Communicating Your Intentions in Relationships
The way a person drives speaks volumes about they way communicate. Today, for example, I was at a four-way stop sign. There was a car stopped at the same time, directly across from me. The driver started to move forward without flashing a turn signal, so I assumed that she, like me, was going to drive straight forward. When I started to move forward as well, she honked and gestured angrily while turning left in front of me. In essence, this person was angry because I didn’t read her mind about the fact that she wanted to take a left turn. If she had signaled her intention, I would have waited. Luckily, this lack of communication resulted in no more than a bit of irritation for her and inspiration for a blog post for me. It could have ended in an accident, one that would require much more energy and work to fix than using a turn signal to begin with.
Some relationships suffer from similar lack of communication. If you are starting a relationship with someone, the passion of falling in love can be overwhelming. Passion tempts you to move forward as fast as possible without stopping. So, maybe there’s an uncomfortable but important fact about what you require in a relationship that you are afraid bring up. You hope this person just understands this about you, and feels the same way so that you can keep going in the direction the passion is taking you. Maybe you are looking to get serious this time around and you want to have children. It could be that you don’t want to get serious, and you never want to have children. Either way, you don’t bring it up because you want to be with this person.
Time goes by, and you become deeply attached. Now this conversation is going to be much scarier because you have more to lose than you did when you first met your partner. If you discover that your relationship goals are completely incompatible, you are now faced with having to pick up the pieces of relationship wreck that could have been avoided. To avoid this scenario, slow down and signal your intentions early on. It will save you time, energy and heartbreak.