When married couples begin to work on there communication skills, the fist skill will always be listening. It is very easy to become distracted while your partner is talking; most of us do it even though we hung on each other’s every word while we were dating. Once we’re married, listening tends to take a back seat to the daily runaround we do in order to keep the household up.
When you both want to say something and know that the other is really listening, try talking to them when they can’t be easily distracted by outside stuff. If you are driving somewhere, you’re probably distracted. If you have children or other people to entertain, you are probably distracted. Take the time to get each other alone, even if it’s for a few minutes.
Here’s a tip for married couples, sometimes people don’t want answers, and they just need to emote. If you are venting, tell each other. It’s so important to be able to just get the day off your chest sometimes, and most married couples mistake venting as a sign that they are expected to fix some problem. This is almost never the case. A good listener listens, looks the person speaking in the eye, nods understanding, and asks if their advice is needed, or if they are being asked to simply listen.
Comedians tell jokes about that silent treatment, or the mind reading trick. And the reason we laugh is that we all know it’s true. How many times have we “punished” our spouse by giving them the silent treatment or behaving like they should know already what we want or need. Say what you mean! It’s hard enough to learn how to actively listen to each other and ask questions to get the other person to continue to open up without playing games. Trying to get your spouse to ask the right question in the right way before you tell them what you need is controlling, childish, and disrespectful.
Another trick to listening is to actively listen. Asking leading questions is tricky to learn at first, but you’ll share more information with each other-meaningful information-if you can learn to draw out the conversation. It’s not rocket science. Think about how you used to ask questions of each other when you were first dating in order to get to know each other, it will come back to you. You both used to ask all kinds of questions in order to figure out what the other was like, and the result was that you liked each other enough to get married! Never forget that.
Lastly, maybe your spouse is listening better than you give them credit for. Most people- woman especially-need validation that they’ve been heard, so practice saying something, anything, to let your partner know that you’ve heard them. Repeating what they’ve said back to them sounds condescending at first, but if you do this only a few times, your mate will eventually realize that you really are listening.