Alcohol has a particularly important presence in our modern American culture. We use it to entertain, connect with others, make family gatherings lighter, engage in business with it and rally around our favorite sports teams while drinking it. Multi-billion-dollar industries have been created around beer, wine and spirits, and popular culture has produced a number of timeless celebrity icons who indulge in: Hemingway, the Rat Pack, Keith Richards, Hank Williams…hell, even Ulysses S. Grant.

Our culture is totally schizophrenic around alcohol: it promotes it to no end, and yet ignores the repercussions of consuming it. Domestic violence, broken marriages, infidelity, depression, and divorce, among other things, result in the overindulgence of booze. Socially, it’s really hard to break away from the attractiveness to it. The parties we go to, the people we hang out with and the advertisements we encounter all promote it, and yet it still continues to get us into trouble.

Men tend to avoid their feelings, and therefore, the problems that those hidden feelings create. Alcohol has always been the socially acceptable avoidance strategy for many men. To find and connect together, alcohol as a social lubricant that allows men to do what comes more naturally to women: seek social support. Women have known this, but to prevent isolation and loneliness, men usually only rally around each other when it involves sports or some like-minded activity. Feelings are rarely discussed, but alcohol allows for “loose lips” contact. Men are much more free and open while drinking to connect to other men emotionally, because it’s not something that men do while sober. Culture doesn’t allow for it, so most men don’t do it. Alcohol provides the social bonding outlet, as well as an opportunity to “speak one’s mind”.

Things to think about:

• Do you find your self drinking alcohol to avoid people, situations, or feelings?
• Have you fought with your wife or girlfriend around alcohol? Do you fight more with her when you both been drinking? Is your relationship taking a hit because of your drinking?
• Are there competing voices in your head, one of which says to slow down or quit drinking?
• Have you experienced the blues, feel down, isolated and alone?
• Do you have a family history of alcohol abuse or dependence? Did you have a mother or father that drank heavily?
• Are you lying to cover up your drinking, or minimizing the number of drinks that you consume?

One of the biggest problems couples face is not talking too little, but talking too much. Fighting and conflict result in talking more than need be, and couples fall into this trap because they say too much to each other. They bark, groan and sulk about little things - from laundry to bill paying to cooking - and this adds to the cumulative effect of relationship conflict.

We say too much. We say things we don’t mean. We put our foot in our mouth, and then regret that we said anything at all. We lose ourselves in the angry reactivity of the moment, and say things we wouldn’t normally have said in a cooler state.

Appreciating this maxim - less is more - and applying it to relationship communication is essential. Chances of conflict minimization increase when the “less is more” concept is applied. Talking less equals more of an opportunity to listen, or at least not say as much. Watching our reactive selves through detached (not aloof) mindfulness is better that losing ourselves in our reactive minds, which want to keep the fight going and say things that will will the power struggle. This just doesn’t work.

Couples who can learn to say less, while not avoiding or isolating from each other, and learn to make their fights and conflicts more efficient, can find newfound success and greater marriage happiness. Learning to speak directly from our feelings and needs, instead of attacking, criticizing, and playing the power games, we can learn to be more efficient in our words and getting our point across much more efficiently to our partner. Learning to develop these qualities is a must for couples seeking to stave off more conflict; couples counseling or marriage counseling provides a third-party and a neutral environment to develop those skills to better a marriage or relationship.