How to Improve Your Listening Skills in Marriage
To improve listening skills in your marriage, you need to understand the reasons why you can miss significant details in what your partner is saying, even though you believe that you are listening. Why do misunderstandings happen? Misunderstandings can happen for a variety of reasons. Here are a few common problems that lead to misunderstandings in marriage. You are preoccupied, exhausted, or both: Imagine you are thinking about a problem you had at work while the children are screaming and the television is blasting at full volume. Now your partner has started talking to you about how they expect company later in the evening. You give a satisfied nod and say okay, but were you paying attention to what was being said? Likely not. You make assumptions: A damaging attempt at mind reading, assumptions can cause a lot of trouble in a relationship. A common way this occurs is when you think that there is a secret meaning to the words that your spouse has said. In reality, you may be reading too much into the situation. Ever-shortening attention spans: A measly eight seconds is considered to be the average attention span of a human being. That means you can lose focus quickly when your spouse is talking to you, often without even realizing it. There are, however, ways to get better at this and become a good listener when you are speaking with the important people in your life, particularly your partner. Sometimes it’s difficult to listen to what each other has to say. There are so many demands that are placed on us by life, and it always seems as though a million things are competing for our attention, such as our jobs, our hobbies, our friends, and our children. Because of this, you and the other [...]
