So as I sit here working my overnight there is a movie playing. I have absolutely no idea what the movie is called and it seems to be made in the 80’s due to the slightly grainy visuals. The scene that came on was of a serenely beautiful woman sitting on the bedside talking to her husband who is snug in his bed. The woman places a wrapped box on her husband’s lap, all while she bears a prideful smile, so bright, it puts the lamp to shame. The man looks at the box with a half hearted smirk and opens it not expecting much. What he pulls out is a handcrafted, ceramic vase that glistens with each of his faux curious turns. While the vase is stunning and an obvious source of pride for the kind woman he gets the honor of being with (if only you watched the whole movie through, he’s a real slimebag but I digress), he states, “...you made this” she nods with earnest eyes. He abruptly puts it on his nightstand and changes the subject, “We have to call the (insert some form of maintenance man here)” and her prideful grin slowly dims all the lights in the room and her eyes sink down in a downcast way. She stands up and gives a short reply, then goes to bed quietly.

Now, half of you who read this might say, “What’s his problem?” and the other half will ask “Why is she sad?” or you will skip that and ask “Okay Remington what is the point of this?” I want to answer those two halves who asked "What's his problem" and "Why is she sad" because it is difficult for people to understand another's point of view. It all comes down to communication and the message that gets transferred from the sender to the receiver. The sender encodes a message verbally, nonverbally, over social media (called the channel or way message is being given), etc., and then the receiver decodes the message, which means he or she assigns meaning to what has been said. After that, the receiver will give feedback (his or her's response to what happened)

Now, Mr. What’s-His-Face is the sender and Ms. Kind Crafter is the receiver. The message is what he said to her about the gift. The context is the scenario they are in.

First, let’s take it from his point of view. He sees this gift through a self-centered lens. Meaning, he is not interested in vases and doesn’t understand why she made him this as a gift let alone thought it would be a good idea. However, he tries poorly to mask this distaste and so cuts the interaction short, moving on to a topic that he feels is more important. He doesn’t stop to think about why she made him this gift and what it actually represents. By doing this he is undermining her work but in his mind he has made sufficient response and feels that the topic of conversation can be changed.

Let’s take it from her point of view. She has handcrafted this vase, painted, put her time and effort into it, and made it with the intention of making someone she loves happy. Such is the point of gift giving. We can also see by this that ceramics is a passion of hers and what she tried to do was display her love for her husband by doing something that she loved. So when Mr. What’s-His-Face sends the message of distaste and apathy, she takes it personally because he did not acknowledge the time, effort, and love that went into the work of art. He also does not encourage her passion by giving her reassurance and positive feedback. This in turn greatly hurts her feelings.

After all this interaction on the bedside, she gets up and moves to her side of the bed facing away from him to go to sleep.Then we move to the new message that she now sends him: she non verbally says, “I’m upset, get away from me” Though her reaction may be understandable, it is not conducive to the situation. He is left not understanding why she is now sad, thus leaving the interaction unresolved. In the long run, this will only cause more tension between the couple due to a lack of communication. Which it most certainly does between the two!

This brief snippet was meant to show you all just how complex and intricate communication really is in our daily lives. Something as innocent as changing the subject at the wrong time can have implications. When there are implications however, it is up to the receiver to voice what they perceived as negative. Most of us just remain passive and never bring it to our partner but the more we do this the more it builds up resentment and anger toward your partner. Not to mention, they begin to associate you with negativity more and more each time they see you. When they don’t address that both parties become incredibly tense.

It is imperative that you build a sense of trust and comfortability between you and your partner in terms of open communication. If you cannot comfortably openly communicate, there is in issue that needs to be resolved. That issue can either be an intrapersonal (internal) problem you need to sort out for yourself or your partner has not given you the reason to trust him or her yet. Either way, your partner is ,meant to be a rock for you. They are with you to help you grow, learn, and get past pain of all sorts. They should be the one person that you can resort to when everything inside isn’t working as smoothly as it should.

I recommend working on that trust and comfortability in the early stages of the relationship. This means show them that you not only want to be romantically linked to them but you also want to be their best friend, someone who they can confide in. Comfortability doesn’t come overnight and it’s not easy for a lot of people but relationships require work and personal growth in order to flourish. So make it clear that you are a believer in open communication, you relationship will thank you for it.