Before or after the restraining order?

It depends. He seems more chatty in the morning when I'm in a rush to get out the door. I'm more chatty at night when he would rather sleep. We ran into communication problems last year which really hurt us, but we've worked this out and we're working on listening to each other better. For a long time, our best talks were on Sundays. We'd go to a local track and walk, and talk the whole time. We only stopped because it got cold.

Interpretive dance, every new moon. Doesn't everybody?

We use a combination of smoke signals, coded telegrams and laser light shows.

(dude, I'm married to her. we live in the same apartment. we talk. with our mouths.

Mostly it comes down to "Woman, get me another beer!"

Huh. Weird, unintended jonmc synchronicity there.

Damnit jon, the smoke signals and semaphores were MY IDEA!

In my last few relationships, it seemed that the less communication there was, and the less contact I had with my s.o., the happier she was.

usually long-ish phone calls most nights, plus instant messenger during the day if we both happen to be on. she's five and a half hours away, so not much face to face contact except on breaks.

Telephone, when not in person. E-mail, occasional instant messaging.

Actually, the reason I finally got a cell phone is because, where I work, we don't have our own phones, and every time he called, he'd usually get one of my coworkers, and everybody in the room knows him, on account of he used to work in the building, so then, regardless of who answered, he'd have to endure a few minutes of chitchat, some of it dreadfully inane, before the phone would get handed to me. Got old quick.

E-mail, especially when he is sitting on the couch next to me. A specially developed type of pinch, which, when used on various body parts, signifies what he should get me from the kitchen.

Like this, here on the forearm, means he should get me some coffee.

Oh, and no joke, a lot of miming. He usually doesn't understand it, though.

We live together but both work for high-tech companies that work you to death so we don't see each all that much. We email or IM each other during the day, add things to each other's google calendars and occasionally phone.

I talk, he zones off, I yell at him for not paying attention.

So basically, like all couples do, right? Right?

I also pee around the building to mark my territory. or because she's hogging the bathroom, I forget which.

How often do I not communicate with my significant other? We started dating two years ago when he came over to my house AND HE HASN'T LEFT SINCE. HEEEEEELP HEEEEEEEEEEEELP. J/K. He washes dishes, so he's very useful.

TPS: we here at Whirlpool are glad to hear how satisfied you are with your DU1055XTS!

I'd like to go on record as hating the term 'significant other.' I realize that it's convienient and inclusive and all that shit, but the writer in my cringes at the bureaucratic sterility of the term.

Podcasters Keith and the Girl invented a new term to replace "significant other"- serioso. I think it's got a nice ring to it.

Every day. I'm the stynxno to my boyfriend's TPS.

Solidarity, stynxno!

On a daily basis, more or less. We're really into the candidate debates. It's something for us to watch and discuss. I find that we enjoy these conversations and connect in more ways than just discussing politics. If that isn't drippy enough for you. We've always have a lot to talk about.

My husband and I are together a lot. A ton. I work one day a week, he works three days per week. We have four days of solid togetherness. The three days that he works are 9-5 hours. We spend a lot of time together. It's nice, but it can also be detrimental to the relationship if you're lazing together day in and day out. We both need to be and feel productive to be our best in the relationship. Things go downhill when we're lazy and in the same room together.

Husband and I will also talk at night before we go to bed. But lately we stay up until the last possible minute in our den and stagger to bed. We can't keep our eyes open and don't get to talk as much as we used to.

I would say that I still have a lot to learn in the communication department. For the most part, I think I am a fairly good communicator, but sometimes I can be very irrational and snappy. For instance, I can be a complete bitchface when I clean. Today I was cleaning and I was in a snippy mood. I have this very weird, irrational seething anger when I'm cleaning and husband is sitting on the computer, or, "doing nothing" while I'm doing all the work. I have a holier than thou I'm cleaning, what are you doing, you lazy arse?! attitude. When the house is empty and I am cleaning it is no problem: I'm happy as can be. If there are people sitting around, watching television, or adding to the mess, I am pissed-off. Sorry for going off on that I'm-crazy-when-I-clean tangent.

And if you haven't heard enough about our personal lives-- husband and I have had our issues with snipping and almost constant sparring at some periods. We never have been in deep heated, "eff you, I want a divorce!" arguments. We do have days of constant bickering and snipping. It's something we are working on and have made great strides. We have had years of happiness and harmony. But we have also had months of daily snipping. We never hold a grudge. One minute we'll snip, the next minute we are enjoying each other's company and singing a song together at the top or our lungs. I don't know what the snipping is. I am guessing immaturity, or just plain bad habits.

We are pretty good communicators-- for the most part. We have no problem telling one another that they made us upset, hurt our feelings, acting like an asshole, etc. We try to resolve issues the best we can. I think we are both fair and reasonable and respect one another's feelings.

That's fantastic, LoriFLA. Thanks for the in-depth answers. :)

*furiously scribbles notes from LoriFLA's comment*

Mom and pops chat via phone once a day (usually after lunchtime, to determine what the evening plans are) and then leave post-its on the bathroom mirror in the morning.

The most important thing I learned from the social coach program was to use "I" messages...although they are not effective with sociopaths.

We talk every day, but the best conversations are when we get out of the house, or when we set aside time at home for doing something in particular - working on some project together, cooking together, that sort of thing. But I have a lot of competition. My husband is an extrovert, very popular, and has hundreds of friends... and that's not even really an exaggeration. He's a freelancer, and his work is fluid, which means his group of colleagues is basically the entire film industry in Greece, and most of the people he works with become friends. So there's almost literally no day that someone doesn't call wanting to get together.

This is not something that we can often do together, because I'm an introvert (not the shy sort, but the sort who finds social activity somewhat draining, so I like to space it out quite a bit and would rather spend time with friends I know better, etc.). So, when we have a problem, it's usually me complaining that he can't find time for me in his social agenda. It's something that comes up a couple times a year, but it's not really a big deal because somewhat like loriFLA and her husband, we have periods when we have lots of time together. I work from home (when I have work), and his job most often shakes out as four to six weeks of intense work, either in town or away, and then weeks or even months of a much lighter schedule. Since October, for example, he's been working about three days a week, on average, so we're spending lots of time together; at the end of the month he begins a new film, and I'll hardly see him at all for a couple of months.

I think our level is high, though. We're definitely not one of the couples I see out together who seem like they have nothing to say to each other. We're pretty much always chatting and giggling and having a good time together. In fact, after we moved to this apartment, our new upstairs neighbor told me, "Wow, you guys actually talk. I hear you having conversations and laughing all the time. My boyfriend mostly just grunts at me."

We've been together 18 years this month, and he's still my favorite person to talk to. But we can easily spend a day or days with me mostly on the computer or reading, and him mostly working on his electronics and equipment - which is also relaxed and comfy and good, but we are best when we make sure that those periods don't stretch out, when we make sure to set up "dates" for just the two of us, or tackle some project, or go on an adventure walk.

If I had to break down our dynamic, I would say that we are A) extremely compatible and don't like fighting and emotional drama; B) rather opposite in terms of extroversion; C) relaxed and laid back, but also prone to attendant laziness; D) each happy independently pursuing his/her own interests. So, for us, we can get too comfortable doing our own stuff while being companionable, and we do best by making sure to set aside special time together. Sometimes it's at home, sometimes it's going out, sometimes it involves pursuing some end-goal together, but we need our super-together time, and if we don't make sure we get that there's some negative drift.

We had a great time the last two days by going out together to take care of some essential errands while working in lovely long lunches out and extended walkabouts into the program. It was great, and we have another date for tomorrow, so we are doing particularly well at the moment... but part of that has to do with the fact that we talked and acknowledged the fact that we are each going through a form of winter depression and decided to fight it by organizing these outings that are partly productive and partly recreational - so there had to be some important level of communication already, enough for our daily conversations to yield disclosures of our individual feelings and a plan to fight the blahs together.

OK, I'll be serious, too. MuddDude and I were good friends before we started dating, and that definitely still translates. We share many interests (although not all) and the same social circle. So really, we spend pretty much all our non-working time together, and that includes running errands together, etc. Since we've got a cable box, we DO spend a lot of time just sort of lazing around the living room, watching TV or DVDs, but our weekends are spent rather productively.

Like LoriFLA, we talk a lot about current events, inside jokes, what happened today, etc.

Mine is 4 hours away, so we talk on the phone every night. Sometimes those are 5 minute "I'm really tired today" conversations and sometimes they're 3 hour marathon talks where we cover everything under the sun - last night we went on about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and attitudes and the nature of faith and entropy and what holds the universe together and that kind of thing. Also, when his sister is coming to visit. We laugh a lot. Then we are actually together pretty much every weekend - either he drives up here or I drive down there and we talk and talk and talk and talk. It's still a new relationship - 3.5 months and counting! - but so far, it's pretty awesome and we haven't yet run out of things to talk about. Somehow, I don't think we will.

And, oh yeah, the interpretive dance thing. We do that too. ;-)

With my tongue, usually.

Modes of communication include:

Business (who will do what for the household and when, scheduling, etc).

Using the animals as talking proxies (we do this way too much).

He complains and I listen/talk him down.

Baby talk, interpretive dance, and nonsense songs.

All face to face or on the phone.

We are less communicators and more communers.

Daily. About light stuff and heavy stuff. Usually in person, but also by phone. More so by phone lately as I'm checking to make sure she hasn't killed anyone during this latest epic-proportional management clusterfuck where she works.

For the light stuff, we trade telling each other about weird shit we find online, like the Hello Kitty assault rifle, some cool birds, or funny YT links. I ask questions like, do you comb your hair during the day? and cats can poop out hairballs too? Or I'll sing a stupid song out of nowhere, the other morning I went, "I been liftin' weights, but my legs aren't sore, mmm hmm. mm hmm." And we laugh at things that happen in public, like the woman who helps blind people get used to their new canes crossing the streets, but then right behind them is a guy who can see that walks diagonally across the whole intersection. And we rent movies and read a lot. We can spend hours in the same room not talking to each other, just doing our own thing in each other's quiet company.

For the heavy stuff we talk about things like religion and spending easter driving 2 hours to look at birds someone on her birding list told her about. We talk about ideas, like our latest ones are urban gardening and homemade dog biscuits. We bitch about inefficiency and mismanagement. We talk about my crazy sister.

Communication breaks down for us if I'm hungry or in a hurry (she says, "let's go eat before you get mean."), or if something is bugging her but she hasn't mentioned it out loud yet and I have to pry it out of her with a crowbar. We've pretty much adjusted to avoid those situations as much as possible, but sometimes we get tired and forget.

It ain't all purty.

Daily/all the time. I don't work, he works five days a week. There's usually not much communication in the morning as I usually sleep through him getting ready for work and only wake for his goodbye kiss. We email back and forth as often as we want (usually 6-10 emails each day). When we're at home together it's face to face. Unless we're playing WoW, then we'll talk to each other through the game (we're several rooms apart and yelling isn't productive as we're both hard of hearing).

We've never had a yelling match or deeply serious disagreement. The closest we came to that was when I thought it was okay to get the two new(er) kittens. It wasn't and we talked it out and he made clear his stance on the subject.

If something emotional comes up it can be difficult for me to communicate without breaking down in tears. I'll email to him what's going on and he's fine with that. Then, since I'm calmer by then, we can talk face to face about the issue(s). It may sound weird but it works well for us.

And, like chewie, I can get really grumpy when I'm hungry (I'm diabetic) or over-tired or dehydrated. We've learned to put whatever it is aside until I can eat/rest/drink. The same thing can happen when the mister gets a headache. Then we'll wait until he takes some drugs, has a nap and is feeling better.

Thanks everyone, for the informative responses! So in summary: communicate at most once a month, and only via carrier pigeons, right?

But be sure to clip the pigeons' wings now and then to keep them from being too efficient in delivery.