You Never Listen

Author—Your wife? My wife? For sure, someone’s wife.

By Doug Wigginton

Generally, guys aren't the best at listening. Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part, men are doers and fixers. It might help to think of us as the Marthas of our relationships with women.

Remember, it was Martha who told Mary, “Don't just stand there, do something” (my loose paraphrase of Luke 10.38-42). That often becomes our guiding mantra. If there's a problem, you can count on us to identify it and tell you how to fix it. This is both the good news and the bad news. The good news is that we are actually good at fixing things. The bad news is that we are not nearly as good at fixing as we think we are.

Mary’s response, “Don't just do something, stand there” (my paraphrase), doesn’t make much sense to us. After all, we are doers and fixers at our very core. It's in our DNA. And when we’re accused of not listening, we’re genuinely surprised. “What do you mean?” we quickly ask. “I heard every word you said,” we say with absolute certainty. In fact, “I can repeat back to you verbatim.” The Marys in our lives reply, “But you’re not hearing me.” And before we know it, the bell rings, at least in our heads, and the fight begins. So we’re off and running — usually in the wrong direction.

The other day, while searching my computer files for an article on listening, I came across an interesting and insightful quote that I had saved but failed to cite its source.

I was delighted to learn that the author was a young woman. After all, I said to myself, who would know better than an author of several very racy romance novels? From my vantage point, she provides a list of sorts that a “typical” man needs to know when it comes to listening. Of course, this is not the kind of book I would ever read or at least admit to reading. On a more serious note, this young author offers her readers the opportunity to see themselves in a mirror.

“When I ask you to listen to me and you start to give me advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Not talk or do—just hear me. I can do for myself. I’m not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me that I can, and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and weakness. But when you accept as a simple fact that I am feeling what I feel no matter how irrational it might be, then I can get on with understanding what is behind this feeling. Perhaps that is why prayer works for so many people. God is silent and He doesn’t give advice or try to fix things. He just listens and lets you work it out for yourself. So, please listen and just hear me. And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn. Then I’ll listen to you.”

Although James was actually writing to his “brothers and sisters,” I think the women in our lives, knowing them as I do, would insist he was addressing the men when he said we “should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1.19). Perhaps we men should “bite our tongues before we say something we will undoubtedly regret” (my summary of James 3.1-12).

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1.23-24).