Making Life Work – Listen Up! A No Fail Recipe To Increase Understanding

Nobody else looks like Kristy. In the 10 years I have worked with Kristy, 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 law, Kristy has amassed a client base of business accounts that trust her judgment and her caring. As my client, I want for Kristy the best her complex life can provide.
What Kristy has deeply longed for is a partner. Not just any partner, Kristy 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 Fred. Fred towers over most of us, and Kristy loves to cuddle into his super-sized shoulder. Both funny and smart, Fred understands Kristy’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 Kristy find it terrific to pile the eight kids into one house and love them all.
But, to hear Kristy tell it, Fred rarely talks to her about how he feels or listens to her reality. He problem solves and pronounces what he and Kristy should do. When Kristy counters his stubbornness, he bellows, then withdraws into a black cloud. Kristy reports “Fred’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 Fred to a couples session, where he plunked himself on the couch and remained nearly motionless for an hour. “Fred, you just gotta listen up,” she said. “ Otherwise you will have to leave my house.” Fred decided to try to meet Kristy’s reasonable needs.
King of the Monosyllable, with one divorce behind him, Fred 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.”
Kristy had her comeback ready. “Fred, 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. Fred 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 Fred began to listen up.
Fred and Kristy 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 thing 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 Fred 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…
(Coche of Stone Harbor educates the public in mental health issues. She can be reached at tcctcs@earthlink.net or 215-735- 1908.)