Listening – The Universal Love Language

Melanie and I got into a fight on Thursday night.

I don’t know if you’ve read The Five Love Languages book. I read it not too long after Melanie and I were married. There were some things in that book that I really didn’t like, but I also remember it being helpful in some ways…

This guy was saying there were mainly 5 ways a person will feel loved.  And a huge reason that many of us struggle with being understood in our relationships with people is that they don’t “feel” loved in the same ways that we do. You try to show love, but they don’t understand it. Some people feel most loved with kind words…others by touch…and others by an act of service, and so on, and so forth (I forgot the other two). The point is, if you want someone to know you care about them you need to learn to “speak” their love language.

What I can’t remember is if this guy really talked much at all about “listening” in his book. I don’t think he did. Because it seems to me that you would have no need to read a book about love languages if you were actually listening to the people around you. I think if we listened to people more, we would learn their language pretty quickly. Hasn’t that always been the best way to learn a language – living life with the people who are speaking that language and listening to them?  It seems to me that the biggest problem in most of our screwed up relationships is that we don’t care enough to take the time to listen.

Because the truth is…

We love ourselves more than anyone else.

Which brings me back to my fight with Melanie. We started fighting because I thought she wasn’t listening to me. And then she got mad because I wasn’t listening to her. After about 30 minutes of working through the frustration, we realized that was exactly what the problem was – neither one of us cared enough to really listen. So we repented…

And then that led to a discussion about the differences that men and women have when it comes to listening. I think it’s true that women are amazingly better at multitasking. And their ability to multitask makes them better listeners. Here is an example…

When Melanie gets together with her Mom and sisters at Thanksgiving, they can cover about 100 topics in 30 minutes. Each person interrupting the other. Each one asking a different question or taking the conversation in a different direction. (To be honest…I’m not sure how much listening is actually going on in these conversations because it sounds schizophrenic to me.) But they look like they are in heaven – perfectly fine with several different conversations all going on at once and all going down rabbit trails. While I am in hell trying to figure out just one thing that was said in the first minute of the conversation – ending up utterly confused. I seriously have to leave the room or turn the TV up. Otherwise my brain gets fried.

If I were an animal, I would be the Unitasker.

Sort of like a Unicorn, but not nearly as beautiful, or as lucky, or as rare.

So… pretty much nothing like the Unicorn.

I almost can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. And I think this is a common characteristic of men. Here is an example. This was crazy, but I don’t believe it was any coincidence. That very night after discussing our problem of not listening and then discussing the difference between men and women’s ability in this area…

I was sitting at the computer, looking at this super cool, gnarled-up, spooky tree for home decor on ebay. You know… Something we have a super huge need for in our already cluttered house of various collections. And I hear Melanie say, or I should say… sing, “HELLOOOOOO!”

I look over at her and say, “WHAT!?” I’m annoyed by anyone singing that word at me.

She says, “I SAID…’Can I GET you anything’?” obviously annoyed by my nonresponse to her question.

I started laughing – thinking that she had whispered it or something. And I told her that I swear I didn’t hear a single word of that sentence. She swore that she said it at a normal volume. It was crazy. I somehow went into deaf-focus-mode looking at the details about this tree on ebay. For all I know, I might have lost every other sense at that moment as well. She didn’t believe me at first. But eventually it made sense to her that if I was only selecting to hear what I wanted to hear, why would I select not to hear…

“Can I get you anything?” I love hearing that question from pretty much anybody.

So, that was the beginning of a new world of understanding between my wife and I. It explains all the times that she has said, “I told you that yesterday! You were looking right at me!” And I’d swear that she didn’t tell me anything. I would say, “How could I not have heard that important piece of information? I would have wanted to know that!” It is true that in my selfishness, sometimes I will tune out Melanie’s voice. But I did not know that I had this ability to uni-task so well that my body actually turns off one of its senses for greater focus. It happens involuntarily sometimes. (I know. I tried to make that sound like a good thing, but I’m not sure if it is. Maybe I actually have a disability. Now that sounds like I’m asking for pity. Whatever.) But maybe that’s why Michael Jordan was so good at basketball. He had this extreme focus ability. Nobody knew that in those moments when he was slamming the basketball down Patrick Ewing’s throat, he was actually deaf, and couldn’t feel, or taste, or smell. I knew I was like Mike. I know I wouldn’t want to have any sense of hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, or even seeing if I were ever that close to Patrick CHEWing. I’m guessing, but I think Michael Jordan is a Unitasker like me!!!

I really don’t know.

But I’m glad my wife and I are learning that one of the best ways to let someone know you love them is to listen to them.

So, I had better go.

Melanie might be trying to tell me something right now.