MALE ROLE-DEFINING MOMENTS
Monday, December 19, 2022
On the subject of whether men listen very well, I have considerable experience over a long time, so I’m confident that I’m not alone, and I’m not wrong …
Women tell me, when recounting their dealings with their partners, brothers or fathers, that most times, when they need to talk – they have a need to be heard and to be understood.
They’re telling that story, not pleading for help.
What our male ego-fired DNA has trouble grasping, is they are voicing their need to be heard, and to feel they have been listened too – and unless the specifically ask us for help, they aren’t asking for help, period.
Many times, it is a matter of them needing to vent, that’s all – and if the male is smart and knows what is good for him, he’ll learn that the man’s role is to listen.
Like most of my brethren, we may talk a good story, but do we listen with serious care, attention, and empathy?
No need to answer that, guys; read on …
Too often, I’ve realized, when admonished to “just listen!” that while I was nodding that I was, my lips were still moving!
While it is possible to speak and listen simultaneously, the best advice is to give 100% of one or the other. Even when we meld them, the quality of our attention and intention drops dramatically, and the chance of getting cross-threaded takes us into troubled waters …
Needing to talk, a willingness to talk about feelings is a more female thing than male in my experience.
Conversely, while men tend to avoid voicing how they feel, the typical male reaction when listening to someone’s story about their difficult day at the office, challenging times with the kids, trauma-du-jour within the family, or squabbles with their manicurist, or their direct reports – we males are always half-listening and at best while we are racing ahead. We are listening, of course, but our brain is busy drafting our response, so we’ll be ready to launch our mini-speech when the storyteller pauses for any reason …
Sometimes we don’t wait that long; we lunge into the conversation – we might preface it with something polite like, “OK, so let be sure I understand what you saying …” as we repeat A-through-Z of what we’ve heard, so we can deftly offer the fixes we formulated while we should have been listening. This is nothing new. My description is not sexism, but rather an observation of myself in motion, of the women in my life in action/reaction, together with stories told to me by angry women and frustrated men …
It’s not about gender, yet it seems to be.
It’s not about competing for air time, yet it seems to be.
It’s not about love or hate, yet sometimes it seems to be.
And, since it’s December, I’ll add this:
December, as so many divorces lawyers have often told me, it’s their busiest time of year; they explain that it’s a time of year when we are all socialized and marketed to in a spirit of ‘everybody is so bloody happy.’
So, when many people find difficulty finding happiness, their finger is often pointed at their marriage. It might not be the sole or dominant contributor to their unhappiness, but it factors prominently in the ‘grounds for uncoupling’ …
And, to conclude, some advice for all men:
They don’t want us to take their side or to falsely agree with them if we don’t agree. What they want, most of all, is for us to make a sincere effort to hear and understand their side. When we stop talking, when we stop pretending to listen, a fantastic thing that happens – we get to hear the whole story. And yes, It’s OK to interject with soft questions as the story plays out, but hold that thought. You’ll find things work our better when you hold those questions until the end of the story; it’s likely they’ll either get answered as the story unfolds or we’ll see that in the big picture of the unfolding story, our asides, quips and cute reactions are of negligible value at best …