As a relationship therapist, I spend a substantial amount of my life with other couples. A key to understanding what it might be like for each of them to be in their relationship and the factors which have brought it to this point is when I can watch them communicate.

Ah... communicate. There’s a word that is bandied about quite a lot! It seems that everybody has their own take on what good communication is. A few of us may even believe that we’re good at it. We speak to people every day, don’t we? If communication has to do with speaking, we must be good at it by now, don’t you think? So let me begin this article by describing what communication isn’t. And one thing it most assuredly isn’t is speaking.

At its deepest, communication has very little to do with the words you use and how they are packaged. How large your vocabulary, how articulate your speaking, how thoughtful and deliberate your responses indicate little about what you are actually communicating to your loved ones. All of this is just content. It is the fruit in the bowl which you are serving to others. True communication is how another person feels when you are speaking to them. More generally, it is how another person feels in your presence. This is the bowl in which the fruit is served. Seen this way, you can offer family members some of the most delectable fruit they have ever seen, but if your bowl is unclean or full of sharp edges on which they could cut themselves, the offer of your  fruit will  be declined.  How the  other  person feels  in   your  presence  is the  lasting legacy of  your

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