Learning how to Listen

I am a counsellor by trade. I listen for a living. But for a long time now, I haven't really listened to my husband with the aim of just allowing him to share.

I have listened intently to catch him out on a lie...I have listened for inconsistencies and half truths. I would like to think I only stopped really listening to him when he started lying to me...but the truth is I stopped listening a long time ago.

I stopped listening to all the things my husband wasn't saying. I brushed it off thinking that he just wasn't the emotional type. I stopped watching his body language and missed all the times he eyes should have crinkled when he smiled at me, but didn't...when he should have been patient and kind with me, but wasn't.

I stopped paying attention.

I stopped listening and missed the cues within the silence that told me that something was seriously wrong. I made the mistake of thinking that all relationships go through stressful periods...its only in hindsight that I now know that what I was going through wasn't stress - it was infidelity.

Yesterday I listened to him. I bit my tongue, so as not to respond to issues I normally would have had a 2 hour conversation around.  I listened, because I realise that I don't really know my husband at all...and maybe I am partly to blame.

With every issue that comes up, I rush to fix it - to respond and debate for hours on end. I am exhausted by my own need to sort it out...sort him out. I talk and talk and talk, until I can't bear the sound of my own voice.

When I offered to just listen, he was surprised.  He said that what he had to say would just make me mad and he didn't want to ruin our day. I promised I wouldn't... he didn't believe me, but tested me anyway. It was good for us both. He spoke softly and every now and then glanced at me, to check whether I was about to pounce on what he had said. And to be honest, I really wanted to...but if I did, he was never going to share with me again.

So I listened and afterwards thanked him for sharing. Shaking off the need to make this a teachable moment for him and I allowed it to become a teachable moment for me instead. Maybe its time to start listening again and somewhere in ether we will find each other again.