If You Want Less Drama In Your Marriage, It's Time To Memorize These 3 Essential Listening Tricks
How to be a compassionate listener.
Dean Drobot | Canva Listening is ridiculously important, and not just for relationships. Research from the University of California at Los Angeles reveals that active listening can significantly impact the brain's neural pathways, leading to better communication, improved relationships, and increased productivity.
So how do we switch from our automated responses and provide a safety net for the other person to land in and be truly heard and understood?
Mastering the art of listening is a major component of keeping your communication thriving and fluid. It takes a bit of practice and you’ll get the hang of it quickly, especially once you see how much all your communication will be improved.
If you want less drama in your marriage, it's time to memorize these 3 essential listening tricks:
1. Subjective listening is often the real culprit in communication breakdown
Do you ever hear yourself responding as in the above examples? Instead of being focused on what the other person is saying, are you wondering how to help them or thinking that sharing your personal experience will put things in perspective in a "misery loves company" style?
Jopwell / Pexels
Maybe you're formulating your perfect unsolicited advice to hand out and make everything right. Surely, and often with your best yet awkward intentions in mind, you direct the conversation, because this is what you think they want and need to hear.
Wrong. You'll know when they become silent or tell you that you just don't understand. If so, forgive yourself and make a vow to change your listening habits NOW.
2. Objective listening is a step in the right direction
Focused on the person who is speaking, your thoughts don’t relate to yourself, and while this level will dramatically improve communication, it still doesn’t get to the heart of the matter and validate with words what the other person is feeling deep down. It sounds like this:
“It’s hard for you to see their relationship fall apart.”
Having empathy
3. Intuitive listening is when you pay attention not only to what is being said but to the tone of voice and tune into what’s not being said
It’s listening between the lines without judging, assuming, or interpreting and connecting with the speaker.
If you do feel a need to respond, you can acknowledge what happened and validate their feelings as being normal, as my friend did for me. However, quite often, just letting the person get their feelings out and bounce their words off you is enough.
In couples, different ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and our inner subconscious reactions act as a filter to what our partner is saying. We often have selective hearing when we forget to focus our listening.
Compassion means placing yourself in their experience, seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and feeling through their heart. It allows you to connect with your partner without judgment, without giving your opinion or trying to fix them.
According to research from Harvard University, having compassion can be healthy for you, as kindness can reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including counteracting high blood pressure.
Next time listen with your heart and create that haven for vulnerability and emotions to be released. You don’t have to say anything at all.
Thank the other person for trusting you enough to share their feelings and reassure them that you are here to receive their emotions safely.
Then be quiet. And wait. Don't be tempted to fill the silence. You'll know when it's your time to speak up.
So often, just hearing our pain spoken with our own words in our voice is enough to shift our energy in a really big way.
When your heart begins to swell warmly with gratitude from others for all that you have not said, and people come to you to share their stories, you'll know that you've mastered the three types of listening and are ready to share your generous gift of silence with others.
Deb Dutilh is a Relationship and Compatibility Coach and has over 25 years of international experience in teaching and personal development. She writes to help women learn how to stop people pleasing, and how to communicate their needs and get them met.