Listen Your Way To A Better Relationship

by Mark Hunter, PCC

Listening is your greatest tool in any relationship.

My wife is naturally a great listener.  I find her reflecting things I said to her that I don't even remember saying (often to her great benefit and amusement as you might imagine.)

But I trust that it's actually a function of her both hearing me fully, and listening for the best parts of me at the same time. That means not just listening to the words I say, but actually hearing the whole experience of me in the conversation.  She hears the mood, emotion, need, and commitment in my speaking without having to ask, and it's all because she listens for it like she means it and knows it's there.

I'm a trained coach.  My job and my training for sixteen years now has been around listening through words to what's behind them, just like my wife does naturally.  The difference is, she's had none of the training I've had, and that's important to understand. Consider that her listening of me is born simply form her commitment to partnership in our relationship. There's no "training" per se for that kind of commitment. It simply is born from a wonderful combination of love and choice.

In any relationship, the degree to which we listen and the choice of what to listen for is commensurate with what we will be able to hear.  That part that is a choice is the especially juicy bit.  It's clearly the choice that my wife made, because I promise you that all I say in our relationship is not gold - she is just listening for gold, and so she hears it.  I also made that choice and hear the brilliance and gold in her.

The amount and quality of what we are willing and able to truly hear in our partner will make all the difference in ultimately creating a partnership that will weather any storm.  My wife and I hear each other on such a connected level because we know this - she knows it innately, and I know it through years of training.

Either way, the result is a relationship that is based in communication, has us hearing each other past our words, and is intimate in it's level of understanding. It's a co-created partnership generated mostly in the "being quiet" moments and the "hearing" we are doing with each other through our listening for each other's best.

Take the value you see from this and practice either the choice of what to listen for, or the willingness to fully hear each other, and watch your partnership flourish.  And, as a side note, I'll let you in on another little secret: having someone listening that closely to me from love over there, and knowing the level to which I'm being heard, creates much more attention to my speaking over here...

Hear me?