How People Mess Up Their Lives and How to Not Make the Same Mistakes:  Part Five - Not Listening (Episode 72)

Brent and Janis look at another way people mess up their lives by not really listening to their spouses, children and colleagues.  

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapist Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships.

Hello friends, welcome back to Life and Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us today. We've been continuing this series. We started it several times ago, and then we picked it up again last time, and we may go in and out of this. It's how people mess up their lives, and how to not make the same mistakes. So this is kind of a part five, I think, we're on.

And this one is about not listening. That seems to be a challenge for us. That's a big mistake that we make, is simply not listening. Yeah, we tend to not listen to others. We can be so busy in our lives, and so busy in what we're thinking about, that we don't really tune in to the people around us. We may hear them, but we don't hear them. And so we have to work on focusing.

What'd you say? Okay. What? Yeah. One of the saddest things I see, and I know you see that too, is when a couple comes in, and they say they're ending their marriage. And oftentimes, what we hear is, I'm done. You see it in the body language, you can see it in their expression.

One of them just says, I'm done. And it's not because it's a, like, I'm mad at you, so I'm done, or it's not a quick reaction. Usually what it is, is years and years and years, if not decades, of one of them saying something about their needs, or their wants, or their dreams, and their spouse doesn't get it.

They don't pick up on it. And so they stuff it back down again, and go, okay, well, we'll talk about it another time. And then they share it again, and again. And this has happened over, and over, and over again for years. And then they finally go, they're not gonna get it, and I'm done. And oftentimes, that is the point of no return. Yeah. And their spouse, who's hearing this, is usually pretty shocked at that point.

It's like, what? We've had a good life. We have a family. And they try to go back and explain all the reasons.

We're a happy couple. Everybody in church would say, we're one of the happiest couples they know. And so they start thinking, well, is this just something that's happening now?

Is this a midlife thing? They want us to try to talk their spouses out of it. They start calling all kinds of people to try to get them to guilt and shame their partner. Talk some sense into that person. Talk their sense into it. Some sense into them. And again, it's just how we can go so long, and something be said, and we never heard it. Right. Over and over again.

And the spouses aren't narcissistic bullies. Well, not all of them. Some of them are. Not all of them are. In many cases, they're not. Some may be a version of that, but they aren't all. Some of them can be people that come from backgrounds where you just didn't talk about feelings, or you didn't talk about wants.

You just get on with life. Life's tough, so you just get on with it. You don't look for those kinds of luxuries of wants, or you don't know much about emotions. So sometimes they will dismiss that partner as being too idealistic, or expecting too much, being too demanding. Or sometimes they'll think they're overly dramatic, especially as the years go on, and they're like, listen to me.

Here's what I want. You go, wow, they've really gotten dramatic. They're going over the edge at this particular point. And so this person who's tried to express needs and wants has been dismissed as being frivolous, or needy, or expecting too much. Yeah, and the other person just assumed that since they were happy, and it seemed like the other person was fine, then everything's fine. But it all kind of started in not listening, not hearing. And then the partner who's kind of stuffed things for decades, they oftentimes come from backgrounds of not expecting too much.

Just what you need. Look at what you do have, and don't complain about what you don't have. Then there's this saying that is so amazing, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. Now again, if that's about which lollipop you got, okay.

I wanted purple. Maybe that's appropriate. But when it's talking about life issues, it causes people again to kind of stuff, they feel guilty, and then they want to kind of run away. Now, this certainly doesn't just happen in marriage. This can happen in work environments where we find ourselves not listening, not taking the time to pay attention to what somebody else is. We've kind of discounted them in some reason, their opinion on something we don't agree with, and so we've kind of discounted all their opinions. And then all of a sudden we end up surprised that someone decides that they're going to leave, or they drop out of a project, and they go to their supervisor and say they want to be moved to another place.

It's like, what? Because we just simply, again, weren't listening. Yeah. We can get so oblivious, and yet to have healthy relationships in any setting, it means both people are getting needs met. Both people are able to communicate openly and honestly and feel heard. But we just get busy, and we just have excuses, or we have things from our past, and any of us are guilty of this. Maybe all of us, I should say, are guilty of this.

We just don't always listen. With kids, if we're not careful, we can brush over some things that are really important. I remember years ago, one of our girls started a new high school, and the last school that she came from had uniforms, but you had to get them at certain stores. So it had to be the uniform store, or JCPenney, or, I mean, it was very specific. And the idea of that was, we have them get them at these places so everybody has the same thing, and there's no competition, even with uniforms. So it was a good idea. But she switched to a new school, and the new school had the same uniforms, but you could get them from anywhere.

As long as they were a certain color. Certain color, yeah. Certain color, you know, certain color, certain style, skirts, and pants, and tops, or whatever. But you could get them from any store, which I think their intent was good, too. The idea was, gosh, if you can get a good sale at Macy's, go ahead and get them there, and you can do that. But what happened was, some of the people would get clothes at very high-end stores, and the kids all knew it. And so my daughter came home one day, and she said, you know what, Mom, I really want to get this pair of pants.

And it was at a store that we don't usually, we did not usually shop from. And, you know, my first response was, I don't spend that much on my pants, let alone a high school kid, sorry. Hopefully I didn't take quite that route, but that was my immediate response. And I thought, well, that's kind of ridiculous. And then I stopped for a minute, and I really wanted to do a teaching moment. I don't think I did, but I really wanted to do some kind of teaching moment on, we just can't, you know, fall into peer pressure, and things are not that important. Did you want me to do the whole lecture now? Okay, okay.

I don't think I did. I think I just paused. And she said, Mom, you don't understand. Your friends accept you, no matter what you wear or how you look. And I'm meeting people for the first time, and they're judging me on what I wear, what my hair looks like, what clothes I'm wearing. That's what I wear, what shoes I'm wearing. I mean, even I remember one time, I was like, I don't use the right stuff in my hair.

And she goes, it's hard to live like that. And I feel like for the first time, I kind what she was saying. And I felt this little whisper of, you know, sometimes a pair of pants is more than a pair of pants. And what it meant to her, or getting those pants, it helped her feel accepted. It helped her feel part of the crowd. So, of course, we went ahead and got the pants. Now, I probably missed a thousand other things in our kid's life that they were trying to say to me, but I feel like that one time, I actually did hear the need that was there.

And I do think it made a difference. So, even though there was peer pressure and everything that continued going on, she at least knew in that moment, I heard her heart. And I think that's important. Our kids are saying things to us all the time, no matter what their age is. And it's, are we listening for their words, or are we taking time to really listen for the heart that's behind it? Yeah. And so, what are we hearing, and what are we missing?

So, if your spouse has made some random comments or two on something they wanted to do or to change, and you haven't really paid attention, possibly, listen to what they're saying. If they say something like, well, I know we can't do this, or I know you wouldn't like this, or wouldn't want to do this, or it might be silly, pay attention to that. That may be the way they ease into something, because they don't feel like they can be real clear about it. Pay attention to that. Is that a desire of their heart, possibly? Is that something they want you to know, want you to pick up on and catch? Now, obviously, it needs to be approached gently.

So, this is not a, what? Do you really want to do that? Do you really want to do that? Or you want to change that, or that's bothering you, obviously, that's not really listening.

That's not helpful. You want to get that after we just got a new couch? So, instead, maybe, I've noticed you've mentioned a couple times that you wish we could sit together and watch a show, some at night. Would you like to start doing that, figuring out how to do that? And, or you've mentioned a couple times that you'd like to travel more. What are you thinking about there? So that we don't just automatically go, travel more, we've got kids in college, what are you thinking?

We don't automatically make a judgment about that. We just listen and think, okay, what are you thinking about? They're probably thinking about, we've got kids in college, too, and let them talk about that. It might be something that is actually very reasonable that you could plan next year, or something that would actually be a really good idea, but we just dismiss it because we believe we know what they're saying, or we believe they don't understand something, we don't agree with their perspective on a thing. Again, we usually interpret meaning based on what we would have said if we said something. And so, we have to learn the way they say something, and what they might mean by that. And be careful in that approach.

I mean, to not start this by going, hey, you keep saying this over and over and over again. Is that something you're really serious about? Being gentle in our approach, as you said, and just, hey, let's talk about this. I notice you've mentioned this. Is that important to you? Yeah. Now, if they're stuffers, if they're more passive, they might immediately say, oh, it's nothing, that's probably silly.

I encourage you to keep there. There's something that they're trying to communicate that's important to them. So, to take what they say as valid, again, even if we don't agree with it. And if they aren't stuffers, they'll probably respond pretty quickly with, yes, I just really want to do that and long for that. And so, just, again, we're just, we're trying to pay attention in a way that we're trying to understand the meaning of what they're saying and really the heart behind it rather than that initial judgment that we have that causes us to stop listening. Even sometimes people will go, oh, well, I thought they meant it as a joke. Well, if they meant it as a joke, if you ask and they meant it as a joke, they will speak up and go, oh, no, that was a joke.

So, Brent, if I have a hard day and I say, okay, I'm going to quit counseling and I'm going to go run away and have a lavender farm, I just want you to know that is a joke. Okay, just know ahead of time because, you know, lavender attracts snakes, which is not a good thing. And then I tried one time to harvest lavender and I think I made 0.1 penny, 0.1, whatever. I made very little money if I worry about that. What? You don't want to become a lavender farmer? I know it's shocking.

I know that's what everybody else's dream, but it's just something that I just decided I'm not going to do no matter how much great it seems. Okay, back to our topic. If you're a helper or a pleaser on the Enneagram, you know, you may see and hear what they need or what they want. You may be well aware of that. You just have to be careful to listen to see if they want you to meet that need or how they want it met. Because just because they're frustrated by a messy garage and things being all cluttered doesn't mean they want you to come over and clean it out. Or they may.

But you need to ask. You can't just assume that. Sometimes helping too much feels invasive. So, yes, you see their need. But if you jump in without clarifying, it feels like you're taking over. Sometimes I'll have couples and one spouse will say, I just want to do something a little more adventurous than going to a movie and going to dinner on date nights. I want something a little different.

That doesn't necessarily mean they want to go on a helicopter ride, especially not they have a fear of heights or they may not want to go rock climbing just because that's something that is adventurous. It's what's adventurous to them. What's something that they want to do? It's listening for that instead of, aha, they want to do something adventurous. I've got that in mind. I can do that. We have to always ask and we have to clarify.

They're the one that owns the oh, I know what they mean or I know what they want. And, you know, back to our series on parenting adult children, that's something that we have to be careful of as the parents of adult children. It's like, oh, I think they'd really like that. We should do that for them. But do they really want that? It never hurts to ask. It never hurts to clarify.

Listening really is loving. It's saying you're so important to me that I not only want to give you my time and my attention, but what you say is important. I want to be connected to you and I want you to be happy. So I'm listening to all the things that you say and I want to be there for you because you're more valuable than other things in my life, than my work or anything else. Yeah. So how do we put this into practice? Just all kinds of ways, but just a few things to encourage couples to do what we call couch time.

And we're not going to go into the detail of that because we have a whole episode on that, but you could go back and look at that. It's just, it helps practice this because this takes practice. You know, we learned early in our marriage that just because we realized we're not really good listeners, I didn't fix it like, oh, okay, we'll just start listening better. You know, we needed something that would actually practice those You know, we asked them, how are you? And they then respond, you know, how are they physically? How are they relationally? How are they emotionally?

How are they, um, um, did I say spiritually already? Um, Prez, you know, you didn't say spiritually. Okay. Yeah. So we use the, it's all those. Yeah. And, um, and it, they're talking and it's, you need to be paying attention.

It's a practice of really listening, really engaging, not fixing. So we, it's a good practice of, oh, I'm not. I can't fix here. I'm not supposed to fix. So I'm not supposed to give any answers. I'm not supposed to, I'm just listening. Um, something like that can help, um, which includes this next one, which is practice listening in a way, even if you're in a business meeting, just practice listening in a way that you could repeat back what they're saying, even if you never repeat it back, even if it's not appropriate in the meeting, but you're listening and then you're thinking, okay, well I could have repeated back exactly what they said.

This just could practice, um, for this. Um, and then we've talked a lot about this, but just again, practice validation. It is simply giving legitimacy to somebody's perspective, even if I don't agree with it, that it's real to them. And so often we stop listening because we click off and go, well, that I don't agree with the way they see that, you know, or why would they see it that way or whatever. Or I've heard this so many times. I've heard this so many times.

Here we go again. And we simply stop listening. And so always give the gift of validation and realizing, okay, they're saying that again. What's that's real to them. They're feeling that real feeling today, right now. What is that?

What's, what's about that? Um, And I would say that's people of all ages, a little tiny to your partner, to your elderly parents. There, there's a reason why they're saying some things. And so it's listening to what they're saying and giving them that gift of love. And one of the things I found, I learned the hard way through this was that, that if you're able to validate people, it actually does something for them. One of the reasons people keep repeating things or keep repeating it in a different way or say it louder and longer is because they haven't been validated. Yeah. You don't get it.

We haven't exactly. And so to start with, I get it. I'm hearing you. I recognize it's real to you. Um, not only as a good practice, but it's a gift that we give to them. This whole thing is listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give to anybody. It says, what you have to say is important to me.

There's almost no greater gift than that. And it's rare. Yeah. So let's commit to do better at this. Um, and hopefully grab something here that you could begin to practice and implement and can begin to change the trajectory of your life. So for today, go in peace, blessings as you go.

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