Men and women communicate for different reasons.
Most stereotypes are incomplete pictures of reality, but many are rooted in
some measure of truth. Often, men communicate to solve a problem. Women
communicate to share. Men generally know
how to state the facts as they see them, but women know how to share their
feelings. So the next time your wife shares a difficult issue with you, she may
not necessarily want you to fix it for her. She may just want you to listen and
try and understand and empathize.
This past Sunday night I did exactly that. I let my wife
share with me some difficult things she was going through. I listened to her
without trying to fix her problem. To help keep the flow of communication open
and positive, I asked her to clarify what she meant. I summarized and
paraphrased what I thought she meant and asked if my interpretation was
correct.
I did affirm her and validated her feelings even though I didn’t quite
understand why she felt the way she did. I resisted the temptation of jumping
into the first available pause for breath, but waited patiently for her to
finish saying what she was saying. In short, I talked with her and not just to
her.
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