How To Listen To Women Effectively in a Relationship

Women work through their humble of feelings by talking them through with someone else. That someone else need not provide any solutions, just an empathetic ear. The benefit to the woman comes mainly by the act of talking itself.

And so, the primary skill in being a good listener is to know how to encourage her:

To start talking
To continue talking until she’s said all that she wishes to say

Because women are looking for empathy, the term acceptance has come to mean those listener behaviors which collectively result in:

The woman being happy that she’s expressed her feelings
Her continuing to verbalize her feelings

The term non-acceptance has come to mean those listener behaviors that collectively result in:

The woman regretting having opened her mouth
Her stopping the act of expressing her feelings

Acceptance behaviors seem to come naturally to other women, but not to men. For men to Excel at this skill, we need to be taught.

The first and most basic step is simply to listen

That sounds easy but it isn’t, because most male to male conversations are two-way conversations. The standard ritual is for you to say something, then the other person says something, then you say something additional, and so on.

During a typical two-way conversation, it’s common for us to do the following:

Listen to the beginning of what the other person just said
Make a guess as to where we think that comment is going
Listen to the rest of the comment with half an ear while thinking about what we plan to say next.

That way, we maximize our own preparation time and improve the odds that we’ll say something intelligent when its our turn to respond.

Men do that so often in business that it’s second nature for us. But when a woman is talking to you about her feelings, it’s a major mistake.

So, What Next?

Most men don’t especially enjoy listening to women blather on and on and on about nothing of substance. We will pretend to listen but we don’t especially enjoy having to sit there and listen.

And so, we mostly tune out. Either we’re working on what to say next or we’re just taking a mental daydream trip to someplace else.

MUST READ: Having Great Conversations With Ladies

Either way, women can spot such inattention immediately. It angers them. And when women get angry due to male u attention, they clam up. If you’ve ever been in a relationship, you’ve seen the cold shoulder up close. It wasn’t much fun, was it?

So, this part is critical: Your job is to listen. You don’t have to worry about what you’ll be saying next because she’ll do all the talking. These conversations are one-way conversations: