Week # 9 Communication and Mutal Problem Solving

What stood out to me the most from this week class discussion, my readings from my marriage class and class preparation was the concept that communication alone cannot save an individual’s marriage. According to Gottman wrote the seven principles for making marriage work.  He Discussed the Post- Marriage Culture 6 myths that most people have which are:

1.       Divorce is usually the best answer for kids when a marriage is unhappy.

2.       Marriage is the key to saving all marriages.

3.       Marriage is mostly about children. If you do not have kids, it doesn’t matter whether you cohabit, marry or stay single.

4.       Marriage may be good for men, but bad for women.

5.       Old fashioned beliefs about marriage and material obligation put women at risk for violence.

6.       Marriage is essentially a private matter, in which no outsider including children should interfere.

From our class discussion I learned that both nonverbal, tone, and the words themselves play a key role in how we behave from our relationship.  We interpret 14% of the words that we hear from others, 35% when it comes to tone, and a majority of what we base our decisions on is the nonverbal cues which equal 51%.  Decoding is the biggest challenge that we must overcome as an effect this will help us prevent confusion.  I wish there was a class on just encoding and interpreting the conversations so that we can adequately express ourselves.