Chateau D' Ampa, Basement

37, Nelson Manickkam Road
Chennai - 600 029

I’m a poor listener.  My wife tells me this all the time.  My colleagues tell me sometimes.  My employees wouldn’t dare tell me (but I suspect they would if they could).  Try as I do to listen, I find it a lot easier to (try) to fix problems than listen to them.  Maybe it’s my nature.  Frankly, I think it has a lot to do with simply being male.

If you’ve attended our Marriage Masala workshops in the past, you would have heard me suggest that one of the greatest needs a woman has of her husband is to be understood.  In fact, putting it in plain language, we suggest that a woman needs her husband to listen to her as badly as a man needs sexual fulfillment (can’t put it much plainer than that, can I?!?).

Listening for a woman is not hearing the words, but hearing the heart beyond the words.  When men learn their wives need them to listen, they immediately seek to demonstrate their ‘listening ability’ by quoting her words verbatim.  This is what she’s looking for after all, isn’t it?  Wrong!  Our wives are looking for us to hear what they’re feeling along with the words they’re saying.  I’ve kind of figured this out……I think.

But the most mysterious challenge for me occurs when my wife’s “words” detail problems she’s facing.  To me, it sounds like she’s asking me for my opinion.  After all, why else would she be sharing this with me?  I’m an engineer, have managed to run my own business for a few years, and since men usually only talk with a purpose in mind, I think, “She must be telling me this because there’s a purpose behind it…..she needs my advice”.  I seek to demonstrate my great love for her with sharing (read “interrupting”) with my various plans A, B, and C.  Somewhere in the middle, I’m told I don’t listen.  What am I getting wrong?

Recently a book I was reading suggested that women’s thought processes work something like multiple windows open simultaneously on a computer.  Whereas guys tend to work on one thing at a time, a woman is working on many files at once.  This explains why a women’s conversations can quickly move from one subject to another seemingly-unconnected-subject without missing a beat.  They are jumping from one window to another because all of the windows are being multi-tasked simultaneously.

The problem gets worse.  Ever see those annoying pop-ups on various websites?  Nowadays, we install software to prevent them from reeking havoc on our surfing experience.  In addition to the challenge of any number of unminimised windows, most women simultaneously have sudden “pop-ups” that seem to come from nowhere - emotionally laden concerns that seem to rise to the surface at the most inopportune times.

So where does my listening problem come in?  Well, the reality is that all of this comes to play together.  As on a computer, if there are too many windows open at the same time, it stresses the system.  The only way to solve the problem is to venture round the screen closing windows and, as we all know, this can only be done one by one (that is unless you pull the power cable!).  When my wife wants to ‘talk’ what she’s really saying is, “I have a lot of windows open that are stressful to me.  I need you to show that you love me by listening to me as I close my windows.” 

Being the typical guy, I immediately think that it would be much more efficient for her to go somewhere and close all of those windows on her own and then we can “talk” about something less stressful when she’s done.  But what so many of us guys misunderstand is that the primary way a woman relieves stress is to talk it out…..and before you get any ideas….yes, to a real person!  Talking is a woman’s way of closing the pop-ups.  While the windows can be quite varied in content and can only be closed one screen at a time, little by little as each window is closed, the clutter in her mind is resolved.  When I interrupt by offering my solutions to the first thing mentioned in the conversation, it only stresses my wife out further….she’s still looking at a screen packed full of stressful windows!

So what does a woman mean when she’s telling you to listen.  She’s really saying is….I have all of these pop-ups that I need to close.  I’m hoping that you love me enough to listen to me and care as I talk through them because talking is how I de-stress.  I’m not asking for you opinion necessarily, but I’ll ask for it if I need it.  What I really want is for you to care (listen) enough to give me a chance to de-clutter.

So what does me as an ISO-certified poor listener do?  Well, if I love my wife, I guess I’m going to have to do a better job of learning to listen her way.  That type of listening requires that I stay engaged even when the topic seems to jump from one thing to another without any apparent resolution until she’s done clearing the desktop.  It requires that I hold my tongue when I want to butt-in with unsolicited advice.  And it requires that I allow her to talk her way out of her clutter.