Keeping Relationship Journals

II. IMPROVING COMMUNICATION....................................... 222

Keeping Relationship Journals................................. 222

I. THE PATTERN OF POOR COMMUNICATION

    After awhile, most relationships settle into comfortable patterns:
accepting the roles that seem to fit the two people,
getting into predictable and mutually-complementary roles,
establishing perhaps a formal protocol of interaction,
keeping a comfortable distance, maintaining secrets,
and sometimes actual dishonesty "to preserve the relationship".
It is much easier to talk about practical, tangible, everyday matters
than about the underlying dynamics of the relationship
or about one's deepest feelings concerning the other person.

    Often certain topics have become taboo;
there is a tacit agreement never to bring them up.
For example, which of the following concerns
do you discuss with the person you are closest to:
sex; money; politics; religion; in-laws; negative feelings about each other;
irksome habits, qualities, or characteristics; other loving relationships;
other sexual relationships; previous relationships; future relationships?

    Unspoken conflicts might eventually destroy a relationship.
If unarticulated problems fester, they can become serious difficulties.
Most relationships reach a comfortable level of communication.
After a few months or a few years, the partners feel
that they have communicated everything there is to know about each other
(which assumes they have stopped growing and changing);
from then on they only communicate about day-to-day details.
Some studies have shown that most married people
communicate with each other only a few minutes each day.
One man said to his wife:
"You understand everything there is to know about me."
Another couple operates on the principle that less is better:
"We don't need any deeper communication,
because our relationship works at this level of communication."
Perhaps more extensive sharing would uncover problems.
They prefer not to rock the boat,
not to initiate any conversation that might threaten the relationship.
The longer this practice of non-communication has lasted,
the harder it becomes to break the pattern.
It is often easier to keep quiet and let the relationship drift along.

     The same is true of pent-up negative feelings about each other.
If the people have been keeping their relationship limping along
by hiding these negative feelings even from themselves,
the disclosure of their hostility might cause a complete break-down.
Some people harbor secret resentments and grudges for years,
letting them out only after they have decided to separate.
Then they unpack their closet-full of complaints
and hurl their hidden resentments at each other.

     Earlier communication could have prevented such blow-ups.
But many couples operate according to a principle learned in childhood:
"If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything."

     Finding time to communicate is another common problem.
Many people cannot fit serious discussion into their weekly schedules.
Lacking the time to finish a discussion properly, they never begin.

     Should they set aside a special time for serious talking?
If they are busy with babies, work, responsibilities, and entertainment,
they might never communicate deeply except by special appointment.
Many people postpone their significant sharing
until a situation that should have been discussed
has been dimmed by the passage of time.

     Sometimes, even after years of being married,
after seeing each other every day for most of their adults lives,
the spouses really do not know each other
because their significant communication petered out long ago.
Perhaps each person has continued to grow and develop,
but because they thought their changes might threaten the relationship,
they kept silent about who they were becoming.
Perhaps it would be a great shock to the husband for his wife to reveal
that she is no longer the same person he married x years ago.
Possibly the relationship is so built on non-communication and falsehood
that letting the truth out would bring the marriage to an end
—which might be a good thing
if the relationship is only a gossamer fabric of memories and imagination.
What percentage of marriages would terminate
if the partners were completely honest with each other?

II. IMPROVING COMMUNICATION

     If we want to resist the tendency of relationships
to deteriorate into thoughtless, automatic togetherness,
if we want to renew our love every time we get together,
we will devote significant attention to improving our communication.
In such creative, growing relationships, communication is essential
—perhaps several hours of significant sharing every week.
But what else is a relationship besides communication?

     A relationship journal is a notebook or diary of a loving relationship,
perhaps a full-size loose-leaf notebook, which will expand over the years.
A relationship journal could also be kept as a set of computer files.
If we have more than one significant loving relationship,
we should have additional relationship journals.

     If we think about love (instead of just letting it 'happen'),
we might find it helpful to write down some of our thoughts.
We might begin each entry merely by recounting
what has happened in the relationship since we last wrote.
This will easily move into how we are feeling about these events.
Do we notice any trends in the relationship?
Is it getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?
What are our hopes for the relationship?  our fears?
Are we having second thoughts about something that happened?
Did something disappoint us?
Has there been a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation?
Perhaps there are some puzzling aspects of the relationship
we would like to record for further thought at a later time.
Does the relationship help us pursue our Authentic projects-of-being?
Is an old phase of the relationship drawing to a close?
Or a new phase opening up?
In short, our relationship journals should include everything
that is going thru our heads concerning our loving relationships.

     We will create more balanced journals if we write regularly,
not just at moments of crisis or trouble in the relationship.
It can also be a place to record our most wonderful and happy thoughts
as well as some of the difficulties that need to be worked thru.

     Keeping journals of our loves will help us think more clearly.
Loving from Authenticity does not happen easily or automatically.
Unless we direct our relationships, they might degenerate into mere habit.
And writing down our thoughts (whether good or bad)
is an excellent way to clarify our perceptions for ourselves.
Writing forces us to think more logically and sequentially,
moving from one point to another,
instead of going around and around in useless circles
or dwelling unduly on some minor incident.

    Keeping relationship journals might actually save us time
because recording our thoughts takes less time than disorganized worry.
Once we have expressed the problems clearly in writing,
we can turn our attention to other activities,
possibly coming back to difficult issues later.

     Also, how we feel about our loving relationships
when we are alone might be strikingly different
from how we feel when we are in the arms of someone we love.
We might get different perspectives on our relationships.
And we will probably find that this written reflection
enables us to be more honest about our relationships.
Our written feelings might not be as censored as our verbal sharing
because we don't have to worry about the other's immediate response.
In our journals, it might be easier to criticize the ones we love,
which we might find difficult in face-to-face encounters.
When we are sitting alone writing, we can finish our whole point
without being interrupted or corrected prematurely.
And the discipline of writing might encourage us to become more serious
about our relationships instead of merely taking them for granted
—which is especially easy for people who see each other all the time.
Routine presence sometimes promotes laxity in 'loving' relationships,
but careful writing about important issues can keep love alive and growing
—as we might know if we have ever conducted a relationship by e-mail.

     As the pages of our relationship journals gather over the months,
we will be creating a valuable record of our relationship.
People who are loving immediately and strongly might not believe it,
but it is possible to forget thoughts and feelings after they are past.
Those who have kept any kind of diary or journal have probably noticed
that re-reading years later shows the events in quite a different light.

     Besides these personal benefits from keeping a relationship journal,
it can also become an important medium of communication.
If our relationships are open enough to share all our thoughts and feelings,
then we can also share our relationship journals.
Such mutual sharing of journals can facilitate times of deep communication.
Reading about our love from the other side
(something few people have been privileged to do)
might give us new insights into the relationship—and into ourselves.

     Real communication is perhaps the most important practice
for keeping a loving relationship open and growing.
Without honest and open communication,
even the best loving relationship can easily deteriorate.
Constant and meaningful sharing enables us to keep up
with the changes in our relationships
—and the changes in the lives of those we love.