The Lost Art of Listening (39 page)

expectations. They expect their partners to duplicate the good aspects of

their own families and make up for the bad. To make matters worse, these

expectations are often directed at a partner’s limitations rather than his

or her strengths. (“I know he could be a more sociable person, if he only

tried.”)

Don’t judge your partner by measuring him (or her) against your

strengths; measure him by his strengths. We all want to be appreciated for

who we are.

No one benefits when weaknesses or shortcomings become

the principal focus of attention in a relationship.

To move away from bitterness, concentrate on your partner’s virtues.

See if some of the things you find objectionable are actually the downside

of attributes you appreciate, that may have attracted you in the first place.

If your partner were different in ways you’d like, he or she would also be

different in ways you wouldn’t like. Request changes of certain behavior,

but don’t punish your partner for what you consider misbehavior. Find

your way to acceptance. Tenderness will follow.

With maturity, the human quest moves from the outside in, from con-

quering the world to struggling with ourselves—to be who we are and to

be connected to others. Looking for love that will simultaneously recreate

and undo the past, we latch on to someone and hope for the best.

New couples are ripe with possibility. Over time they become struc-

Listening Between Intimate Partners
233

tured into a system, organized by the demands of living together and per-

haps raising a family. As we’ve seen, the process that transforms two people

into a pair is based on accommodation and boundary making.

At first, patterns of behavior in a couple are free to vary; later they

become entrenched. But even then, change is possible. The key is comple-

mentarity. Those who would remake their own luck must learn to see the

annoying things their partners do as one part of a pattern, a pattern that

connects two people together in cycles of action and reaction. Look to

your part.

* * *

of the joys and sorrows of intimate partnership comes from looking beyond

personalities to the patterns of interaction between them. Problems, it

turns out, are more likely to be resolved, not by trying to change what your

partner does, but by changing how you respond to it. Once you discover

that the more you do X, the more he does Y—or he realizes that the more

he does Y, the more you do X—either one of you can change the pattern

by altering your own input. But when a twosome becomes a threesome,

things get a little more complicated.

As I’ll explain in the next chapter, to understand what goes on in

families, it’s necessary to look beyond the dynamics of interaction between

two people to the overall organization of the whole group. I hope these

considerations will prove useful to you in understanding what goes on

between you and every other member of your family.

Exercises

1.
Identify three negative assumptions about your partner. During the

next week look for evidence contrary to any of those negative assump-

tions. (Hint: Consider motivation, not just behavior.)

2.
Look back over the last few days and try to list three or four times when

your partner did something good for the relationship and you failed to

let him or her know that you appreciated it.

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

3.
In your relationship, are you more of a pursuer or a distancer? Why do

you do that? Are you afraid of change? Afraid of conflict? What are you

seeking when you pursue? Are you looking for mutual benefit or for

changes that would mainly benefit you? What do you distance yourself

from? Why does what you’re avoiding make you anxious? What would

you gain by shifting from avoidance to approach once in a while?

If your partner is a distancer, what do you think he or she is avoid-

ing? What can you do to reassure your partner that what he or she is

afraid of isn’t going to happen?

If your partner is a pursuer, what does he or she want from you?

How can you initiate giving more of what he or she wants in a way that

doesn’t make you feel like a victim?

4.
A friend is someone with whom you can relax and be yourself. You can

ask a friend for a favor. A friend is someone you can count on. A friend

is someone you can talk to. For women this kind of talking tends to

occur face to face, whereas for men, talking with friends tends to occur

while they are doing something.

What would happen if you went out of your way to be a friend to

your partner for a few days? Why don’t you try it and see?

5.
Make a list of your differences from your partner that he or she has

trouble accepting. For each one, how would it affect your relationship

if he or she were to become more accepting?

Make a list of your partner’s differences that you have trouble accept-

ing. For each one, how would it affect your relationship if you made an

effort to become more accepting?

LISTENING IN CONTEXT

How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family

11

…

“Nobody around Here

Ever Listens to Me!”

How to Listen and Be Heard

within the Family

As we’ve seen, the quality of understanding between people isn’t fixed in

character but depends on the
process
of their interaction. The advantage

of seeing the process of relationships is flexibility. What can be recognized

as a pattern of mutual influence can be changed. But there’s a catch. Once

children arrive on the scene, the dynamics of couplehood are no longer

sufficient to explain what goes on in the family. Now, it isn’t just how two

people interact that can lead to problems in understanding but how the

overall organization of the family affects every single individual and com-

bination of family members. Patterns of communication in families are

hard to change because they’re embedded in powerful but unseen struc-

tures.

Family Structure

Families, like other groups, have rich possibilities for satisfaction. (Don’t

we marry and bring children into the world with clear and simple hopes for

235

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

happiness?) Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” The same could

be said of family relationships, though, sadly, many congeal into limited

and limiting molds.

Listening is an art that requires openness to each other’s

uniqueness and tolerance of differences.

As they are repeated, family transactions foster expectations that

establish enduring patterns.1 Once these patterns are established, fam-

ily members use only a fraction of the full range of behavior available to

them. The first time the baby cries or the in-laws come to visit, it’s not

certain who will do what. Will the load be shared? Will there be a quarrel?

Will one person get stuck with all the work? Soon patterns are set, roles

assigned, and things take on a sameness and predictability.

When a mother tells her son to put away his toys and he ignores her

until his father yells at him, an interactional pattern is initiated. If it’s

repeated, it creates a structure in which the father becomes the disciplinar-

ian and the mother is the permissive parent.

Family members tend to have reciprocal

and complementary functions; the more one parent

does for the children, the less the other is likely to do.

Where one partner is weak, the other is strong.

The Possibilities in Every Pair

A family system differentiates and carries out its functions through
subsys-

tems.
Every individual is a subsystem, and dyads (such as husband–wife or

mother–child), as well as larger groups, make up other subsystems, deter-

mined by generation, gender, and function.

Individuals, subsystems, and whole families are demarcated by inter-

personal
boundaries
, emotional barriers that regulate the amount of con-

tact with others. Boundaries protect the autonomy of the family and its

1Salvador Minuchin and Michael P. Nichols,
Family Healing
(New York: The Free Press,

1993).

How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family
237

subsystems. A rule forbidding phone calls at dinnertime establishes a

boundary that insulates the family from outside intrusion. When children

are permitted to freely interrupt their parents’ conversations, the boundary

separating the adults from the children is blurred.

Subsystems inadequately shielded by boundaries limit the potential of

these subgroups. If parents always step in to settle their arguments, chil-

dren won’t learn to fight their own battles. Similarly, when in-laws are too

actively involved in a couple’s affairs, the couple will be slow to develop

their own resources.

These days when work and after- school activities consume so much of

our lives, we have limited time for ourselves and less time for our families.

In the few hours we do have with our families, many of us are reluctant to

exclude some members of the family so that others can do things togeth-

er—such as a father taking a daughter to a basketball game or a mother

and son taking in a movie together. This is unfortunate.

Time alone together allows every pair in the family a chance

to talk and freedom to listen.

The most obvious example of a relationship that suffers without time

alone together is the one between wife and husband.

Lewis felt that he’d lost his wife to the children. Once Iris had been his

friend and lover as well as his wife. Deciding to have kids and the pregnancy

and the birth and those first few wonderful, exhausting months of babyhood

brought them closer together. Then, as Lewis saw it, Iris pulled motherhood

over her head like a blanket. They were still friends, sort of, but they were

more parents than anything else. They rarely listened to each other because

they rarely talked. When Lewis decided to move beyond cursing fate and

casting blame, he found that the simple act of spending time alone together

with Iris was the first step in revitalizing their marriage. (In the process he

discovered that two people who aren’t spending time together aren’t just

busy; they’re also dissatisfied with the listening they’re getting.)

Parents need time alone with each of their children. One of the best

ways for parents to listen to their children is to arrange little outings with

each one. Once a week isn’t too much to aim for. Even if a child has a good

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

relationship with a parent, conversation and intimacy are easier away from

everyday distractions. The time a parent spends taking a child out to din-

ner or for a hike or on a bus ride into the city may well be the best time in

both of their lives. Every pair has its possibilities.

Now let’s look at how some familiar structural flaws create problems

in listening.

When Boundaries Are Blurred

The two biggest mistakes parents make in listening to their children both

involve blurred boundaries: failing to establish control over their children’s

behavior and interfering too much in their lives.

The most important thing to keep in mind when listening to chil-

dren is the difference between allowing them to
say
what they want and

letting them
do
what they want. When a child says “I don’t want to go to

bed,” he or she is expressing a feeling and making a request. A wise parent

distinguishes between the two and acknowledges the feeling before ruling

on the request.

Of course children don’t want to go to bed! They might miss some-

thing. Staying awake is their way of clutching at life. Parents who blur the

distinction between expression and action get into foolish debates with

their children. They say “I don’t care what you want; you’re going to bed

anyway.” Or they try to convince children that they’re tired, as though

obeying the rules depended on agreeing with them.

Parents who confuse love with leniency often fail to enforce their

rules. Mistaking permissiveness for understanding and democracy for

respect, such parents confuse their children about who’s in charge and end

up too anxious about controlling the children’s behavior to be able to lis-

ten to their feelings. The dichotomy between authority and understanding

is a false one; actually, they go hand in hand.

The most common alternative to effective discipline is nagging. Con-

stant bickering with children wounds their pride and does more to engen-

der insecurity than to establish parental authority. Effective parents take

control early in their children’s lives and use it sparingly.

Children learn from the consequences of their behavior.