Managing Your Emotions So You Can Truly Listen

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

As you are listening to your spouse’s feelings, the main thing you need to do is manage your own feelings so you can let your partner work out what he or she is trying to communicate with you. This means sitting on your own tongue (so to speak) and waiting patiently while your partner communicates about what he or she is feeling.

This is where the willingness issue that I have been discussing comes into play. This process isn’t comfortable. There’s just no way around that. It’s difficult to listen to your partner tell you how much pain you have caused. But you have to be willing to accept this discomfort if you are going to help your relationship heal.

Not only is it difficult to have to listen to the pain you have caused your partner, but your patience for listening to your spouse could be tried in other ways as well. Perhaps you are the more aggressive person in your relationship and you don’t usually sit patiently while you partner expresses his or her needs. Or perhaps you are a very quick thinker and your partner is a slow thinker. You might become impatient and try to finish your spouse's sentences so you can speed up the process and move on.

None of this is going to serve your relationship. At this point, the best thing you can do is sit patiently and listen to your partner as he or she develops his or her thoughts. Don’t try to defend yourself. Don’t try to edit what your partner has said. Don’t try to stop something you don’t like. Don’t try to finish your partner’s sentences. Don’t stop listening just because it puts you in a bad light. Just sit and listen to what is being shared.

If you want to save your relationship, you'll have to swallow your emotions for a while and listen to what your partner has to say. If you don’t, all you do is prove that you don’t understand what your spouse is going through.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.

For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/

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