My wife and I have very different thinking styles. She processes by talking — she needs to say the thing out loud before she knows what she thinks about it, and that process can take a while, and she knows what she means even when the words aren't quite there yet. I process by drawing — I need to see the shape of something before I can engage with it, and I get impatient with conversations that don't seem to be converging on anything.
These modes conflict. She's talked to someone who seems to stop listening halfway through because he's already drawing something. I've drawn things for someone who doesn't find spatial representations natural and who feels like the drawing is already a conclusion she didn't participate in reaching.
We figured this out by accident, during a conversation about money that was going badly. I went to the board — I don't think I was even conscious of it — and started drawing a rough picture of what we were talking about. She walked over to look at it, picked up a marker, and changed one of the numbers. We worked it out in about fifteen minutes. The same conversation had been running for several weeks.
The board doesn't solve the underlying style difference. It provides a medium where both modes can operate. She can talk toward the board — she can say things out loud and see them rendered in front of her by someone else's hand. I can draw and then look at her face to see whether what I've drawn reflects what she meant. The board becomes the thing between us that we're both relating to, rather than two people whose different modes are in conflict.
I'm not suggesting couples therapy through whiteboard. But I do think there's something to the idea that having a shared visible space changes the dynamic of a difficult conversation. You're both looking at the same thing. The thing is not either of you. That helps.