Women and men usually have different understanding of listening due to their gender differences and different emotional requirements. Sometimes men may thought they are just trying to listen really intently to their partner but their partner may even get mad at them. It can be frustrating because when the men thought they were listening but listening means something quite different for their women. To be a great listener for a man, he'd better try his best to do the following 5 points to manage well their relationships:understand her while listeng to her, give her proper feedback, dig deeply what she wants to express and keep a discerning observation on what's the connotative meaning behind her words and fully respect her fullness of emotion.
1. Listening, understanding and then comes to problem solving
From the male perspective, men are just like a hammer for a nail and they just are searching for a problem to fix. When a woman tells her man a problem or challenge with you, you may directly offer a solution to the problem. From the male perspective, she telling you about a problem that needed solving. This is because men commonly communicate with each other in this way. However, from her perspective, she was opening up about something that was meant to bring you closer together. She was sharing something intimate with you. For her, if you just directly give her advices, she'll have a feeling like rejection and you're just pushing away her invitation to intimacy by minimizing the story and contents she wants to share with you in your "just fixing it" way.
When she tells you that she wants to talk, she desires your attention on her and want you to show that you want to be there. Simply, listening and encouraging your partner to talk is the best of both worlds for both parties involved.
She connects to you by telling you what’s on her mind- her thoughts, her worries, her hopes, and her frustrations. In her mind, everything that is happening in her life that you don't yet know about feels like a barrier to intimacy. Allow her the chance to tell you about it. Remember that she doesn’t need you to sort her life out, or fix her problems; she just wants you to hear her out.
However, every rule has an exception and sometimes she will be looking for advice. The only time she wants you to solve her problems is when you feel like her story scaring has shifted. She is no longer simply catching up her day. Instead, she is clearly suffering even in the telling of the story and it appears she desires your help in solving this problem.
2.Give her feedback as she desires
Just like in any normal coomunication, when you speak to someone, you wants your counterpart's feedback in time.It's even more like this when your woman is sharing her thoughts/stories/life with you.She is looking for a specific kind of listening.You've already understood that she isn't just search for advice from you or seek you for help to solve her problem. What she actually needs is to see attention,comprehension and emphathy from you.
Just to put it simply, she wants to know that you are constantly listening to her, that you understand what she's telling and you are just the right emotional feedback to what she is saying.
You want to agree with and validate her emotions, not shy away from them or minimize them. If she feels like you minimize her emotions and her ideas (by stopping the flow of them with advice or worse, by not listening at all), she will stop sharing her emotions and ideas with you. That might sound fun for about ten minutes but you'll quickly realize that her sharing, emotionality, and nurturing style of love will cease to exist along with the conversation.
If she said something awful happened, she wants to hear you say, “That’s awful. That must have felt so bad.” If something joyful happened, she wants to hear you say, “That's awesome! That sounds like so much fun.”
It's advised that you had better show discerning observation on her likes, dislikes,frustations,milestones, passions, hobbies, and everything else that she chooses to share with you.
3.Dig deeply on all she want to share
To be a great listener and a great partner, you shall make sure she's totally openning herself up in front of you. Because when your partner really feels that she's listened to, she'll need to get everything out from her feeling.
Depending on her mood, this may or may not come easy to her. And more importantly, she’ll also purposely leave hints and openings because she wants to test how much you actually care about her. It’s up to you to dig deep into these openings. The more you dig, the more it shows that you truly love her.
4.Listening the connotative meaning behind words
Let's look at some examples how her words may mean something else rather than what it may initially seem:
"It's Ok" could mean "It's just so so.I'm..."
“I’m cold” could mean, “I’m cold, please give me your coat.”
An exasperatedly expressed “I’m fine”could mean “I’m not fine and I want you to love me more.”
“Fine, if that’s what you want to do” could mean, “I don’t feel like you’re taking my preferences into account.”
In the same way as dig deeply on all she want to share can show her that you care about her, attempting to understand the subtext of her words can have a similar positive effect. It shows that you care enough and are attentive enough to her emotional needs that you will put in that extra effort to understand what she’s really comminucating to you.
Learn to see through your partner's words and listen between the lines and she'll feel like no one else on earth has ever understood her as well as you do.
5.Respect her fullness of emotion
As men, we typically gravitate towards emptiness in our conversations and emotions. We want to figure out and bring them to a conclusion. However, women typically gravitate toward fullness in conversations and emotions. They want to continue connecting through talk.
A common mistake that men make in conversation with their partners is that when they hear their partner is suffering, they try to stop the emotion from happening or they try to redirect it. Though this can be beneficial in certain situations (for example, if your partner has been talking about her stressful day at work for over twenty minutes and you can see she is starting to suffer by reliving it in the process), it is largely unnecessary. It’s good to listen to her emotions but you want to ease her back to the present moment if you feel like she is getting lost in the negative emotion of her story.
A woman wants to feel free to express herself. She does not want to be limited or restricted in her thoughts or emotions.
Let her hurricane of emotions spin and sit back and take in her feminine energy. When you allow her to experience her emotions in the way she needs to, she will feel respected, seen, and appreciated by you.
In communicating with your female partner, pay as enough attention as possible on her and practice the 5 points presented as above: understand her while listen to her, give her proper feedback, dig deeply what she wants to express and keep a discerning observation on what's the connotative meaning behind her words and fully respect her fullness of emotion. By practicing doing so patiently, you'll certainly win more love from her and make your relationship more intimate and longlasting.
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