The Lost Art of Listening (12 page)

ears is such a basic human motive, why are so many people numb and

silent? Because life happens to them— slights, hurts, cruelty, mockery, and

shame. These things are hard on the heart.

We come to relationships wounded. Longing for attention, we don’t

always get it. Expecting to be taken seriously, we get argued with or ignored.

Needing to share our feelings, we run into criticism or unwanted advice.

Opening up and getting no response, or worse, humiliation, is like walking

into a wall in the dark. If this happens often enough, we shut down and

erect our own walls.

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63

Although a speaker’s reticence may be seen as a personality trait, such

tendencies are really nothing more than habits based on expectations

formed from past relationships.

People who don’t talk to us are people

who don’t expect us to listen.

Therapists who encounter resistance to speaking freely engage in

what is called
defense analysis
—pointing out to the patient
that
he is hold-

ing back,
how
he is holding back (perhaps by talking about trivia), and

speculating about
what
might be on his mind and
why
he might hesitate

to bring it up. Therapists have license that the average person lacks to ask

such probing questions, but it’s not against the law to inquire if a friend

is finding it difficult to open up for some reason or to point out that she

doesn’t seem to talk much about herself. We shape our relationships by

our response.

“No, Everything’s Fine . . . ”

When you ask someone if something is wrong and the answer is a not-

very- convincing “no,” how do you respond? One common response is to

say “You don’t look fine.” This may be intended as an invitation, but it

doesn’t come across that way. Pressing a reticent person to open up or

getting annoyed at the person for not doing so presumes that he or she

has no good reason for not telling you what’s wrong. People don’t do

anything for no reason.

When someone seems reluctant to tell you what’s bothering him, you

might make an informed guess about why the person is reluctant to say

what’s on his mind. “Are you afraid of how I might respond?” If you think

the person just doesn’t want to get into it, you can ask “Is it something

you’re hesitant to talk about?” Don’t push too hard, though. If someone

tells you she doesn’t want to talk to you about something and you keep

pushing, she might decide she was right to think you can’t be trusted to

accept her feelings.

Does the person who isn’t very forthcoming with you have reason

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THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

to believe that you’re interested in what he thinks and feels? That you’ll

listen without interrupting? That you can tolerate disagreement? Anger?

Openness is a product of interaction.

Men Are from Mars?

As we head further into the twenty-first century, the social construction

of gender—men do this, women do that— polarizes relations between the

sexes as never before. As the old complementarity gives way to a new sym-

metry, conflict seems to be the price for equality.

Several books in recent years gained enormous popularity by telling

us that men and women communicate differently and then explaining

what those differences are. Among the most popular was John Gray’s
Men

Are from Mars
,
Women Are from Venus
, in which the author argues that

men need space while women crave company. If we learn to respect the

inevitable differences that crop up between two people who live together

by attributing such differences to gender rather than to stubbornness or ill

will, maybe that’s a good thing. And if we learn not to react unsympatheti-

cally to what our partners say, that’s certainly a good thing. But perhaps

the most important thing is not so much learning
how
to react to these

other, alien creatures, but learning not to
overreact
and learning instead

to listen. Perhaps the best response to Freud’s famous question “What do

women want?” might have been “Why don’t you ask—and then listen?”

Once, differences between men and women were thought to be bred

in the bone, and this biological determinism was used to justify all man-

ner of inequity. After years of effort to break down these separate but

unequal categories, a new wave of feminist scholars reasserted what they

once fought: gender differences. Jean Baker Miller emphasized responsive-

ness and mutuality as especially important to women in relationships,5 and

Carol Gilligan argued that for women the qualities of care and connection

are fundamental to selfhood, organizers of identity, and moral develop-

ment.6 According to Gilligan, men build towers and women build webs.

Thus far the greatest impact of the new work by feminist psychologists

5Jean Baker Miller,
Toward a New Psychology of Women
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).

6Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

How Communication Breaks Down
65

has been a reaffirmation of gender differences—but this time with a positive

construction of the psychology of women. In her book,
The Reproduction

of Mothering
, Nancy Chodorow pointed out that because boys and girls are

parented primarily by mothers, they grow up with different orientations to

attachment and independence.7 Boys must separate themselves from their

mothers to claim their masculinity, which is why boys of a certain age start

shrinking from their mothers’ hugs and why “sissy” and “mamma’s boy”

are still such powerful invectives. Girls, on the other hand, do not have to

renounce their mothers’ caring and connection to become women; they

learn to become themselves
through
connection.

In the wake of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, the idea of

inherent gender differences has come to define the discourse on men and

women to such an extent that many writers now take for granted that

women are fundamentally different from men in ways that make them

better at listening. For people who accept this premise, life is simple: All

the complexities of relationship can be dispensed with in favor of one all-

purpose explanation. Men do this; women do that. End of discussion.

This new wave of sexual typecasting is reflected in the popular recep-

tion of books that reduce every nuance, every polarity of conversation

between men and women to one gender distinction: men seek power;

women seek relationship. Sadly, a lot of people now take this for granted.

Perhaps the best way to begin making a difference in the quality of

listening between men and women is to unmake a difference. My point

isn’t that there aren’t conversational differences between men and women

but that perhaps it’s time to stop exaggerating and glorifying them.

Why are so many women and men so willing to assume that we’re

separated by a vast gender gap, that we speak different languages, and that

our destinies take us in different directions? Is it really a woman’s nature to

be caring and seek connection? Is it really a man’s nature to be indepen-

dent and seek power? Or do these polarities reflect the ways our culture

has—thus far—shaped the universal yearning to be appreciated?

Sometimes social and political factors provide the underlying expla-

nation for so- called gender distinctions. Might caring, for example, which

has been represented as a gender difference, be more adequately under-

7Nancy Chodorow,
The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

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THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

stood as a way of negotiating from a position of low power? Perhaps some

women (and some men) are caring because of a need to please, which

stems from a lack of a sense of personal power. Thus the same woman who

appeals to the need for caring in debates with her husband may emphasize

rules in arguments with her children. The same social embeddedness that

promotes caring may sometimes make it difficult for women to recognize

their own self- interest. Perhaps rather than our apologizing for or celebrat-

ing gender differences, it might be more useful for us to talk
with
each

other, instead of about each other, and to move toward partnership, not

polarization.

Perhaps if we started listening to one another we could move toward

greater balance, in ourselves and our relationships. Perhaps women raised

to believe that happiness is to be found in selfless service to others could

learn more respect for their own strivings and capacity for independent

achievement. Perhaps men who seek identity only in achievement could

learn greater respect for the neglected dimensions of caring and concern.

In the process of relaxing rigid definitions of what it means to be a man

or a woman, perhaps fathers might learn to lower the walls they build

around themselves and reduce the gulf across which they relate to others

and guard their masculinity. Perhaps mothers, in learning more respect

for their own self- interest, could develop more respect for the boundary

between themselves and their children and allow the children more room

to become themselves.

If we can avoid thinking of gender differences as fixed and given,

perhaps we might begin to entertain the possibility that boys can identify

with their mothers’ nurturance and care to become more fully realized men

and better fathers. Similarly, we might begin to see that girls can identify

with their fathers as well as their mothers and feel entitled to be indepen-

dent persons with their own agendas. Maybe God invented the idea of two

parents so that children could draw on the best of both of them.

Comforting as it may be to blame lack of understanding on other

people’s stubbornness or insensitivity or gender, the reasons we don’t listen

to each other turn out to be more complex. It isn’t selfishness, but compli-

cations of character and relationship that keep us from listening and being

listened to.

A fuller appreciation of the dynamics of listening makes it a little

easier for us to begin hearing each other. Is it necessary to dissect every

How Communication Breaks Down
67

misunderstanding and analyze it according to message, subtext, context,

speaker, listener, and response? Of course not. The simple, heroic act of

stepping back from our own injured feelings and considering the other

person’s point of view is quite enough of an accomplishment.

So why are we so sensitive to misunderstanding that we have trouble

seeing the other person’s side of things? To answer that question and con-

tinue to move toward hearing each other, let’s look more closely in the

next chapter at the emotional factors that complicate listening.

Quiz

To help you become more aware of your own listening habits, complete the

following questionnaire. Answer the questions honestly, and because we

listen differently to different people, think of a specific person you have a

relationship with when you answer these questions. You might want to do

this twice, once with a family member in mind and once with a coworker

or friend in mind.

How Good a Listener Are You?

When someone is talking to you, do you:

1—Almost never 2—Sometimes 3—Often 4—Almost always

___ 1. Make people feel that you’re interested in them and what they

have to say?

___ 2. Think about what you want to say while others are talking?

___ 3. Acknowledge what the speaker says before offering your own

point of view?

___ 4. Jump in before the other person has finished speaking?

___ 5. Allow people to complain without arguing with them?

___ 6. Offer advice before you’re asked?

___ 7. Concentrate on figuring out what other people are trying to say,

not just respond to the words they use?

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THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

___ 8. Share similar experiences of your own rather than inviting the

speaker to elaborate on his or her experience?

___ 9. Get other people to tell you a lot about themselves?

___ 10. Assume you know what someone is going to say before he or she

is finished?

___ 11. Restate messages or instructions to make sure you understood

correctly?

___ 12. Make judgments about who is worth listening to and who isn’t?

___ 13. Make a concerted effort to focus on the speaker and understand

what he or she is trying to say?

___ 14. Tune out when someone starts to ramble on, rather than trying to

get involved and make the conversation more interesting?

___ 15. Accept criticism without getting defensive?