The Lost Art of Listening (36 page)

Brendan and Gina were very much in love when they married, also

very young and unaware of how different their backgrounds were. Hers

was a large, close-knit family whose watchword was togetherness. His was

a small, fragmented family in which independence and personal achieve-

ment were the highest accomplishments.

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In Brendan’s opinion, Gina was addicted to attachment. She always

wanted to talk. Even when they were watching TV or reading, she’d inter-

rupt every few minutes to tell him something that popped into her head.

It broke his concentration and made him furious. This he tried to signal

indirectly by sighing or saying “Yes?” with a weary note in his voice. But

Gina didn’t seem to get the message.

Gina took closeness for granted and found Brendan’s “coldness” and

“detachment” selfish and mean. Why did he have to shut her out all the

time?

They each had their own point of view, at best sporadically sympa-

thetic to the other one. It’s a sad and familiar story. Two young people with

too great a disparity in their expectations to fit together easily, and too

little experience to know how to work at it.

It wasn’t really their differences that made the first few years together

so painful; it was their inability to talk about them. Once a week or so,

Gina would get fed up with Brendan’s distance. At these times, Brendan

was appalled by the meanness and exaggeration of her accusations. The

worst was “You don’t give a damn about anybody but yourself!”
How could

she say such things?
He certainly couldn’t listen. Feeling the frustration of

not being heard, Gina would raise her voice, which only made Brendan

shrink further into himself. Finally, Gina would break down in tears and

sob, “Why are you so mean to me?” Brendan had the same question but

only thought it, and never more than twice a day.

Like a lot of ill- matched couples, Brendan and Gina gradually did

learn to live with each other. After a while they had children to cush-

ion their couplehood. Gradually they learned to accommodate to each

other. Gina got used to Brendan’s silences and golfing with his friends.

He learned to spend more time with her and the kids. But what they

never learned very well was how to talk to each other. Brendan didn’t

talk to Gina because he thought she was unreasonable in her expectations

and didn’t respect his right to his own preferences. Gina continued to

express her disappointment with Brendan’s lack of involvement from time

to time, but he never really did learn to listen. He listened well enough

to pacify her—“I’m sorry”; “Yes, dear”—but not enough to understand

how she felt. He wished she were different, he wished he could run away,

and these thoughts kept him from ever really understanding or coming

to terms with the real person he had married. Like a prisoner who thinks

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of nothing but escape, he never really did adjust to the realities of his

relationship.

Pursuers and Distancers

Pursuers want more connection, which makes distancers feel pressured.

The more she pursues, the more he distances; the more he distances, the

more she pursues. It’s a game without end, though it does have interrup-

tions.

When pursuers get fed up with being rebuffed, they withdraw in hurt

and anger. But after a while they start to get lonely, and then they begin

the cycle all over again.

“Why Won’t You Talk to Me?”

How can you convince a distancer that you are open and receptive to

what he or she might be thinking and feeling? How can you convince a

distancer of your openness without creating more pressure?

The person who withdraws doubts that anything good will come out

of discussions. If you live with a distancer, you’ll have to convince him

or her that you’re receptive to what he or she wants. Actually, you don’t

have to do that; you can just keep doing what you do, like most normal

unhappily married people.

She wants to talk more. He wants to fight less.

To meet their own goals, both of them need to do more

of what the other one wants.

If you’re a pursuer, try backing off. Focus less on the other person for

a few days. This planned distance isn’t the same as reactive distance—

getting fed up and giving him the cold shoulder. Snubbing isn’t the same

as ignoring someone; it’s an attempt to punish him with silence, which

of course doesn’t lessen your preoccupation with him. Instead of being

passive- aggressive, increase your emotional investment in other things.

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217

When you stop pursuing, notice what happens.3 You’ll probably find

your anxiety rising. This is important. Consider how much of the pursuing

is an attempt to cope with your own anxiety and lack of other avenues of

satisfaction in your life.

Accept any forward movement on the part of a distancer—even if it’s

to complain. This is important. Pursuers say they want their partners to

share feelings with them, but what they mean is positive feelings. A pursuer

who experiments with shifting the pattern should avoid getting defensive

about whatever the distancer does express. Distancers have feelings, too,

but they keep them locked in tightly sealed compartments. If a distancer

does start expressing feelings, try to listen without getting reactive.

If you’re a distancer, pursuers are hard to live with. They put you on

the defensive. It’s hard to stop running when someone is chasing you. The

first thing to realize is that it isn’t just him or her chasing you; it’s a pattern

of pursuit and withdrawal. Instead of avoiding the pursuer, try initiating

contact on your terms. Call your partner in the middle of the day; invite

him or her to go for a walk. Say what’s on your mind; ask what’s on his or

hers.

Change Is a Three-Step Process

If you shift your part in a pursuer– distancer pattern for a week, you’ll dis-

cover that change is a three-step process: First you change. Second, your

partner responds— usually in ways that are partly rewarding and partly

annoying. Third comes your response to that response—either you change

back, or you persist.

At what point do you usually give up? What could you do to persist

in your effort to make changes in your relationship? Try sticking with a

small change and notice what happens—how
you
feel—when the other

person tries to get you to change back. Remember: it isn’t what others do

but how we react to what they do that tends to defeat us.

If a pursuer makes an effort to stop pursuing her partner, he may not

immediately respond by moving toward her. The resulting distance might

3If you’re a pursuer, you probably expected me to say something about your partner’s behav-

ior. Admit it!

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make her feel cheated. She changed, but he didn’t. At that critical junc-

ture—the third step in the change process—she would either revert to her

old style or persist, making an effort to remain calm, develop other inter-

ests, and give her partner space to discover his need for her.

Alternatively, if an emotional distancer decides to break the pattern

by moving toward his partner, she might not immediately respond the way

he wants her to. She might not, for example, be receptive to his opening up

about things that are bothering him. She might be critical. If her response

upsets him and he reverts to distancing, he might conclude,
I tried, but

she’ll never change
. But if he does change back, it wouldn’t be because of

how his partner responded; it would be because of how he responded to

that response.

Another reason the pursuer– distancer dynamic isn’t so easily resolved

is that pursuers and distancers tend to have constitutionally different oper-

ating styles. Pursuers have an affinity for relationship time; distancers pre-

fer time alone or activity together. (That’s why some people are emotional

distancers but sexual pursuers.) Pursuers tend to express their feelings; dis-

tancers avoid them. Pursuers have permeable boundaries and relate readily

to a wide number of people. Distancers let down their defenses with only

a select few.

Although each of us has a predominant operating style, the dynamics

of complementarity trigger different roles in different relationships. A man

may be a distancer with his mate and a pursuer with his mother. A woman

may be a pursuer with her partner but a distancer from her stepfather.

Distancers are unsure of themselves in relationships; they depend on

privacy for protection. Pursuing only makes them feel hounded.

To approach a distancer, don’t push. Knock to enter.

Give him time to anticipate company.

Distancers handle threatening issues by closing them off. Anxiety

about these issues may not be acknowledged, but it is always present below

the surface. The tension created by such unaddressed anxiety often triggers

conflict in the relationship or emotional problems in one of the partners.

Emotional pursuers handle sensitive issues by talking about them over

and over again in an anxious manner. The issues never become closed off,

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219

and the emotionality surrounding them is never dealt with. For their part-

ners, this repetitiousness is like salt poured on a wound.

Like most complementary patterns— overfunctioning/underfunction-

ing, strict/lenient, fast-paced/slow-paced—the pursuer– distancer dynamic

isn’t static. Very little about relationships is static.

Accommodating Differences

Intimate partnership is a process in which two individuals restructure their

lives into a unit: The Couple. Friends invite The Couple over for dinner,

the IRS taxes The Couple, The Couple accumulates belongings. The two

separate personalities don’t disappear, of course, but their relationship is

now a system, their fates interwoven.

The first priority of intimate partnership is mutual accommodation to

manage the details of everyday living. Each partner tries to organize the

relationship along familiar lines and pressures the other to accommodate.

They must agree on the big things, like where to live and whether and

when to have children. Less obvious, but equally important, they must

coordinate daily rituals, like what to watch on television, what to eat for

supper, when to go to bed, and what to do there. Unfortunately, there is a

thin line between accommodation and capitulation.

Lynn was just nineteen when her mother died. After the worst of

the grief gave way to emptiness, she decided to get out of New York and

move to Montana. When she got off the plane, she was stunned by the

intensity of the sunlight. The last of the snow was melting and the valley

blossomed. Summer came, stretched and yawned, and then it was early

fall. That’s when the loneliness set in, and Lynn started wondering what

she was going to do with her life. Right about then she met Travis. After

all the boys she’d known in New York who couldn’t stop talking about

themselves, Lynn took Travis’s quietness for strength. She thought he was

the real deal. So when he asked her to share his trailer with him, it seemed

like the right thing to do.

A year later their relationship wasn’t a lot better or a lot worse. Maybe

a wedding would do the trick. So Lynn gave Travis an ultimatum: either

they got married or she was moving out. But even walking down the aisle,

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she found herself thinking
This is never going to last
. Afterward she got

drunk, hoping to numb this giant step into the unknown.

Lynn got pregnant on the honeymoon, and two weeks later Travis

joined the Air Force. When Travis was posted to Korea, he went ahead to

get settled, and Lynn moved in with his parents. It was not a happy time.

And so, six weeks later, when she boarded the plane for Inchon, it was

with as much relief as anxiety.

When the jet lag wore off and reality settled in Lynn found herself

alone all day with a baby in a tiny apartment. She’d written Travis to buy

a car with an automatic transmission, because she couldn’t drive a stick

shift; but he hadn’t listened. Not being able to drive sealed her isolation.

When she tried to talk to Travis about it, he said, “You’ll get the hang of

it. Don’t be such a baby.” What could she say?

Unfortunately, Lynn neither insisted that Travis listen to how she was

feeling nor asked how he was feeling. “I nagged,” Lynn said. “I was angry

and bitchy. Back then I wasn’t very sure of what I was feeling, and so the

frustration just built up and came out as attack. Instead of telling him how

I was feeling, I’d say things like ‘We never do anything; you never take me