My father-in-law loved music, especially sacred music, very much. He was an accomplished singer and spent a significant portion of his professional career giving voice lessons. Voice lessons are comprised of several elements. The first element of a voice lesson involves listening. What are the music and the words trying to communicate? What is the message behind the words? What emotions does the music evoke? Answering these questions requires listening with full attention and with the heart. The next element is for the singer to emulate what was heard and understood with his or her own voice. Then the instructor points out where the singer might have misinterpreted something or missed an important note or transition. They continue lessons in this vein, practicing until the singer’s voice communicates the true message and emotion from their own heart to the audience.

Our voices do this in our love relationships as well. We listen intently as we get to know someone. We check our understanding of them by communicating back to them what we’ve heard, and then we respond with our hearts, minds, and voices.

My husband and I fell in love when we were very young. We went to different high schools so we were only able to see each other two or three times a week. When we did, we would talk for hours over dinners, on hikes, while hanging out in the pool, on drives, etc. Then I graduated and went to Europe for two months. My husband remembers the thrill of getting a phone call from me while I was in England, on his 20th birthday. I was gone and then, all of a sudden, there was my voice carried over the phone line—a voice that instantly put him in touch with all of the person he loved and knew so well.

After being back home for a month, I went away to college. We carried on our “conversations” through letters and the occasional phone call. I would write long letters to him every couple of days, sharing the details of my experiences, thoughts, and feelings. I looked forward to receiving the same from him. In essence, we grew into adults together. We shared who we were becoming with each other whether we were together or apart. We had the privilege of doing so on several different continents; letters crossing from Ecuador to France and vice versa, among other places.

John Gottman, a psychologist well known for his research on marriage, would describe the knowledge that type of sharing creates as a “love map.” A love map is a detailed knowledge of each other’s lives. It is an intimate familiarity with your loved one’s world; not only their favorite foods, books, movies, activities, etc., but also their deepest longings, beliefs, and fears. In his book, “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,” he says that couples who have extensive love maps of each other’s lives can better weather the storms of life; stressful events and conflicts that arise.

This applies to any close and meaningful relationship. However, this isn’t just a “once and done” kind of thing where you develop that love map as you get to know and love someone and then just cruise along with that initial knowledge. When we stop sharing our lives and having those deep conversations, we begin to feel disconnected from one another. Gottman emphasizes that we need to keep extending our love maps of each other.

I was reminded of this the other day as I read a review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s new novel in a recent issue of Time magazine (September 12, 2016). One of the main themes of the book is the dissolution of a marriage. The reviewer says that what the main characters, Jacob and Julia, “lose the ability to do, is to say the title of the book: ‘Here I am.’” In an interview with the reviewer, Foer says, “It’s very hard in the context of a domestic everyday life relationship to ask questions like ‘Who have I become?’ or ‘Who have you become?’” He goes on to say, “The whole point of what’s tragic about domestic life is that people don’t talk that way. It’s not that they have those conversations and reach tragic truths—it’s that they never have those conversations.”

This pulls at my heartstrings as a life coach, a psychologist, a person of faith, and as a wife, mother, sister, and friend. In all of those roles and relationships, those conversations are critical. They are critical first in terms of our own inner thought life and examination and then they are vital in any relationship that is important to us. How can we say, in effect, “Here I am,” unless we’ve taken the time to discover who we are in the present?

While our temperaments and personalities may be fairly stable, our lives are not static. Who we were as young adults is not necessarily who we are today. Our experiences and maturity change us. Our interests, needs, and desires may also change over time. Questions like “Who have I become?” invite other questions. What are my values? What is my purpose? What are the most important things to me in life? Is that reflected in how I spend my time? Who do I want to be? What is working well in my life and what is not working well? Where do I need to move forward? What am I passionate about? What gives me energy? What drains me of energy? What are my strengths and how am I using them? Am I living with intention and purpose?

It’s true that it takes time and intention to ask ourselves these questions and time is often a difficult commodity to find in different phases of our lives. It also takes courage. Sometimes we do not want to see or face who we have become. But if something is important enough to us, we give attention to it. We find the courage, the time, and the resources. We may journal. We might reflect with a friend or a family member. We might engage a coach to walk with us toward a deeper understanding of ourselves and the realization of our goals for the future. We might see a therapist or counselor to help us resolve pain from the past in order to live more comfortably and fully in the present.

Our closest, deepest relationships are ones in which both individuals share their truest selves. We can be vulnerable in those relationships and let the other person know what is in our hearts, what we are struggling with, what we are dreaming about, and what happens in our daily lives. We know that the other person is listening to and understanding us and vice versa. But we need to keep on sharing with one another in order to maintain the emotional closeness that defines those relationships. We need to keep on saying, “Here I am.”

Sometimes we need voice lessons to do this; lessons on listening fully to our inner voice, the voice of the Holy Spirit, and the voice of our loved ones. At other times we need lessons on how to recognize and share our innermost fears, hopes, and desires. We also sometimes need lessons on how to speak in a voice that will be heard, understood, and taken seriously.

In my coaching practice, I see quite a few couples for marriage enrichment. One of the goals these couples often have is better communication. Many couples have gotten out of the habit of having real conversations with each other. One husband recently admitted that when his wife starts talking, he finds himself thinking, “How important is this? I mean, do I need to put down my cell phone or can I multitask?” He said this with an embarrassed laugh. And it hung in the air. Sometimes just hearing yourself say something like that out loud gets to the root of the problem. We stop really listening to the voice of our loved one. Or, we listen to defend ourselves rather than to understand the other.

There have been seasons in my own marriage where that strong connection was weakened by lack of attention for all the reasons listed above; lack of courage, time, and intention. We stopped extending our love maps of each other. We fell into habitual, nonproductive patterns of communication and could not resolve conflict when it arose. Like so many couples, one avoided or deflected and the other gave up and stopped trying. We hid from ourselves and each other. We were not brave enough to be vulnerable. We needed voice lessons. Our marriage was important enough for us to first, face ourselves, and then, learn new, more productive patterns of communication and get back to extending our love maps and hearing each other’s voices daily.

One recent example of this is a conversation that my husband and I had a few nights ago. We were talking about one of our adult children and career choices. I was using myself as an example of how there can be many twists and turns from one’s training and education through various careers. Apparently, he interpreted something I said to indicate that I might not be happy with the way my professional life had developed. So, later on, he asked me simply, “Are you happy?” I said yes, and further explained the context of my earlier comments. This little conversation shows several aspects of voice. First, it showed me that he was listening to me and that he cares about my happiness and well-being. Second, it helped me to clarify what I had said. And third, it caused me to listen to my inner voice by revisiting that question the next day and asking myself when I am most happy in my work (when I’m interacting with clients and when I’m writing). That question also required a certain amount of vulnerability on both of our parts and the sharing that happened as a result of it deepened our emotional connection.

In her book, “The Dance of Connection,” Harriet Lerner writes about maintaining those connections that are important to us even in the midst of frustration, hurt, conflict, anger, fear, and so on. She stresses that to do so, we must find our authentic voice. Essentially, that means knowing yourself and being able to fully and effectively voice your wants, needs, desires, boundaries, etc. It also involves being to able to listen and ask questions that allow us to truly know and understand the other person, their perspective, and other information pertinent to the discussion (the history of similar relationships or conflicts in our families of origin, for example).

In any long term relationship, conversational patterns can become habitual and nonproductive. Finding our voice means we can change those patterns so that hearing and understanding can be achieved. Lerner emphasizes that conflict can be an opportunity for discovery, new learning, and a deepening of the relationship if we are willing and able to be vulnerable and use our authentic voice.

My husband still loves to hear my voice over the phone line. He likes for me to give him a quick call each morning (when possible) while he’s at work, just to feel connected. Our voices represent all that we are. So, whose voice do you need to hear today? To whom do you need to say, “Here I am.”...? Who do you need to call out to and ask, “Where are you?”

Voice Lessons

Three Keys to Strengthen Relationships ~ Part 1

Love and The Edge Effect

When Anxiety Strikes ~ Grounding Techniques to Calm You

For Those Who Mourn, Part 2

For Those Who Mourn

Thanksgiving for the Bread of Life

Fall Reflections ~ Following Your Path

On Becoming Love ~ The Last Chapter

On Becoming Love, Part 5 ~ Solving Your Solvable Problems

Patricia C Marshall