TL;DR: Sometimes I struggle to be a good listener, especially when I don’t agree with the viewpoint my partner is presenting. I think it’s because I tend to be conflict-avoidant. I know this isn’t super healthy and I really want my boyfriend to be able to be his true self around me. Do you have any advice for turning my listening ears on and not getting emotional while he speaks?
Hello! Overall, I think I have a great relationship but I know I personally struggle to be a good listener sometimes. I’m naturally pretty conflict-avoidant and it can be really hard for me to hear a differing viewpoint from my boyfriend, especially if there isn’t much of a compromise or a bridge between his viewpoint and mine. Sometimes this is silly little things like “I have my heart set on a red rug for the living room” while I want a blue one (not a real example, but things along those lines). But sometimes it’s bigger things like our views on family or spirituality or careers. I find it really hard to fully embrace what he’s saying without trying to contort it into something that makes sense to me (not necessarily twisting it to be a completely different viewpoint altogether, but still different than the way he’s expressing it).
Sometimes it feels really hard to have conversations. We both speak the same language (English) and are native English speakers but it still seems to get warped because we use different phrases or one person will be being figurative and the other literal (or vice-versa). I think both of us might be a little on the spectrum but instead of that making us that much more aware of saying what we mean, I think it just makes us say things that make sense to ourselves and then making an assumption that the other person got it because “how could they not; that was crystal clear”.
I really want to be a better listener and stop filtering what he says through my own lens and what specifically makes sense to me. I have a tendency to be a little controlling because it’s hard for me to accept when things don’t make sense. Instead of him saying “I really want a red rug” and me being able to accept that and move on, my brain goes to “Well why do you want a red rug? Didn’t you just say last month you thought blue was a super calming color for the living room? Did your mind change or were you saying that last month to appease me?”.
I feel like this need to make things make sense holds me back from hearing his full truth. Because, if in that instance I just accepted he wants a red rug, and then asked him to show me some examples of things he liked, I might find out all the blue rugs weren’t at all what we were looking for, or that he had a red rug growing up and he loved it and it meant something to him, or that he just happened to see a red rug he liked more than any of the others, and suddenly wanted not just a red rug, but that specific red rug. I know this is a silly example, but things like this have happened between us.
Is it just about accepting that sometimes we’ll have different opinions and that’s okay? And/or that sometimes he’ll have a different opinion and any way he justifies it just won’t make sense to me because we have different viewpoints and upbringings and all that good stuff? Is it wrong that I ask why he thinks that way, or am I asking him to defend who he is in a mean way?
I guess sometimes I have a concern that we’ll come to something we disagree on and realize there’s no bridge and no compromise, and that’ll be the end. A perfectly good and normal Saturday would end in me packing up my things and leaving and never seeing him again. All because we disagreed on something.
I ultimately know it’s a little silly and that it’s more wrong of me to be hesitant about him sharing things when they feel different to me. I really want him to share with me. I want to create a space where we can be open with each other with no judgement. But I recognize a big part of that is me not panicking when he presents a different (or even opposite) point of view.
Where’s the line between being curious and being rude asking him to “defend” his thoughts and actions? Or should I just learn to drop things?
I know this probably seems silly but I do want to get better. We’ve gotten in some arguments before where he’s said opinions he had been holding back and they felt like massive truth bombs, where, if he would’ve said them in the first moment he thought them (or around that time) it wouldn’t have built into this intense thing. But I don’t entirely blame him, because I think he holds certain things back because he doesn’t know how exactly I’ll handle them.
I don’t think I fly off the handle or act abusive when he presents a different point of view, but he knows I get uncomfortable by certain things. It’s especially hard when he has a rigid point of view that will never change, and it could be different than mine, because that could lead us down a road of questioning the relationship. I do know, though, it’s better to find out now than later. It’s still just difficult to hear, though.
What kinds of questions can I ask him when I run into this situation so that I can understand him better without making it seem like I’m being judgmental? Because sometimes I just want clarification because there have been MANY occasions where it turned out we believed the same thing but phrased it differently so it didn’t seem the same. Like, if he suddenly said he wanted a red rug after saying previously he wanted blue, and then he shows me rugs he likes and they actually have so much blue alongside the red that I would personally classify them as blue (just for instance).
Sometimes we even find ourselves nitpicking little phrases and words. “You said ‘some’ and I didn’t know that qualified as ‘some’ to you” or “You said we would spend time together Friday evening but you were out with friends when I tried to go out and do something with you” and then the response is “I was out with friends at 5:00 PM. 5:00 PM isn’t evening to me. I was going to go out with you after.”
I never realized people could see even simple things so differently and that’s not me trying to be narrow-minded. Things that I wouldn’t have even questioned I’m suddenly head-scratching over how interpretation (and the same for him).
Basically, I would love some advice to listen better to eliminate confusion and to get to know him more fully. Thank you!!!