As a child I heard that “children are best seen not heard” so often I never spoke up in public about anything.  We are taught to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves from an early age. 

Gender differences in communication

Girls are taught subtly in the classroom to keep their ideas to themselves. 

There was a study done years ago (sorry, I don’t recall the source) where they counted the number of times girls were called upon in class to boys, and the number of times girls were punished for speaking out of turn as opposed to boys.  This study revealed that girls are called upon less, and punished for speaking out of turn more. 

Boys, of course are taught to hide their feelings from toddlerhood.  Our culture doesn’t even allow boys to learn the words for feelings.   Then, older boys, fathers, brothers, teachers, and coaches shame them if they show any sign of having a feeling other than happiness or anger.

So it’s no wonder communication is so hard for us. Yet those of us who can overcome our difficulties with communication are the best equipped for any career and have far more financial and social success. 

Environmental effects on communication styles

For myself, my “dysfunctional family” further complicated all the cultural edicts against communication. I learned to keep secrets, to protect others from my feelings (I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I hurt because then I would have to tell them why), and to try to guess what others wanted from me since they wouldn’t come out and tell me.

Coming into a marriage with this kind of baggage at age 43 and a history of two failed marriages did not bode well from my new partner. Yet he took the gamble (Yea!) and I think it has paid off for both of us.

To get to good communication from the very beginning we had to fight a number of difficulties.

First, I was phobic of his anger (anger in my family meant someone would get abandoned or hurt) and because of his own Self-Protector mode anger was his primary emotion.  Second, I hid my real feelings because of how I had been trained as a child. 

The first year of our marriage was turbulent and extremely painful at times.  It was a good thing we were so crazy about each other or we could never have survived it!

Overcoming communication difficulties

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