I can see her lips moving.
She’s obviously talking to me because she’s looking right at me. She must be telling me…
something.
“Are you even listening?” my wife asks.
“Oh, yes,” I reply.
I was not listening.
I was thinking about changing the ceiling fan in the bathroom, but I do remember her saying “blue” at one point because that got me thinking about our upcoming beach vacation.
“You said, ‘There was a blue one,’” I continued, matter-of-factly.
My wife sat back in her chair with a well, you’ve won this round motion. I nailed it. She was talking about something blue. Two points for the win! You thought you could trap me but-
“Okay. What was blue?” she asked.
Sonofabitch. Busted.
“The…sky?”
As you can well imagine, this was the wrong answer. I know this because she immediately called me an asshole and threatened to stop talking to me for the rest of her life. Please note, this is the third time today she’s made that threat and it’s been barely 20 minutes since we’ve finished coffee.
She was talking about a new piece of dental hygiene equipment that they got at work and how it was the same color that she wants to paint the bathroom. The very SAME BATHROOM WHERE I WANT TO CHANGE THE CEILING FAN okay I see where my train went off the tracks during her story.
I feel bad for my wife. I do.
Pretty much every conversation she tries to have with me, or I try to have with her, starts with three seconds of actual interest, and then segues into me going into a little Danny-Torrence-from-The-Shining trance where I just, well, disappear for a while. Where have I gone? Could be anywhere but usually, there is some trigger word that sends me off into thinking about something else.
My mind goes 90 MPH.
It’s not just my wife. It’s my son, daughter, friends, coworkers, anyone who speaks to me. Any word in any sentence can trigger my mental spiral into contemplating some household project, or thing I needed to do but forgot to, or cheese.
Cheese is always in my thoughts.
My son will tell me about a new band he saw live, or my daughter will tell me about a new show she’s watching, and my response during the next pause in the conversation is, “Hey, did you get that oil change?”
Something else. I’m always thinking of something else.
It’s not that I don’t WANT to listen to every word that people say, it’s just that for some reason, I can’t. I did a little digging into why this may be and found this article by PsychCentral:
It’s called Reasons You Don’t Listen and includes several bullet points that kind of didn’t hit home but this one did:
“YOU’RE DISTRACTED: While someone is talking, you might be occupied thinking about what you’re going to cook for dinner or what time the pharmacy or dry cleaner closes.”
Yep. I’m distracted. Also, I don’t have any dry cleaning to do. I work from home and unless I want to dry clean my bathrobe, I do not need that type of service.
Their recommendations include becoming an Active Listener. Personally, being an active anything sounds exhausting. I would rather be inactive. It just seems so much easier, but if it will get my wife to stop yelling at me after she tells me about a new suction machine at work, then so be it.
There are some steps in there to take, like avoiding multitasking while someone is talking. This means not scrolling your phone or writing a Tweet or maybe typing a Medium article on how to be a better listener while your son is telling you about his day, that you asked him about in the first place. Move the other things away.
Bam. I can do that.
Another tip: Be empathetic.
Crap.
Unfortunately, I passed on the genetic trait of apathy to my daughter. Neither of us cares about what other people are doing unless it directly involves us in some way. This seems harsh, and probably narcissistic, but caring about what other people think or what affects others has been a big climb for me.
I don’t think I was always this way. In fact, I can almost pinpoint the precise instant I stopped feeling empathy to a moment of adolescent trauma (different article, sorry). My daughter did not have this a-ha apathy-inducing moment, so I fear I may have passed this along through my parenting methods. Someone probably tried telling me this once but, of course, I was thinking about paint.
Another point the article makes is TRY to listen. Physically turn to the other person and focus on the words the person is saying. Additionally, you should not overdo body movements, which I think means when someone tells you, “I was let go at work today,” you don’t start breakdancing.
Damn. This may take some work.
I want to be a better listener, especially for my wife, mainly because she scares me when she’s mad. But she has things to tell me that are important to her, and I owe her as much to want to hear them. I certainly don’t want every conversation she has with me to leave her feeling blue.
Blue.
That reminds me. I need to book that beach vacation.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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