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“Where’s the Greek yogurt?”
“You didn’t tell me to grab Greek yogurt.”
“Yes I did, I texted it to you!”
“No, you did not… here’s the last text I got from you.”
“Ah da**it, I forgot to hit send. I apologize.”
Lack of communication.
It affects us all—from unsent text messages, to missed phone calls, to passive aggressive comments, to thinking our partners are mind readers.
I’ve known my wife for over five years and we’ve been married for almost three, I can confidently say that we know each other better than anyone else in either of our lives.
We openly discuss things that other couples usually don’t, we’ve shared intimate secrets with each other and we aim to be honest with each other without putting one another down.
But, as open as we are, we still hit a snag every once in a while that sometimes leads to a fight.
The most glaring example of this is a bad habit that I used to have that I take full responsibility for… I just wish I had realized it sooner.
I have always been an optimistic, happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Yeah, I’ve had many bad days and I’ve been stressed out, especially when I would have a bad game where I would strike out three times. But I was always pretty good about suppressing those emotions, putting on a smiling face and going about my day.
I always thought this was a healthy way of handling my problems:
Feeling jealous? Smile.
Feeling fearful? Smile.
Feeling insecure? Smile.
Feeling angry? Punch something… then smile.
Although this method of handling things didn’t always have great results for me, I was always adamant that others should adopt this same way of being.
It wasn’t until about a year ago, when I began making some positive changes in my life, that I began dealing with these emotions in a much more healthy way, and in the process realizing that suppressing them and pretending they weren’t there was doing much more harm than it did good.
Unfortunately, I didn’t begin figuring this out until my wife and I had been together for while.
So how did I use to handle these types of situations with my wife?
Here’s a typical example:
(My wife walks in from work)
Me: Hey baby.
Her: Hey.
Me: How was your day?
Her: It was okay.
Me: (Assuming that it was NOT okay) Just okay? What happened?
Her: You know, just typical work stuff I have to deal with.
Me: Let’s talk about it… (I had this bad habit of wanting to talk about EVERYTHING and not taking the hint that sometimes she just wanted to get home and unwind for a bit)
Showing some reluctance, she begins to mention all the things that went wrong that day and why she’s stressed out.
I begin to listen intently and at some point, I stop listening and wait for her to finish so I can interject with my usual optimistic spiel.
Me: It’s not that big of a deal… look at the bright side… you’re losing sight of all the good in your life… is this really worth getting upset over? Just let it go!
Her: You just don’t understand, you’re not in my shoes everyday, I wish you could just live my life for one day so you can see what I’m talking about.
Me: (Getting upset and frustrated by this point) I don’t have to live your life! Just let it go, change your mindset, be happy! I feel like a broken record!
We would continue this way until we were tired of yelling and we’d just shut up and not talk to each other for the rest of the night.
These kinds of arguments happened more than once, and we’d usually go to bed angry at each other.
Just typing this out and looking back at how I used to handle these situations I feel like such a d*ck.
What was my eventual “aha!” moment? (Actually, it was more of an “oh d**n, I was not handling this well” moment)
When I came across a quote while working on a speech for my Toastmasters group about, surprise surprise, effective communication. The quote was from none other than the great Tony Robbins, and it read:
“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”
Bam! Like a 95mph fastball to the helmet.
I instantly realized that I wasn’t genuinely listening to my wife, I was just waiting to respond the way I always did.
I wasn’t listening with empathy to truly understand where she was coming from, I was just waiting for my turn to speak.
I wasn’t taking her perspective into consideration, I was trying to impose my perspective and the way I handle things on her, like a charismatic bully.
The only thing is, my way of handling things—just putting on a smiling face all the time—was never entirely that beneficial for me either.
Who was I to tell her how to see things, handle things and feel about things? Especially when I couldn’t really do that for myself.
In TV and movies, they tell us that we need to seek others who complete us. A perfect example that many of us might know is that scene from Jerry Maguire where he tells Renee Zellweger’s character “you complete me.”
While I’ll admit that was a touching scene at the time, it’s bullsh*t.
We don’t need others to complete us, we’re already worthy enough as we are.
We don’t need others to make us whole, we have to learn to make ourselves whole.
What we need are others who will look upon us with understanding, empathy and forgiveness.
We need others that will see the humanity within us, support us and help us become the best versions of ourselves that we can become. Not by telling us that we need to think, speak or act a certain way, but by showing us that it’s okay to be ourselves and encouraging and inspiring us to bring every part of us—the good, the bad and the ugly—out on the table.
There are two important things that I’ve learned from this:
- My way of handling things before, with myself and with others, was not very healthy or beneficial, and
- Even if I had figured out the best way to handle every situation that was ever thrown at me in my life, it doesn’t give me the right to try to impose my way of doing things on anyone else, because what works for me might not work for others. Effective communication begins with listening to understand, not by imposing “my way” on others.
I wish I would have come across this quote and had this “aha!” moment a lot sooner, but I’m glad I finally did.
And I’m even more glad that my wife has had the patience to stick with me on this journey of discovery.
Are you listening to understand, or just waiting to speak?
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Previously published on Medium.
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Photo by Alex Bocharov on Unsplash