Signs of a Lack of Communication in a Relationship & What to Do About It

Why Is Communication Important in a Relationship?

Healthy communication in a relationship allows partners to share thoughts, express needs, set boundaries, and resolve relationship conflicts before they escalate. This helps couples feel more emotionally connected to one another, become more confident in their ability to have a healthy relationship moving forward, both short and long term, and create a deeper level of intimacy. During these conversations, both people should be able to become more vulnerable, open, and curious, which strengthens the relationship’s foundation.

However, when couples have poor communication, they often feel emotionally unsafe and disconnected. They feel frustrated, unimportant, and alone in their relationship. Without communication, past and ongoing wounds go unhealed, making the future of the relationship feel uncertain. This keeps them stuck in  negative patterns of communicating, which makes it difficult for them to relate to each other and work to resolve conflict.

Signs of Bad Communication in a Relationship

Bad communication often has a detrimental effect on relationships, so it is important to learn and recognize its signs. These may include a partner who doesn’t listen or pay attention, a partner who centers the attention back to themselves, or someone who becomes defensive during conversations.

Some signs your relationship lacks communication include:

They Interrupt You

Frequent interruptions are a clear sign of poor communication. Cutting someone off prevents them from fully expressing their thoughts and can make them feel unheard or dismissed. When this becomes a habit in a relationship, it signals a lack of respect and disrupts healthy dialogue. Effective communication involves active listening and allowing each person to speak without interruption.

They Twist Your Words

Another sign of communication issues in relationships is when someone intentionally twists the words or meaning of what was said, usually to mischaracterize someone or prove a point. This undermines clear and honest communication and can lead to more conflict and trust issues over time.

They Always Make Things About Them

It’s natural for people to share their own experiences, but when one partner constantly steers every conversation back to themselves, it creates an imbalance in communication. Over time, this one-sided dynamic can make the other person feel unheard, unimportant, and emotionally disconnected. Healthy communication involves mutual exchange—both partners should feel valued and understood in conversations.

They Pretend to Know Everything

Communication issues can sometimes show up as a person who is too quick to give advice or act like they know more than they do. This bad habit can be annoying to others, making people less likely to want to interact and shutting down lines of communication.

They Are Constantly Distracted

Someone being constantly distracted, checking devices, or doing other things during a conversation is another sign of a communication problem in a relationship. This can be frustrating and even offensive to the other person, who may grow tired of trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t seem to listen or pay attention.

They Practice Stonewalling During Conflict

Stonewalling means abruptly cutting off or ending a conversation, closing the channels of communication. When this becomes a pattern, it’s often a sign of deep communication issues in a relationship, and also works to prevent the healthy resolution of conflicts.

They Are Defensive or Aggressive

Defensiveness quickly shuts down any shot at open and honest communication, and often leads the other person to becoming defensive in response. Aggressiveness is one defense mechanism, but there are many others including passive aggression, shutting down, and blaming the other person.

They Don’t Address What You Said

When someone never addresses or responds to what you say in a conversation, it isn’t clear that they are listening or hearing you. Instead, they may move the conversation in a completely different direction. This bad habit can be both a sign of communication issues as well as a contributor to those issues getting worse over time.

They Correct or Critique You

Another sign of bad communication in a relationship is someone who is constantly correcting or criticizing you or things you say or share with them. This leads to defensiveness, shutting down communication and leading to conflicts and hurt feelings.

They Don’t Remember Later

When someone often forgets things we told them or said in conversations, it’s natural to assume they are not really listening. While this might be happening for a number of different reasons, it’s a clear sign of communication problems in a relationship.

They Selectively Listen

Another sign of communication issues is when someone selectively listens to things we say, tuning out other things we said that add context or clarity. This tendency is a sign of communication issues, and often leads to a lot of miscommunication in a relationship.

How a Lack of Communication Affects Relationships

When these communication struggles go unresolved, they don’t just cause frustration in conversations—they can damage the entire foundation of your relationship. When communication breaks down, it can affect both partners emotionally and relationally, leading to deeper issues over time.

Here’s how communication issues affect relationships:

Emotional Consequences

• Resentment builds over time – Unresolved conflicts create lingering frustration and resentment in marriage.
• Increased relationship anxiety – Poor communication leads to uncertainty about the relationship’s future.
• Focusing on the negative – When partners struggle to express themselves, negativity overshadows positive experiences.
• Feeling hopeless – Without open dialogue, the relationship may feel beyond repair.

Relational Consequences

• Lack of growth – A stagnant relationship struggles to deepen its emotional connection.
• Toxic dynamics develop – Miscommunication can lead to power struggles and unhealthy interactions from toxic relationships.
• Disconnection – Without regular communication, partners drift apart emotionally.

Trust & Security Issues

• Lack of safety – Emotional safety erodes when conversations feel hostile or unproductive.
• Missed opportunities for support – When couples don’t share their struggles, they lose the chance to support each other.

Married couples may experience more significant levels of stress from a lack of communication, as they may have additional family dynamics and the option of divorce to consider. When children are involved, they often feel the stress, anxiety, and tension between their parents. Married couples often worry that divorce would be too painful for their children as well.

Poor communication in a relationship can also impact the individuals in many ways, including:

• Low self-esteem
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Increase in loneliness
• Increase in stress levels

13 Ways to Fix a Lack of Communication in Relationships

No matter the stage of your relationship, level of commitment, or depth of communication struggles, improving how you and your partner connect is possible. The key is awareness—recognizing where communication breaks down—and a shared commitment to making meaningful changes. When both partners put in the effort, healthier conversations and a stronger relationship can follow.

Here are thirteen tips for how to fix communication problems in relationships:

1. Increase Your Awareness

You can’t fix a problem you don’t see. The first step is identifying where communication is breaking down. While it may seem obvious, many couples don’t realize the specific patterns causing misunderstandings or disconnection in their relationship.

When having an argument, it is important that couples practice self-awareness and identify where the breakdown of communication occurs, so that they can work to resolve it.

2. Make a Commitment to Change

After becoming aware, it is important that each person makes a commitment to changing the patterns that are detrimental to the relationship. A good way to begin is to identify one change each person needs to make and write it down.

3. Set Up Accountability

After making the commitment to work towards better communication, it is important that both people hold each other accountable as they try to implement these changes. If one person does well the first time, but reverts to their old communication patterns shortly, their partner should be able to hold them accountable–and they should be able to take accountability for their mishaps and mistakes.

4. Understand Your Attachment Style

People’s attachment styles are shaped in early development with their primary caregivers and impact how they relate to others in their relationships. This includes how people form bonds, how they communicate, how comfortable they feel in the relationship, etc. It is important to understand how one’s attachment style may influence their communication patterns. For example, someone with a secure attachment style may react differently than someone with avoidant, disorganized, or anxious attachment.

5. Be Proactive About Your Communication

Often, communication issues come up during times of conflict. When discussing how to avoid communication issues, consider coming up with a plan after cooling off.

Some things to consider when making a conflict plan include:

• Make a list of the challenges
• Limit the conversation to 30 minutes and one topic
• Take turns sharing how you feel
• Don’t interrupt. Write things down if you have to.
• Manage your feelings
• Discuss whether taking “breaks” during the conversation is okay ahead of time
• Put your phone away and turn the tv or computer off. Be present.
• Maintain good eye contact

6. Be Open to Suggestions

Being open to suggestions means being able to listen to each other’s perspective on the situation and how each might want to resolve the issue. It doesn’t mean that one or the other is correct, but without being open to the other’s point of view, reaching a compromise will be even more difficult.

7. Be Curious About Your Partner

Ask your partner, husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend questions to get to the bottom of why they might think or communicate a certain way. Ask them to share more about a particular emotion, or ask them how they reached a conclusion or feeling. A great question to ask when there is a breakdown in communication is: How can I best support you moving forward? Use this time to get to know them in a different way and learn how to be a better partner for them.

8. Learn to Set Healthy Boundaries

Setting healthy boundaries in relationships is important all the time, but especially when struggling with communication issues. Sometimes, boundary and communication issues go hand in hand. For example, if someone struggles with communication struggles in marriage or relationships, they may find it more difficult to express and assert their boundaries. This can, in turn, make it more difficult for them to feel confident in their relationship.

9. Check In on a Regular Basis

Decide when to have check-ins with one another about how the changes in communication are working. Be deliberate about scheduling a block of time to discuss this – it can be weekly, a few minutes each day, once every few weeks, etc. Consider using relationship journal prompts to go deeper into conversations with your partner.

10. Express Vulnerability

Often, when there is significant communication breakdown, there is a heightened fear of rejection that might cause one or both people to suppress their vulnerability and hide it from their partner.  Learn to express vulnerability and pain by using  “I” and not “you.” This helps the other person avoid feeling guilt and blame for their partner’s feelings.

11. Focus on the “We”

When people are communicating about issues, it’s important to come from a “we” perspective. This shows that, ultimately, the goal is for the relationship to thrive, and to not be self-serving in nature. For example, use phrases like, “I want us to become better at communicating” and “I know that we can make our relationship better.”

12. Celebrate the Small Wins

As people work through their communication issues, there will be periods of time when things improve, and couples will often reach positive milestones when implementing these changes. Don’t forget to celebrate those! It can make the difficult times easier to manage when the payoff is recognized.

13. Patient

It’s also important to remember that not everything that you plan on will go according to plan. Often, couples experience many “fits and starts” when making changes. This is all part of the process. Sometimes, one person is in a different place than the other, or can communicate better, and this can make the process frustrating for both people. It is important to give each other grace while navigating conflict in the relationship, and to remember how each person may be feeling.

What to Do When There Is No Communication in a Relationship

People often struggle with knowing when to walk away from the relationship when there are communication issues. Many remain hopeful, but if you have taken actionable steps to improve the communication and it’s not working out, you have to evaluate if the relationship has reached a point of no return.

Signs that it might be a good time to break up include:

• Lack of compatibility
• Persistent trust issues
• Little emotional intimacy
• Sexless marriage or relationship
• Lack of curiosity about your partner
• Both people live separate and parallel lives
• One or both partners have tried to work through communication problems with their partner, to no avail

When to Seek Couples Counseling for a Relationship Without Communication

There is no “perfect” or right time to seek therapy. Some couples work tirelessly on their relationship without seeing results, which is often a good indicator that they need professional help. Although most couples wait several years before finding a couples or marriage counselor, the sooner they do, the better their chances of working through communication issues in their relationship.

There are numerous benefits to couples counseling. A therapist can help implement healthier strategies and aid in learning how to manage the ups and downs that often come when couples start to make communication changes in their relationship. In-person or online couples therapy platforms can help you understand your partner differently, in a non-judgmental way.

If one or both individuals would like to explore going separate ways, they may consider discernment or divorce counseling. These options can help people arrive at a healthy end to their relationship, and if needed, work with married couples to divorce amicably, maintain healthy communication during divorce, work through co-parenting issues, and navigate how to talk to their kids about divorce.

When to Try Individual Therapy

Sometimes, it might be helpful for people struggling with lack of communication in a relationship to seek individual therapy as well. Dealing with issues that may affect communication, such as an individual’s own trauma and mental health struggles, can vastly help efforts made in couples counseling.