Why It’s Important to Communicate Your Pain

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

One of the most difficult challenges you face on the road of acceptance is getting your partner to understand the depth of your pain.

If your partner doesn’t come to terms with how much damage he or she has done and how much pain he or she has caused you, it is much less likely that your spouse will make a substantive and permanent change.

But there is a way to make this happen. You can get past this seemingly insurmountable obstacle on your path toward forgiveness if you are both willing to do the work it takes to get there. You can learn ways to communicate with one another that will help your partner understand the depth of your pain.

Learning how to communicate with one another in a deep and meaningful way (which is what you need to do if you are going to successfully express the pain you feel) is a skill you can learn. There are a series of steps to take that will allow you to communicate with each other in new and more meaningful ways – ways that will allow you to truly share and better understand the pain you feel.

Quality communication of this nature takes two people actively involved in a dialog. This means that both of you need to invest in the process if it is going to work. I know I have already stated how important it is that both of you be invested in this process of acceptance, but it bears repeating here because it is so critical for quality communication.

Your spouse needs to be willing to hear your pain and come to an understanding about it. At the same time, you need to be able to manage your emotions well enough to communicate in ways that are effective in terms of letting your partner know how you feel. Both of you need to be actively involved in this process if it is going to work.

Take a moment to think about that and commit to this process. If both of you are ready to start working on a program that will truly help your relationship begin to heal, the 5 Steps to Communicating Your Pain presented here will help you both achieve understanding about this situation.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.

For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/

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