Give the Gift of Listening for Christmas!

As we gather gifts for those we love, I think of Wendy, a lonely married client who wanted nothing more for the holidays than to be understood by her husband of 16 years. 
Nobody is lonelier than a married person who feels emotionally isolated from his or her spouse. It is torturous to live year after year without a sense of emotional connection with your life partner.  In the 10 years, I have worked with Wendy; her body has expanded in size: with the birth of each of her three children she gained extra weight to cushion her sense of emotional isolation from her husband. 
Her sharp intellect provides her a command of her surroundings. A quick conversation with Wendy confirms that you are you are in the presence of a good-hearted, super smart, well-intended, mom. 
Bart works hard to support his end of the finances.  Constantly with others, he loves the solitude of early morning fishing. And he loves a big family dinner followed by TV after a long day running his laundromat. He loves Wendy and his children but, unlike Wendy, he dislikes cuddling “for no real reason,” and disagrees with her support of women in politics.
“We need them home with our kids,” is his position.  Resentful of Wendy’s penchant for a monthly meeting with her close female friends, Bart would prefer she “come straight home to have dinner together like most families.”
Wendy has told Bart that his inability to listen to her carefully considered life goals and his unwillingness to be empathic keeps her on the brink of leaving him. But divorce would hurt the children, and she will not endanger them.
So getting him to listen to her is her central life goal. In couples’ therapy, she tells him, “I can’t relax and trust you to care how I feel or who I am inside unless you respect how I feel.” Desperate to improve things, she drags Bart to couples’ sessions, where he plunks himself on the couch and remains nearly motionless for an hour.
“Bart, you just gotta listen up,” she said.  “All I want from you for Christmas this year is to learn to listen to how I feel. I am eating myself into poor health from loneliness!”
“Okay! I’ll do it!”   King of the Monosyllable, Bart committed to learning to couple. 
“Ok,” he boomed one day in my office, “Lemme see the paper on how to listen.” And he meant it. 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. I continued, “I want to teach you how to listen to each other with your heart and soul. It is one of our greatest gifts as people to listen to one another. “
Bart is learning to listen as his gift to his wife.  He and Wendy are learning to love one another skillfully.  Each has committed to re-learning how to discuss emotions and how to listen to a partner. 
How about you? 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 simply understood – not evaluated, not judged, simply understood from their own point of view.
As Bart can now state, it only seems easy to park one’s pride and try to listen to the heart of another person. And, as he would also say, it is very worthwhile.
To consider: How would you and your marriage benefit from a quick review of the skills in talking about emotions and listening?  Might it improve your life in 2017?
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.
Find Dr. Judith Coche, where she teaches couples to listen and to love more skillfully. Reach her through www.cochecenter.com.