The Lost Art of Listening (10 page)

inevitably trigger a defensive reaction. For that matter, even “Haven’t you

taken the garbage out
yet?
” could provoke an emotional response. If you

don’t watch how you say things as well as what you say, it’s easy to provoke

those you love.

Then there are those touchy subjects that can almost be counted on

to set off an explosion. As I’ll explain in Chapters 6 and 9, topics likely to

be toxic among couples are money, children, and sex. To have a construc-

tive discussion about any of these, where both people really listen, requires

special effort. You might have to watch not only what you say and how you

say it but also where, when, and why.

This is not to imply that we need to spend our lives tiptoeing around

each other. What it does mean is that we may need to step back and calm

down, being aware of what sets us off and what sets off those we want to

communicate with, if we are to get through to each other.

When we don’t, many exchanges degenerate to such clever repartee

as “You’re such a bitch!” and “Oh, grow up!” before falling apart altogether

as someone storms out of the room.

Understanding the Rules of the Listening Game:

Beyond Linear Thinking

We don’t usually stop to examine patterns of misunderstanding in our

lives because we’re stuck in our own point of view. Misunderstanding

hurts, and when we’re hurt we tend to look outside ourselves for explana-

tions. But the problem isn’t just that when something goes wrong we look

for someone to blame. The problem is linear thinking. We reduce human

interactions to a matter of personalities. “He doesn’t listen because he’s

too self- absorbed.” “She’s hard to listen to because she goes on and on

about everything.” Some people blame themselves (“Maybe I’m not that

interesting”), but it’s usually easier to recognize the other person’s contri-

bution.

Attributing other people’s lack of understanding to character is armor

for ignorance and passivity. That some people repeat their annoying ways

with most people they come in contact with doesn’t prove that lack of

How Communication Breaks Down
53

responsiveness is fixed in character; it only proves that these individuals

trigger many people to play out the reciprocal role in their dramas of two-

part disharmony.

The fixed- character position assumes that it’s hard for people to

change. But you don’t change relationships by changing other people. You

change patterns of relating by changing yourself in relation to them. Per-

sonality is dynamic, not fixed. The dynamic personality position posits

that it is possible for people to change; all we have to do is change our

responses to each other. We are not victims—we are participants, in a real

way, and the consequences of our participation are profound.

To participate effectively, you have to know something about the

rules of the game.

I remember how confused I was the first time I saw a lacrosse game.

From where I sat it looked as if some kids were standing around while the

rest raced up and down the field, using their sticks to pass the ball back and

forth, club each other, or both. I got the gist of it—it was like soccer played

by Road Warriors—but a lot of it was hard to follow. Why, for instance,

did the team that lost the ball out of bounds sometimes get it back and

sometimes not? And why sometimes when one kid whacked another with

his stick did everybody cheer, while at other times the referee called a foul?

The problem was that I couldn’t see the whole field and didn’t know the

rules of the game.

The same disadvantages—not seeing the whole field and not know-

ing the rules of the game—keep us from understanding our successes and

failures at communicating with one another.

Earlier I said that listening is a two- person process, but even that is

oversimplified. Actually, even an uncomplicated communication has sev-

eral components: the listener, the speaker, the message, various implicit

messages, the context, and, because the process doesn’t flow one way from

speaker to listener, the listener’s response. Even a brief consideration of

these elements in the listening process reveals more reasons for misunder-

standing than simply bad faith on the part of the listener.

“What Are You Trying to Say?”

The message is the point of what a speaker says. But the message sent isn’t

always the one intended.

54
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

A family of four is invited to spend Sunday afternoon at the

lake house of friends of the father. When the teenage daughter asks

if she can bring along a friend, her father says, “I don’t think we

should bring extra guests when we’re invited to dinner.” The daughter

looks hurt, and the man’s wife says, “You’re being silly; they never mind

extra company.” The man gets angry and withdraws, brooding over his

feeling that his wife always takes the children’s side and never listens to

him.

The problem here is a common one: the message sent wasn’t the

one intended. One of the unfortunate things we learn along with being

“polite” and not being “selfish” is not to say directly what we want. Instead

of saying “I want . . . ,” we say “Maybe we should . . . ” or “Do you want . . . ?”

When we’re taking a trip in the car and we get hungry, we say “Isn’t it

getting late?” (When I was growing up I learned that guests weren’t sup-

posed to put people to any trouble. If you went to someone’s house and

wanted a glass of water, you didn’t ask; you looked thirsty. If they offered

you something, you politely declined. Only if they insisted was it okay to

accept. A really good boy waited until a glass of water was offered at least

twice before accepting.)

Because this convention of indirectness is so universal, it doesn’t usu-

ally cause problems. If the other person in the room says “Are you cold?”

you can assume he means “Can we turn up the heat?” But indirectness

can cause problems when stronger feelings are involved. The father in

our example didn’t want his daughter to bring a friend. Perhaps his wife

was right; the people who invited them wouldn’t mind. But somehow
he

minded. Maybe he wanted his daughter to remain more a part of the fam-

ily and less an independent person with friends of her own. Or maybe he

wanted her to be part of the grownups’ conversation, instead of off with

her friend, because he found it easier to talk about the children’s doings

than his own. That’s the trouble with being indirect: there are always a lot

of
maybe
s
.

When we’re conflicted over certain of our own needs, we may infer

(rightly or wrongly) that others would object to even hearing our wishes,

much less acceding to them. Because indirectness leads to so much mis-

understanding, it does more harm than good. Two people can’t have an

honest disagreement about whether or not they want to move to another

How Communication Breaks Down
55

city as long as they engage in diversionary arguments about whether going

or staying would be better for the children.2

One reason others argue with us in a way that seems to negate our

feelings is that we blur the distinction between our feelings and the facts.

Instead of saying “I don’t want her to bring a friend,” the father tries to

cloud his motives and bolster his argument by appealing to
should
s. When

his wife argues with what he says instead of what he means, he feels

rejected.

Like every listener, he measured the intentions of other

speakers by what they said—or what he heard—and asked

that they measure him by what he meant to say.

As speakers we want to be heard—not merely listened to—we want

to be understood, heard for what we think we’re saying, for what we know

we meant. Similar impasses occur when we insist we said one thing and our

listener heard another. Instead of saying “What I meant to say was . . . ,” we

go on insisting what we
did
say.

“Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?”

Implicit messages tell us more than what’s being said; they tell us how we’re

meant to receive what’s being said. Depending on the situation, “Let’s

have lunch” could mean “I’m hungry,” “I’d like to see you again,” “No, I

don’t want to go to dinner with you,” or “Please leave now; I’m busy.” The

statements “I love you” and “I’m sorry” are notorious for having multiple

meanings. Knowing the other person can make it easier to decode implicit

messages; speculating about his or her motives can make it harder.

According to Gregory Bateson, one of the founders of family therapy,

all communications have two levels of meaning:
report
and
command
.3 The

2There are times, however, when the most effective statement of what you want is less than

completely candid. For people who have trouble saying no, rather than trying to explain

why they don’t want to do something, it may be easier to say “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

3Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson,
Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry
(New

York: Norton, 1951).

56
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

report (or message) is the information conveyed by the words. The sec-

ond or command level (which Bateson called
metacommunication
) conveys

information about how the report is to be taken and a statement of the

nature of the relationship.

If a wife scolds her husband for running the dishwasher when it’s only

half full and he says okay but turns around and does the same thing two

days later, she may be annoyed that he doesn’t listen to her. She means the

message. But maybe he didn’t like the metamessage. Maybe he doesn’t like

her telling him what to do as though she were his mother.

In attempting to define the nature of our relationships we qualify our

messages by posture, facial expression, and tone of voice. For example,

a rising inflection on the last two words turns “You did that on purpose”

from an accusation to a question. The whole impact of a statement may

change depending on which words are emphasized. Consider the differ-

ence between “Are
you
telling me it isn’t true?” and “Are you telling me

it
isn’t
true?” Pauses, gestures, and gaze also tell us how to interpret what’s

being said. Although we may not need the ponderous term
metacommuni-

cation
, misunderstandings about how messages should be taken is a major

reason for problems in listening.

One winter when I was working hard and feeling sorry for myself, I

wrote to a sympathetic friend and said jokingly that I was running away to

spend two weeks on the white beaches of a deserted Caribbean island. The

only trouble was that I didn’t
say
it, I
wrote
it, and she missed the irony I

intended. The medium didn’t carry my tone of voice or the facial expres-

sion that modified the message. Instead of getting the sympathy I was

(indirectly) asking for, I got back a rather testy note saying that it’s nice to

know that some people have the time and money to indulge themselves.

We
know what we mean; problems arise when we expect others to.

How is our communication to be taken? Is it chat? A confession? An out-

pouring of emotion? When our listeners fail to grasp that we’re upset and

need to have our feelings listened to, who’s to blame?

A woman told her husband that something her boss said made her

afraid she might be in for trouble at work. The husband responded by say-

ing no, he didn’t think so; it didn’t sound that way. When she replied that

he didn’t listen to her, both of them got upset. She was annoyed because

he didn’t listen to her feelings. He was hurt because he
was
listening. He

just didn’t realize how upset she was.

How Communication Breaks Down
57

Perhaps to some people this woman’s upset would have been apparent.

Maybe a friend would have realized that she needed to have her feelings

acknowledged, not disagreed with. But she wasn’t married to that friend.

She was married to a man who didn’t automatically understand how she

wanted to be listened to. (Some people try to make that clear: “I’m worried

about something, and I need to talk about it.” “I need some advice.” “I just

need you to listen.”)

E-mail makes correspondence so easy that people often send messages

in a personal frame of mind that get read by someone in a business frame

of mind.

Long- distance boyfriend sends his girlfriend an e-mail in the morn-

ing, saying, “Good morning.” She’s at work and doesn’t respond. He later

sends another message with a specific question, and she replies with an

answer to the question. He responds with a hurt message about how she

couldn’t bother to take the time to say good morning. What their e-mails