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Communication filters may be the cause of unwanted conflict and crisis in your marriage.  

A primary cause of misunderstanding and conflict in relationships is the meaning that we attach to another's words. This happens through the filters that we use in receiving and sending communications with our spouses. Filters are the ways that we interpret and assign meaning to another's words to us. This is true for both speakers and listeners. Filters are created by past experiences and present distractions. These filters cause the listener to hear something other that what the speaker said, and hence the potential for misunderstanding and escalating conflict. [1]

There are 5 main types of communication filters:

• Distractions – internal or external distractions and preoccupations.
• Emotions – prevailing mood and emotions.
• Beliefs and Expectations – how you think and what you expect will happen. 
• Differences in Communication Style – influenced by temperament, personality, cultural upbringing, and an array of other factors.  
• Self-protection – fear of being hurt or rejected. [2]

Do you know your communication filters?

Filters may be momentary, for example, coming home after a stressful day, or more permanent, for example, a belief that work comes before play. The relationship challenge is to determine when and which filters keep you from hearing and understanding your spouse's point of view. This takes a conscious effort. Successful couples have learned to recognize and work with their filters, rather than to allow their filters to determine communication outcomes.

How to recognize your communication filters:

• Desire to do so.
• Develop a healthy self knowledge and relational awareness.
• Building up of negative emotions and feelings.
• Growing sense of defensiveness or blame.
• Thinking or speaking in absolute, all or nothing terms.
• Practice of active listening and assertive communication techniques.  
• Accept feedback and correction from your partner when your filter has engaged.

How can a couple manage the negative impact of their communication filters?

Keep mutual kindness, respect and friendship first place in any discussion with your spouse. Don't lose sight of the shared sense of meaning in your vocation of marriage. Be aware of internal and external stressors and factors that leave particular filters more prone to surface. Acknowledge to your partner when a particular filter has activated. Give yourself permission to take a time out or to reschedule an important discussion. Be sensitive and accepting of each other's personal differences. Seek to out give and out serve each other in any given exchange. Practice the empathy and other focus as prescribed in the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

Pope Benedict XVI recognizes crisis brought by communication filters as opportunities for growth in intimacy:

"Today, a crisis point is reached the moment the diversity of temperament is perceived, the difficulty of [husband and wife] putting up with each other every day for an entire life …That in crises, in bearing the moment in which it seems that no more can be borne, new doors and a new beauty of love truly open. …True beauty also needs contrast. …Husbands and wives must learn to move ahead together, also for love of the children, and thus be newly acquainted with one another, love one another anew with a love far deeper and far truer. So it is that on a long journey, with its suffering, love truly matures." [3]

David Grobbel, L.M.S.W.
Marriage Preparation Coordinator
The Retreat Center at St. John’s

1.  Markman, Howard. J. …[et al.], 12 Hours To A Great Marriage, pp. 45-51. (Jossey-Bass, 2004).

2.  Markman, Howard. J. …[et al.], 12 Hours To A Great Marriage, pp. 45-51. (Jossey-Bass, 2004).

3. MEETING OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI WITH THE PRIESTS OF THE DIOCESE OF ALBANO; Swiss Hall at the Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo, 31 August 2006.