Rule Number Five: Encourage Dialogue by Learning to Listen

The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out. (Proverbs 20:5, NIV) Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath (James 1:19, KJV)  Love begins with listening.  Until you are willing to listen, no one will confide in you; so learn to listen with your heart and head.  The Bible emphasizes listening for the sake of understanding.  Solomon defines listening as the skill of drawing out a person’s true thoughts.  Try to understand what your spouse is thinking, feeling, and trying to communicate with his or her words and actions.  Love listens.  Tell your spouse this: “I love you, so I want to try hard to understand your needs and desires.  I really want to know what’s important to you so that it can become as important to me.”  How to listen: Give each other full and undivided attention. Listening is more than hearing and trying to prepare a response.  Sometimes, we are too busy waiting for our turn to talk, or preparing a legal brief in our minds that will prove our points.  We need to give full and undivided attention to the ones we love.    Ask effective questions Effective listening demands more than silent attention. It requires actively engaging others by asking questions for clarification.  “Just now when you said that…were you trying to say …?”  “I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I don’t think that I fully understood what you meant when you said…”  “Could you help me by repeating that just one more time?   “Okay, I think I am beginning to understand you: are you saying that…?”     Wait and meditate Honor what you have heard by asking for time to think deeply about it.  Too often, we use listening as a technique, but our insincerity shows up quickly in our pre-packaged prescriptions.  We offer solutions without understanding the problems.  This is a terrible habit because it confirms that we were just practicing some phony listening technique.  What we must do, instead, is learn to meditate on the weight of our spouse’s words long enough to gain a true understanding of his/her deepest needs.  What prevents us from listening? Pride, defensiveness, disrespect, and false assumptions clog our ears and prevent us from attending sincerely to our spouse’s words and feelings.  Don’t assume that you already “know” what someone is trying to say: this is dangerous.  The human mind is wonderfully and frustratingly complex.  People are not always who we think they are, and they hide their true feelings from us when they recognize that we are just pretending to listen.  What prepares us to listen? Humility is the key to listening: it closes our mouths and opens our hearts.