Free FOR MEN ONLY by Shaunti Feldhahn

we can be alone (when I’m not so tired)? I want to be able to really hear you, and honestly, I can’t now.”

    Those two or three minutes were an incredibly good investment if they still make her feel loved a year later!
    Rounding Second
    Give her your full mental attention.
    (What most men think: “If I’m listening, I’m not doing anything.”)
             
    When Shaunti and I were living in New York City, one of our friends was an acoustic engineer who designed opera houses. He seemed like the perfect candidate for the old question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
    He answered quite seriously. “No, it doesn’t. It makes a
noise
, but sound has to be perceived. The sound waves have to be listened to in order for the noise to be a sound. Just them hitting a tree stump or a rock doesn’t count.”
    We can apply the same idea to listening. If we’re just sitting there, not actually paying attention to what our wife is saying, we might as well be a stump. Listening isn’t “I’ll sit here and let her bombard me.” It is an active practice of identifying her feelings, considering what’s she’s really saying, and listening for the story behind the story.
    That’s why listening isn’t the same thing as “doing nothing.” And that’s why real listening can really wear a guy out. Because most women don’t have an emotional and even physical limit on their ability to listen and process emotion, they don’t understand that most men do. They don’t realize it is almost a physical limitation, like the mental equivalent of cardiovascular capacity.
    I can be totally willing to listen to Shaunti share her feelings about something. But just like my body would shut down if I tried to run too many miles, my brain just starts checking out after a while, whether or not I want it to.
    The key is to set yourself up for success by mentioning this to your wife or girlfriend at some neutral time. Use this book, point to this section, and explain the limits of your particular listening capacity. Then, when you
are
in an emotionally charged conversation for a little too long and you start to zone out, you can tell her, “I’m so sorry, I totally missed that. I’m reaching the end of my ability to hear.” Blame it on you—not her.
    Finally, realize that “listening” doesn’t usually mean a marathon. As one male marriage counselor told us, “Guys need to know that their wives aren’t looking to them to be their best girlfriend and listen for hours. For most women, even taking a fifteen-minute walk with them a few evenings a week would totally fill their need.”

    “Listening” doesn’t usually mean a marathon.
    Rounding Third
    Listen for the right thing—how she
feels
about the problem.
    (What most men think: “I should filter out all that emotion and listen for the facts.”)
             
    If you want to make it home, you have to round third base. As we said earlier, when men are faced with a problem with emotional dimensions, we turn task oriented. Put emotions in one box, objective circumstances in another, then ignore the emotion box in order to nail a solution.
    But this sets us up for big trouble. We’re busy trying to filter
out
a wife’s feelings because we think they get in the way of solving the real problem—instead of holding the key to the real problem. We think that she’s getting “too emotional” and it is clouding her thinking—never realizing that for most women, not only are their feelings the main point, but they’re probably also perfectly capable of analytical thought
and
strong emotions at the same time. They just need to have their feelings listened to in order to “get somewhere.”
    So in order to listen
in the way she needs
, we have to do what does not come naturally and—at least at first—not present a solution. We have to retrain ourselves to do something that will initially seem even weirder. Instead