her soul mate, and after some time both partners may start experiencing anger and mutual rejection, gradually distancing from each other. Often, even after the main problem is solved, it turns out that other aspects of the relationship also have to be “repaired.” Good communication that opens people to each other can be very fragile, and if it’s broken, only careful and painstaking work can restore it.

Most people take simple conversations for communication. However, real communication consists of two parts: the ability to speak and hear, not just listen. Today, the ability to hear is an art that modern couples can’t master. Hearing your partner means empathizing and sympathizing. You show that you actually care about what happens inside your head during a conversation and try to understand the feelings of another person.

A close attention to what your partner says, sincere sympathy, lack of personal interest, readiness to see a partner as she is and a sincere desire to help are the components of communication in a relationship.

Things that should be communicated early in a relationship

Knowing how to communicate effectively in a relationship is the key to a strong union. But not everyone is able to be completely honest, but this is more than vital. Here are a few things that are important to communicate at the early stages of the relationship.

1) Relationship expectations

Before learning to communicate in a relationship, talk about what both of you expect from it. If you’re not looking for a person to spend your whole life with, don’t be afraid to admit it. On the contrary, if you don’t need a relationship for just a couple of months, say so. Don’t hold a person if your goals don’t match. Otherwise, all this can end very dramatically: you’ll destroy your partner’s expectations, and nothing but a painful breakup will come of it.

2) Leadership

In any relationship, there’s a distribution of tasks – house chores, managing finances, whatever. As a rule, partners deal with issues in their “zone of responsibility” independently, without getting their loved ones involved, but global problems require a deeper approach. It's good when the couple is mature enough to calmly discuss everything, that is, both partners are ready to compromise or look for alternative solutions for any situation. An excellent option is to immediately decide who will be the head of the family, responsible for everything that happens to it. If you don’t discuss this issue now, you run the risk of facing misunderstandings and unwanted conflicts in the future.

3) Sex

It’s important to know your partner’s desires and preferences in bed. Sometimes it’s difficult to open up to another person and tell you about your intimate secrets. That’s why it’s a common relationship communication problem. Leave the stereotypes behind and trust each other. After all, sex is an important part of a happy relationship. If this question is not solved, it will result in sexual dissatisfaction, and sexual dissatisfaction leads to tensions in the relationship.

4) The concept of an ideal relationship

Each of us sees good relationships in our own way, and at the same time, we’re afraid to deceive our partner's expectations. Fear of losing the partner, anger, and disappointment – these are first prerequisites of emotional distancing which grows into mutual insults. All this generates stress, and with stress comes the desire to criticize and change the partner. Perhaps, it’s better to quit some habits and accept others to create comfortable conditions for living together. That’s when communication in a relationship gets even more important. You should discuss these habits once you begin living together.

5) Children

During the first months and even years of living together, young couples prefer to take the best of this life first, gain financial independence, and see the world. And after a couple decides to settle down, the sudden news that one of the partners doesn’t want children for some reason may become a huge disappointment. Views on family planning need to be communicated before you get too far. Disagreements on this issue may even lead to a breakup.

6) Pastime

We all have our own social circle. Some of your partner’s friends may become yours, and vice versa. Partners can’t always stay together – sometimes you just need a change of scenery. You need to plunge into your own world alone. You should discuss how much time you want to spend together, in the company of friends, and alone, as personal space is important. If you don’t pay attention to this issue, it can cause misunderstandings, or your partner may even become jealous if you pay too much time to your friends.

7) Financial situation

It’s better to discuss financial aspect at once. It’s not a personal issue, so you don’t necessarily need to know how to communicate feelings in a relationship. We’re not talking about your debts, taxes, and wage. Find out your partner's attitude towards money. It’s important to understand whether your views and habits are the same.

8) Career expectations

Finding a dream job is a great success. Sooner or later one of you may get a proposal that involves some changes, for example, moving to another city. It’s necessary to clarify what factors can influence your decision to sacrifice your career and start all over again in a new place. Otherwise, you’ll have to learn how to maintain relationships at a distance.

9) Honesty

Cheating is one of the most common causes of divorce. If both of you have the same views on monogamy and the concept of trust, this is a good sign. Also, you should clearly identify your position towards the possibility of a breakup – what may cause the decision to end the relationship or, on the contrary, the desire to preserve it.

10) What’s bothering you in a relationship?

That’s where the relationship and communication go hand in hand. Nobody wants to hear that their partner doesn’t like something in the relationship. But without such talks, it’s impossible to correct mistakes and move forward together. If one of you doesn’t like something, but you stay silent, the insults will only accumulate. You may expect nothing but trouble in the end. It’s better to discuss everything and solve the urgent problem together.

These 10 questions are the basis of the dialogue you should start at the early stages of a promising relationship. Thus, both partners can get to know each other better and understand how to communicate in a relationship. The main rule is to talk about everything honestly so that misunderstandings that looked insignificant at first glance don’t turn into regrets in the future.

Effective communication in relationships is very important. However, the way you decide to communicate is equally important in order to express your feelings and come to a mutual agreement. If you’re ready to listen and discuss the urgent issues in a calm, positive way, you’re more likely to get a positive response from your partner. Pay attention to how you communicate and see if there is an opportunity to improve communication in your relationships.