Building Better Skills

Last year I taught a class for married couples, something I had avoided doing for about ten years. For one thing, who am I to teach on marriage? I’ve only been married 42 years; I’ve only had one husband. Really, my experience is pretty limited.

People kept asking and I caved. But the timing felt right. Scott and I had been working on learning some new skills. They seemed to be a good fit for a discussion on marriage. The more I learned, the less I knew. I became increasingly aware of the distance between my intentions and my reality. And honestly - this is a good thing. Certainty is a relationship killer.

It also confirms what Richard Bach said, “We teach best what we most need to learn.”

I was prepared to teach a class on marriage when I realized how desperately I needed to work on my own. The main clue was exposed when I noticed how we struggle to really listen to each other. After knowing each other for 48 years, it is easy to assume we can complete each other’s sentences. Sometimes we can. I can predict with amazing accuracy what Pete is going to yell at coaches, players and refs during UVA football and basketball games. But do I know what he is most afraid of? Do I know what he is interested in us accomplishing in the next ten years of our lives? Maybe not.

This listening deficit is not exclusive to my marriage; it really is much broader than that. But, it seems to me, in marriage, if we are not listening well to one another, if we cannot validate one another, if we cannot mess up and make amends with one another, the loneliness will kill us.

So how do we get better at listening? As I suspected, it turns out it is a teachable skill set. And I want to talk about it. Write about it. And eventually get around to wrestling with why we need to improve our listening skills as a function of learning how to repair broken relationships.