Can Karen Get Frank to Listen?

Nobody else looks like Karen. In the ten years I have worked with Karen, her body has expanded with the birth of each of her three kids. Her sharp intellect provides her a command of her surroundings. A quick conversation confirms that you are in the midst of a good-hearted, super-smart giant, who understands and deeply cares. 
Trained in accounting, Karen has amassed a client base of business accounts that trust her judgment and her caring. As my client, I want for Karen the best her complex life can provide.
What Karen has deeply longed for is a partner. Not just any partner, Karen needs a man to cuddle with, a man smart enough to understand her complexity, and loving enough to help raise her kids. This tall order has recently been filled by Frank.
Frank towers over most of us, and Karen loves to cuddle into his super-sized shoulder. Both funny and smart, Frank understands Karen’s complexity. She delights and frustrates him, but he says he loves her, just like he loves the five kids that he shares with his ex-wife. He and Karen find it terrific to pile the eight kids into one house and love them all.
But, to hear Karen tell it, Frank rarely talks to her about how he feels or listens to her reality. He problem solves and pronounces what he and Karen should do. When Karen counters his stubbornness, he bellows, and then withdraws into a black cloud. Karen reports that “Frank’s shortcomings – his inability to listen and his unwillingness to be empathic – keep me on the brink of leaving him. I can’t relax and trust him.”
Desperate to improve things, she dragged Frank to a couple’s session, where he plunked himself on the couch and remained nearly motionless for an hour. “Frank, you just gotta listen up,” she said.  “Otherwise you will have to leave my house.” Frank decided to try to meet Karen’s reasonable needs.
King of the monosyllable, with one divorce behind him, Frank slowly committed to learning to couple.  “Ok,” he boomed one day in my office, “Lemme see the paper on how to listen. She talks so much it should be easy enough to understand her.”
Karen had her comeback ready. “Frank, you think it is beneath you to listen to me, but I am really smart. You bully me and the kids and, as much as we love you, the way you treat us is despicable. It has to change.” Hazel eyes glared at his flat, expressionless face.
Taking advantage of his request, I pulled out a sheet with tips on how to speak from the heart and listen deeply to another. I handed a copy to each of them. Frank smirked and glared at me. I continued, “I want to teach you how to listen to each other with your heart and soul. Don’t laugh. It is one of our greatest gifts as people to listen to one another. And I am relieved to report that Frank began to listen up.”
Frank and Karen are learning to love one another skillfully. Each has committed to re-learning how to discuss emotions and how to listen to a partner. As you consider your life, is there a way you could listen up?
Dr. Carl Rogers developed three interpersonal conditions that encourage deep human relationships. Three conditions to facilitate meaning and learning between people:
1.     Realness and genuineness. When we are authentic and interact without a façade, relationships naturally move to deeper levels of interpersonal meaning. We can come into a direct and personal encounter with each other, on a person-to-person basis.
2.     Prizing, acceptance, trust. When we prize one another, we appreciate the feelings, intellect, humor, opinions and person of those we love. We accept and respect each other as individuals, and trust that those we love are fundamentally trustworthy.
3.     Empathic understanding. When we try to understand someone we love from their own perspective, great things happen: we can create relationships with a level of spontaneity and deep meaning. Everyone feels deeply appreciated when not evaluated, not judged, but simply understood from their own point of view.
As Frank can now tell you, it only seems easy to park one’s pride and try to listen to the heart of another person. And, as he would also tell you, it is very worthwhile.
To consider: How would you and your family benefit from a quick review of the skills in talking about emotions and listening? Would they read this article and try to practice at home?
To read: Carl Rogers, Ph.D. “The Facilitation of Significant Learning.” In Contemporary Theories of Instruction. Ed. L. Siegel. San Francisco: Chandler, 1967.  304-311…
Dr. Judith Coche works with couples like Karen and Frank in person and by phone and video as part of her work at The Coche Center, LLC, in Stone Harbor and at Rittenhouse Square. Reach her through www.cochecenter.com.