Love Your Wife More Than You Love Yourself – Part 4

Listen to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like the guy in this video.
Women are a mystery. I know it may be overgeneralization to say this – so apply whatever amount of common sense is needed to understand it.

Women don’t want you to fix their problem, as much as they want to feel understood, acknowledged, or listened to.

There are times, obviously, when what she really wants is for you to fix the drain under the kitchen sink.

But there are many times, she just needs to air her grievances to her best friend. She doesn’t want you to solve or fix the problem, but to listen to her.

This is hard for us. Men are fixers. It’s in our nature as men to find broken things and fix them.
Women do want things to be fixed. But more importantly, they just want to be heard, understood, loved, accepted.

It may seem counter-intuitive and self-sabotaging to sit in that situation, where she pours her heart out, and you just listen.

You would not think that it is difficult, but learning to listen has been one of the toughest challenges of my relationship with my wife. I’ve always got a solution, and answer, a suggestion. Keeping those quiet long enough to fulfill her actual need, though, the need to be heard and understood – that’s the real challenge.