Read The Lost Art of Listening Online
Authors: Michael P. Nichols
expectations. They expect their partners to duplicate the good aspects of
their own families and make up for the bad. To make matters worse, these
expectations are often directed at a partner’s limitations rather than his
or her strengths. (“I know he could be a more sociable person, if he only
tried.”)
Don’t judge your partner by measuring him (or her) against your
strengths; measure him by his strengths. We all want to be appreciated for
who we are.
No one benefits when weaknesses or shortcomings become
the principal focus of attention in a relationship.
To move away from bitterness, concentrate on your partner’s virtues.
See if some of the things you find objectionable are actually the downside
of attributes you appreciate, that may have attracted you in the first place.
If your partner were different in ways you’d like, he or she would also be
different in ways you wouldn’t like. Request changes of certain behavior,
but don’t punish your partner for what you consider misbehavior. Find
your way to acceptance. Tenderness will follow.
With maturity, the human quest moves from the outside in, from con-
quering the world to struggling with ourselves—to be who we are and to
be connected to others. Looking for love that will simultaneously recreate
and undo the past, we latch on to someone and hope for the best.
New couples are ripe with possibility. Over time they become struc-
Listening Between Intimate Partners
233
tured into a system, organized by the demands of living together and per-
haps raising a family. As we’ve seen, the process that transforms two people
into a pair is based on accommodation and boundary making.
At first, patterns of behavior in a couple are free to vary; later they
become entrenched. But even then, change is possible. The key is comple-
mentarity. Those who would remake their own luck must learn to see the
annoying things their partners do as one part of a pattern, a pattern that
connects two people together in cycles of action and reaction. Look to
your part.
* * *
of the joys and sorrows of intimate partnership comes from looking beyond
personalities to the patterns of interaction between them. Problems, it
turns out, are more likely to be resolved, not by trying to change what your
partner does, but by changing how you respond to it. Once you discover
that the more you do X, the more he does Y—or he realizes that the more
he does Y, the more you do X—either one of you can change the pattern
by altering your own input. But when a twosome becomes a threesome,
things get a little more complicated.
As I’ll explain in the next chapter, to understand what goes on in
families, it’s necessary to look beyond the dynamics of interaction between
two people to the overall organization of the whole group. I hope these
considerations will prove useful to you in understanding what goes on
between you and every other member of your family.
Exercises
1.
Identify three negative assumptions about your partner. During the
next week look for evidence contrary to any of those negative assump-
tions. (Hint: Consider motivation, not just behavior.)
2.
Look back over the last few days and try to list three or four times when
your partner did something good for the relationship and you failed to
let him or her know that you appreciated it.
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3.
In your relationship, are you more of a pursuer or a distancer? Why do
you do that? Are you afraid of change? Afraid of conflict? What are you
seeking when you pursue? Are you looking for mutual benefit or for
changes that would mainly benefit you? What do you distance yourself
from? Why does what you’re avoiding make you anxious? What would
you gain by shifting from avoidance to approach once in a while?
If your partner is a distancer, what do you think he or she is avoid-
ing? What can you do to reassure your partner that what he or she is
afraid of isn’t going to happen?
If your partner is a pursuer, what does he or she want from you?
How can you initiate giving more of what he or she wants in a way that
doesn’t make you feel like a victim?
4.
A friend is someone with whom you can relax and be yourself. You can
ask a friend for a favor. A friend is someone you can count on. A friend
is someone you can talk to. For women this kind of talking tends to
occur face to face, whereas for men, talking with friends tends to occur
while they are doing something.
What would happen if you went out of your way to be a friend to
your partner for a few days? Why don’t you try it and see?
5.
Make a list of your differences from your partner that he or she has
trouble accepting. For each one, how would it affect your relationship
if he or she were to become more accepting?
Make a list of your partner’s differences that you have trouble accept-
ing. For each one, how would it affect your relationship if you made an
effort to become more accepting?
LISTENING IN CONTEXT
How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family
11
…
“Nobody around Here
Ever Listens to Me!”
How to Listen and Be Heard
within the Family
As we’ve seen, the quality of understanding between people isn’t fixed in
character but depends on the
process
of their interaction. The advantage
of seeing the process of relationships is flexibility. What can be recognized
as a pattern of mutual influence can be changed. But there’s a catch. Once
children arrive on the scene, the dynamics of couplehood are no longer
sufficient to explain what goes on in the family. Now, it isn’t just how two
people interact that can lead to problems in understanding but how the
overall organization of the family affects every single individual and com-
bination of family members. Patterns of communication in families are
hard to change because they’re embedded in powerful but unseen struc-
tures.
Family Structure
Families, like other groups, have rich possibilities for satisfaction. (Don’t
we marry and bring children into the world with clear and simple hopes for
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happiness?) Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” The same could
be said of family relationships, though, sadly, many congeal into limited
and limiting molds.
Listening is an art that requires openness to each other’s
uniqueness and tolerance of differences.
As they are repeated, family transactions foster expectations that
establish enduring patterns.1 Once these patterns are established, fam-
ily members use only a fraction of the full range of behavior available to
them. The first time the baby cries or the in-laws come to visit, it’s not
certain who will do what. Will the load be shared? Will there be a quarrel?
Will one person get stuck with all the work? Soon patterns are set, roles
assigned, and things take on a sameness and predictability.
When a mother tells her son to put away his toys and he ignores her
until his father yells at him, an interactional pattern is initiated. If it’s
repeated, it creates a structure in which the father becomes the disciplinar-
ian and the mother is the permissive parent.
Family members tend to have reciprocal
and complementary functions; the more one parent
does for the children, the less the other is likely to do.
Where one partner is weak, the other is strong.
The Possibilities in Every Pair
A family system differentiates and carries out its functions through
subsys-
tems.
Every individual is a subsystem, and dyads (such as husband–wife or
mother–child), as well as larger groups, make up other subsystems, deter-
mined by generation, gender, and function.
Individuals, subsystems, and whole families are demarcated by inter-
personal
boundaries
, emotional barriers that regulate the amount of con-
tact with others. Boundaries protect the autonomy of the family and its
1Salvador Minuchin and Michael P. Nichols,
Family Healing
(New York: The Free Press,
1993).
How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family
237
subsystems. A rule forbidding phone calls at dinnertime establishes a
boundary that insulates the family from outside intrusion. When children
are permitted to freely interrupt their parents’ conversations, the boundary
separating the adults from the children is blurred.
Subsystems inadequately shielded by boundaries limit the potential of
these subgroups. If parents always step in to settle their arguments, chil-
dren won’t learn to fight their own battles. Similarly, when in-laws are too
actively involved in a couple’s affairs, the couple will be slow to develop
their own resources.
These days when work and after- school activities consume so much of
our lives, we have limited time for ourselves and less time for our families.
In the few hours we do have with our families, many of us are reluctant to
exclude some members of the family so that others can do things togeth-
er—such as a father taking a daughter to a basketball game or a mother
and son taking in a movie together. This is unfortunate.
Time alone together allows every pair in the family a chance
to talk and freedom to listen.
The most obvious example of a relationship that suffers without time
alone together is the one between wife and husband.
Lewis felt that he’d lost his wife to the children. Once Iris had been his
friend and lover as well as his wife. Deciding to have kids and the pregnancy
and the birth and those first few wonderful, exhausting months of babyhood
brought them closer together. Then, as Lewis saw it, Iris pulled motherhood
over her head like a blanket. They were still friends, sort of, but they were
more parents than anything else. They rarely listened to each other because
they rarely talked. When Lewis decided to move beyond cursing fate and
casting blame, he found that the simple act of spending time alone together
with Iris was the first step in revitalizing their marriage. (In the process he
discovered that two people who aren’t spending time together aren’t just
busy; they’re also dissatisfied with the listening they’re getting.)
Parents need time alone with each of their children. One of the best
ways for parents to listen to their children is to arrange little outings with
each one. Once a week isn’t too much to aim for. Even if a child has a good
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relationship with a parent, conversation and intimacy are easier away from
everyday distractions. The time a parent spends taking a child out to din-
ner or for a hike or on a bus ride into the city may well be the best time in
both of their lives. Every pair has its possibilities.
Now let’s look at how some familiar structural flaws create problems
in listening.
When Boundaries Are Blurred
The two biggest mistakes parents make in listening to their children both
involve blurred boundaries: failing to establish control over their children’s
behavior and interfering too much in their lives.
The most important thing to keep in mind when listening to chil-
dren is the difference between allowing them to
say
what they want and
letting them
do
what they want. When a child says “I don’t want to go to
bed,” he or she is expressing a feeling and making a request. A wise parent
distinguishes between the two and acknowledges the feeling before ruling
on the request.
Of course children don’t want to go to bed! They might miss some-
thing. Staying awake is their way of clutching at life. Parents who blur the
distinction between expression and action get into foolish debates with
their children. They say “I don’t care what you want; you’re going to bed
anyway.” Or they try to convince children that they’re tired, as though
obeying the rules depended on agreeing with them.
Parents who confuse love with leniency often fail to enforce their
rules. Mistaking permissiveness for understanding and democracy for
respect, such parents confuse their children about who’s in charge and end
up too anxious about controlling the children’s behavior to be able to lis-
ten to their feelings. The dichotomy between authority and understanding
is a false one; actually, they go hand in hand.
The most common alternative to effective discipline is nagging. Con-
stant bickering with children wounds their pride and does more to engen-
der insecurity than to establish parental authority. Effective parents take
control early in their children’s lives and use it sparingly.
Children learn from the consequences of their behavior.