The Catholic Perspective

5 Relationship Rules: Do you listen, really?

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Imagine you’re sitting in the car carefree, listening to nothing but your own mind wonder. All of a sudden you’re brought back to reality as you hear, “Are you listening to me?” As most men you quickly collect yourself and try to BS your way out of trouble. As usual you don’t get far and now you’re in the hot seat. In my last post we talked about communicating. Communication is key to any relationship as I pointed out before, but what makes it successful?

Listening!!!! In any relationship you have the best ones are the ones that you listen and then speak. These posts are from a catholic male perspective, so please if you are the other from the other persuasion (by all means) leave a comment. I will just assume many men are like the scenario described at the start of this post, but that is one type of listening. In this post I want to focus on, well, I will refer as active or passive listening. Active listening is when you listen to every word a person is saying and you can follow. I think most of the time most men do not have a difficult time actively listening to their significant other. Now passive listening is something I struggle with everyday.  Active listening can be quickly fixed in many ways as simple as, just start listening. Although passive listening is very different and difficult since you may be already actively listening, but not really listening.  (If Stephanie reads this just like most women you are probably nodding your head, while your man is like WTF)

God designed man and woman differently; as you may already know from books like, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. God created man for a purpose to worship and focus on him. So God purposely designed men with a tunnel vision. Typically most of us want to solve problems so when you are listening to your significant other about her day we zone into a problem and immediately try to resolve it. WRONG! All she wants is us to listen and empathize (think its’ empathize) with her.  I think the problem I have with passive listening is that I want to solve and talk. NOT LISTEN!!! God designed women to focus on multiple things. Women are fully capable in solving her own set of problems, and as men we need understand that and suck up our pride in thinking we are the sole problem solvers in the relationship.

So the point is, we need to start listening which means for us to shut up, listen, and understand. The short and simple solution, but remember in any relationship it takes time to understand when it need not apply. I do believe sometimes we as catholic men need to be in the hot seat. Healthy conflict helps grow the relationship. When you’re in a marriage or destined to be married you both need to focus on US not I. Next week, I will discuss how to communicate US and not me.

Posted by Catholic Chump on 08/20 at 12:11 AM in Lifestyle,Relationship, (0) Comments