Keeping it civilised: Couples must be cautious about the choice of words and tones used when communicating with their partner. — AZHAR MAHFOF/The Star
PETALING JAYA: If a couple cannot imagine themselves losing each other, they should do something about their strained relationship.
While marriage is hard and a work-in-progress that requires ongoing investment, relationship experts and counsellors have called on couples to create and maintain rituals to fill each other’s “love tanks”.
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Family lawyer and author of several books about relationships, Toh Harnniann said that whenever in conflict or contemplating a divorce, couples should constantly remind themselves why they got together and chose each other in the first place.
“Can we imagine ourselves losing each other? Is that the consequence we desire? Otherwise, we had better do something (about our relationship).”
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Despite being married, both parties need to understand that they are both independent individuals with individual needs and different priorities, he said.
“We have to accept him or her as he or she is. Don’t try to change the other party; instead, we should try to accept and understand the person as is.”
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Toh, who is based in Klang, said couples must be wary of their choice of words and tone when communicating, as arguments start normally not because of the message but the way it is delivered.
“The idea of communication is to convey a message, making sure that we hear and understand each other.
“But many times, instead of seeking to understand, we use that opportunity to launch a personal attack.
“It may not be what we intended to do but if the other person feels hurt, then the communication fails. So it’s important to exercise extreme patience and put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.”
He said his firm noticed an increase in divorce cases since the MCO period.
“We can’t quantify it or provide actual statistics, but suffice to label the increase ‘significant’.
He said couples often faced problems concerning communication, sex and finances in their marriage.
“Couples definitely need to learn to communicate better and more effectively to solve these three delicate issues.
“Marriage counselling normally helps, but unfortunately this is still not common in Malaysia,” he said.
Weighing in, marriage and family therapist Charis Wong said the pandemic had both a positive and negative impact on couples.
“For those who were distressed, the MCO and pandemic exacerbated the couples’ problems as they were stuck at home together with no outlet to avoid conflict.
“But I’ve also had couples who shared that the pandemic brought them together because they had more time to reconnect with each other and had less distraction,” she said.
She said couples learning to find a new way of expressing their own needs and responding to each other’s needs will help them change the way they communicate with each other.
“Creating and maintaining couple rituals is important to fill each other’s ‘love tanks’.
“Learn what is meaningful to your partner so you can fill up his or her love tank. Learn each other’s love language and mindfully learn to speak this language,” she said.
Wong, the director of KIN & KiDS Marriage family and child therapy centre, said her couples therapy is focused on identifying the negative interaction cycle between the couple that is leading to dissatisfaction, conflict and disengagement.
“Once partners can see how this negative cycle or ‘dance’ is impacting their ability to tune into each other’s needs in the relationship, they become more mindful about their actions that are reinforcing this dysfunctional cycle.
“Then we work at turning to each partner, listening and understanding what the partner needs and responding to that need instead of fighting or disengaging.
“Learning to find a new way of expressing one’s own needs and responding to each other’s needs will help a couple change the way they communicate with each other,” she said.
As couples can drift apart when one party stops being invested in the relationship, Wong said couples should learn to identify the need and deeper emotion behind the behaviour and turn to each other instead of away from each other.
