It was one of those "NPR moments" the announcers are always talking about on the radio. As I was driving home from work, anxious to see my husband and daughter, I caught an interview of actor Adam Goldberg on our local NPR station. The interview continued beyond my drive home, and I sat in the driveway, listening. When asked about his religion, Goldberg explained that he is the product of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. He jokingly added that he had inherited the neurotic, anxious behavior common to Jews, and the repressed, uncommunicative nature typical of Catholics.
While I had a good laugh at this, the interview made me think about the differences in personality between my husband--who is now Jewish, but was raised in a devout Protestant home--and myself. Namely I thought about our differences when it comes to communication styles.
The fact that we are different is no secret in our household. We often marvel at how unalike our childhoods were. While it's fun to reminisce, we have come to realize just how strongly these differences work together to enhance a lack of communication during times of stress.
As a Jewish woman who grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City, I come from an extremely close, and yes, anxiety-ridden family that talks about everything. While my family has had its share of heated discussions, we all talk on a regular (and frequent) basis. On average, I talk with someone from my family almost every other day. On the flip side is my Methodist-raised husband, who grew up in a small town in Kansas. He comes from a supportive and loving family, yet has much less frequent contact with them--talking to one of his family members every other week. As a whole, they have a different outlook on life from my family--they are less willing to interfere with each others' lives and they communicate mostly about practical matters.
Originally, I thought much of the communication gap was due to gender differences. Miriam De La Cruz, of Dayton, Ohio, a Jewish woman married to Victor, a Hispanic Catholic man, shares similar views when it comes to the communication challenges in her own marriage: "It seems like just as many of our communication issues stem from gender as they do from cultural differences. My mom and I can sit and talk a situation to death, but Victor's eyes tend to glaze over about 30 seconds into a conversation about feelings."
However, as I dug further into this cultural phenomenon, a history lesson from my rabbi taught me that much of the communication gap between interfaith couples traces back to cultural differences. Of course, there are always variations within cultures, yet still, on the whole there are similarities that are true for many people within that cultural group.
The History Behind Interfaith Communication Issues
Interfaith relationships became prevalent only in recent decades. Prior to the 1950s, the use of the term "melting pot" was only partially accurate in describing the U.S. While the United States contained many different cultures, most ethnic groups remained closed to outsiders until the 1950s and '60s. Until this time, interfaith marriages were out of the question in most communities, according to Joel Crohn, Ph.D., a Los Angeles-based clinical psychologist, and author of Mixed Matches: How to Create Successful Interracial, Interethnic, and Interfaith Relationships.
Today, with almost 50 percent of Jews marrying spouses of different faiths, what does this history have to do with us?
It has to do with an often overlooked issue faced by interfaith partners: Our history continues to shape the way we communicate with one another.
Communication Patterns Among Interfaith Couples
"Marriage is complicated, period," said Crohn, who defines himself as a "translator between the cultures." "Every difference a couple brings to the relationship adds another level of difficulty."
"My job is to look at what is commonly referred to as stereotypes between the cultures. These 'stereotypes' are really patterns of communication, built over the years by our societal backgrounds," said Crohn. "These patterns show that typically, the Jewish partner is more emotionally reactive, while the gentile partner is less expressive. I generally work with couples in which the Jewish partner has to work on setting more boundaries, and the non-Jewish partner's focus is on becoming more expressive."
That comment rings true with Karen and John Brownlee, an interfaith couple from Cincinnati, Ohio, who agree that John, a non-practicing Catholic, tends to avoid conflict, whereas Karen, a practicing Jew, generally likes to confront any issue head-on. "I think Jews prize communication more than some other cultures," said Karen.
The reality is, Jews and non-Jews share an even more universal difference, according to Susan Tivol, MSW, an interfaith facilitator/coach in Overland Park, Kansas. "The broadest difference for interfaith couples is the fact that one partner has lived their life as a member of a minority group, and the other partner--in most cases in the United States--has lived as a member of the majority Christian world. The Jewish partner has lived in a community that has had to develop its own institutions and group structure. It is a minority experience with its own distinct cultural life. That presents the non-Jewish partner with a brand-new environment that they have never experienced before, and that is sometimes hard to relate to," said Tivol.
"We have extremely different communication styles that are typical of our backgrounds," said Barbara O'Connor, a Jewish woman from Overland Park, about her interfaith marriage to an Irish Catholic man. O'Connor, who remains extremely close with her family, said she and her siblings rely on each other during good times and bad. "I tend to be overly communicative, and Ted will go to great lengths to not have to discuss something. In his mind, not discussing something will keep the peace."
Bridging the Communication Gap
In working with interfaith couples, Crohn and Tivol agree on similar strategies in coping with communication differences:
Acknowledge your differences.
In other words, don't assume you understand your partner, said Crohn.
O'Connor agrees. "To overcome our different communication styles, we have both worked on meeting each other halfway. It doesn't always work in the heat of the moment, but it has made it much easier to discuss more challenging issues," she said. "For instance, we each handled a close friend's illness in completely different ways… I talk about it and Ted doesn't. So I work on giving him more space during these times, and he works on giving me the comfort I need by talking about it."
Make a safe place to communicate.
Crohn works with couples to have them assign levels of intensity to their feelings and reactions in certain stressful situations. Using a scale from 1 to 5, each partner assigns a numerical value to how he or she feels in a situation. If one partner tends to feel threatened by heated discussion, he may assign it a 4 to show his discomfort with the issue itself, while his wife--who grew up in a household where heated debate was a way of life--assigns it a 1. Once a number is assigned, the couple sets aside time to discuss why they rated the situation this way. Using the previous example, the husband who rated an argument as a 4 might look back to discover the origins of his high disc
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