by Harriet Hairston
There comes a time in every marriage when both spouses must learn the art of compromise. This sounds like such an easy thing to do, but if you’ve been married a day or a decade, you will find at times that compromise eludes you.
If you have ever experienced this challenge in your marriage, Marty Babits’ book, “The Power of Middle Ground” is definitely a helpful resource. How do you know if you need to compromise more in your marriage? How does communication take place between you and your spouse? Are you at “Square One,” or do you have a healthy atmosphere of intimacy within your marriage?
The first step to finding out is self-assessment. Babits created the following true or false quiz to help you determine where you are on the spectrum of “Middle Ground Communication:”
1. When my spouse offers an opinion/comment, I often interpret it as criticism.
2. When I speak to my spouse, my intent is, except in rare instances, to be supportive.
3. It takes a lot for me to get angry at my spouse.
4. We joke around a lot and rarely ever take things the wrong way.
5. It’s hard for either of us to joke about anything without feeling the other will be offended.
6. When my spouse tells me something about myself that I didn’t know or disagree with, in general, I tend to have some hostility in it.
7. Part of what I want/expect from my spouse is for him or her to feel free to tell me something he or she may be aware of that I’m not.
8. Generally speaking, if my spouse is interested in something, i will tend to get interested in it also.
9. Generally speaking, when I am interested in something, my spouse will follow suit and at the least, demonstrate an initial curiosity–if not in the idea/subject, then in my interest in it.
10. It’s very difficult for my spouse to surprise me; I’m always 3 steps ahead.
The key to the above quiz is 1) F; 2) T; 3) T; 4) T; 5) F; 6) F; 7) T; 8) T; 9) T; 10) F. Give yourself one point for every correct answer.
If you got 0-2 points, then you are at “Square One” in your communication, meaning you or your spouse feels underappreciated and misunderstood. Each of you feels along and lonely in the other’s presence, and attempts at communication generally end up in a power struggle.
If you got 3-7 points, you and your spouse are working towards middle ground communication, but there are significant pockets of difficulty within your relationship.
If you got 8 or more points, there is a good amount of trust and comfort in your relationship. Congratulations! Continue to maintain your middle ground communication. Catalog what you have learned and reach other couples with pointers of what you do to maintain it!
If you are in the latter category and middle ground communication comes so natural that you find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what you do to maintain it, you may find yourself in the following seven guidelines for middle ground communication. If you are in the first two categories, you may want to adopt the following guidelines in your own marriage:
1. Avoid generalization and stereotyping. This means doing away with “You/I always” and “You/I never” statements.
2. Do not blurt your responses to your spouse. Respond, don’t react. Response requires reflection. Reaction is just a counterpunch and nothing gets resolved like that.
3. No name calling! All that does is stop the flow of communication.
4. Speak honestly and judiciously. But understand that you must think before you speak. The truth spoken without love is just as dangerous as a lie.
5. Develop and sustain patience with your spouse. Babits stated that “patience and humility blended together compose emotional stamina, which is fundamental to the creation of a secure, long term love relationship.”
6. Think about what your spouse says in terms of who he/she is and their communication style, not your own. Babits suggests to “have a good grasp of how the situation is viewed by your spouse as well as yourself.”
7. Have an agreed upon “time out” signal, where if the two of you are at an impasse, you can push the pause button, calm down and come back to it later. Have an agreed upon time limit for your time outs, and do not avoid re-addressing the issue once the time comes.
BMWK, are you at Square One, the Middle Ground or somewhere in between? How have you learned to communicate with your spouse more effectively?
God bless!
~ Harriet