<body><div>Key points<ul><li>What makes deep, empathic listening almost impossibly hard, especially when we are in conflict? </li><li>I’m going to tell you the secret—and you are probably not going to like it.</li><li>The challenge is finding a practice that works for you.</li></ul>Listening is hard.And you suck at it.As it turns out, listening is a kind of superpower—a superpower that, honestly, relatively few people have. As a relationship scientist and couple therapist, I work with a lot of couples across the continuum from ridiculously happy to heartbreakingly unhappy and one thing that they all have in common is how bad they are at listening to each other.I know everyone has already heard more than enough about active listening and how important it is. Every relationship expert out there has told us that listening to and understanding our partners is essential to a healthy loving relationship. And yet we all know that somehow it just isn’t as easy as it sounds. I mean, technically it’s not hard, but in practice it seems to be all but impossible.Why is that?For me, listening has a very particular definition. The kind of listening that nurtures intimacy and connection is listening that is rooted in the intention to empathically and compassionately understand. More specifically, the intention to seek to compassionately understand my partner before, and maybe even instead of seeking to be understood. Unfortunately, perhaps despite our best intentions, this is precisely the type of listening that hardest for us to do.I met with a couple recently who started the session by telling me that they had a “major blow-up.” It occurred to me in that moment that the primary thing that fuels a major blow-up is a desperate, almost panic-level desire just to simply be heard, understood, and cared about. Both partners are desperately fighting to be compassionately understood, and neither of them is even really trying to simply listen. They are like two firehoses pointed directly at each other on full blast. Everybody’s talking and nobody’s listening. Don’t be shy. Raise your hand and admit you do this, too. I know I do.Why is listening so much harder than it sounds?What makes deep, empathic listening almost impossibly hard, especially when we are in conflict?Because our partner is often saying something that we don’t like and don’t want to hear. When our partner is saying something that we don’t like hearing, we experience it like a porcupine quill jabbed right into one the places where we are the most vulnerable.And we catch fire.When we feel that sting, we catch fire and reactively go into fight or flight to defend our vulnerability. And fight and flight are about escaping or destroying, but listening is about receiving and caring. We cannot be both simultaneously reactive and listening to compassionately understand.And here is the key to why actively listening is basically impossible in practice. Most of us, almost all of us, are completely at the mercy of our reactivity. We have no way of even beginning to behave with skill and wisdom, with an open and receptive heart, when we are feeling upset and defensive.And no one ever teaches us this skill.So, if we all basically suck at listening under the best of circumstances and even superheroes completely abandon all pretense to even try to listen when their partner says something they don’t want to hear, what are we mere mortals supposed to do?Well, I’m going to tell you the secret—and you are probably not going to like it.Practice. You need a practice through which you can cultivate the ability to tame your reactivity.This ability does not come easily and is the main missing ingredient in all the advice that we get about active listening and all the therapies that try to help us heal our relationships. The advice-givers always make active listening sounds so easy, so simple that it almost seems insulting to even mention it. And yet, I promise you, most of them can’t do it either. It is easy advice to give and extraordinarily difficult advice to follow. Because it takes deep and dedicated practice. And not just ordinary “I’ll poke around on my language app” practice, but genuinely committed spiritual practice.How do I learn how to wrest control of the moment away from my injured ego?<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=123pVV_0wCZTu9p00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=123pVV_0wCZTu9p00" width="639" height="427" ><figcaption>Practice like your love depends on it.</figcaption></figure>I have come to believe that it is essential to have some kind of contemplative practice—whether that is meditation or contemplative prayer, or a genuinely spiritual yoga focused on embodied presence (not just getting a good sweat on). We must practice if we are going to learn how to compassionately host our intense reactivity so that we have any chance of being both simultaneously upset and openhearted enough to compassionately understand what our partners are saying to us—especially when we don’t like what they’re saying.For me, the practice is mindfulness meditation, specifically the practice of Zen. For others, the practice might be some form of contemplative prayer, spiritually oriented yoga, or something that guides us in the practices of humility, service to others, grace, and kindness. These are practices that help us learn that when we are on fire, we can stop, drop, and roll. We can stop and refrain from causing harm, even when we are upset. We can drop into our practice to hold our reactivity with awareness and compassion. We can roll forward with our commitment to seek to understand before seeking to be understood.The challenge is finding a practice that works for you. And, once you do…Practice your ass off. Discover that right now, you suck at it, and practice anyway. Practice until your hands shake and your heart is sore. Practice everywhere. Practice in line at the pharmacy. Practice when you’re happy. Practice when you’re sad. Practice when you want to, and practice when you’d rather do anything else. Practice as if your life and love are at stake. Because they are.And what, specifically, are we to be practicing?<h2>The Keys to Skillful Empathic Listening</h2>1. Set your intention. Even when I don’t like hearing what my partner is sharing with me, I will listen with the sole intention of compassionately understanding. Maybe my partner is telling me about something I did that upset them. Maybe my partner is expressing an opinion that I strongly disagree with. Maybe my partner is blaming me for something that has gone wrong between us. Regardless, I will set my intention to first seek to understand before seeking to be understood.2. Hold your own reactivity with compassion. When my partner is sharing something with me that I don’t like hearing, I am going to have strong negative emotions (hurt, anger, surprise, jealousy, fear) and an intense urge to defend myself, rebut what they are saying, or express my hurt or outrage. I’m going to have to host all my strong thoughts and feelings, while still listening with an open heart. My partner might say, “You did x and that was selfish and uncaring,” and I’m going to feel attacked, stung, and want to argue “my side,” criticize my partner for something they do, or maybe just withdraw into sullen silence. I will really, really, really want to do all those things. My emotions will be very strong. My head will be full of thoughts about what I want to say in response. And instead of giving in to any of that, I will take a deep breath and refocus my attention on empathically understanding what my partner is trying to share with me.3. Listen with your heart. If I want to empathically and compassionately understand what my partner is saying to me, I have to momentarily put down my own thoughts and opinions, my own reactivity, and engage my empathic imagination to put myself in their shoes and see and feel the world from their perspective. If my partner is telling me that I hurt them, I have to feel their hurt more acutely than my own defensiveness. If my partner is telling me that they are angry with me, I have to empathize with their anger more than with my innocence. If my partner is telling me what they don’t like about my favorite show, I have to care about what they care about more than care about persuading them otherwise. I want my heart to understand your heart, even when I wish it were otherwise.4. Finally, know that this is a deeply spiritual practice that will set you both free. When I can have my own reactivity without acting on it, when I can feel stung and upset and still listen with an open heart, then I am truly an instrument of the way of intimacy.ReferencesCordova, J. V. (2025). The Mindful Path to Intimacy: Cultivating a Deeper Connection with Your Partner. Guilford Press. New York, NY.</div></body>

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Listening Is Hard and You Suck at It

What makes deep, empathic listening almost impossibly hard, especially when we are in conflict?. I’m going to tell you the secret—and you are probably not going to like it. The challenge is finding a practice that works for you. Listening is hard. And you suck at it. As...

Listening Is Hard and You Suck at It

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