#471 - Why You Feel Unheard in Dating (And How to Fix It)
Every once in a while I'm struck by how common skills aren't so common after all. Today I want to talk about one of them: developing good communication skills. I'm not talking about the ability to give a TED Talk or become a world class orator.
I'm talking about the simple ability to communicate with another person. That sounds easy enough, but as many of you know all too well, it's not something everyone is gifted with. The good news is it's a skill that can be learned, no matter how long you've gone without it.
This week I had a discovery call with a woman who set the stage right away. She told me she was 73, thought we'd met at a retreat several years ago, and wanted help with her dating life. I was glad to take the call. I genuinely wanted to help her.
As we got started, I tried to get to the heart of what she was looking for. And it reminded me of an old joke.
Wife: "Can you stop yawning while I'm talking to you?"
Husband: "I'm not yawning, I'm trying to say something!"
During that call I managed to get out a couple of questions, but the rest was her telling me everything except what I'd actually asked. Every time I tried to steer us toward what she really wanted, she rolled right past me. I'd ask, she'd answer a different question entirely, and we'd drift further from anything I could actually help her with.
I want to be honest about how that felt, because I think you've felt it too. It's frustrating. Not in an angry way, but in a quiet, deflating way. You start out leaning in, wanting to connect, and slowly you realize the other person isn't there with you. They're performing at you. After a while you stop reaching, because reaching takes two. I finally had to end the conversation by letting her know I couldn't help her, and I hung up feeling like we'd never really met at all.
Communication is a two way street, and over the years I've learned that the greatest communication skill you can develop is to listen. If you keep talking, sharing ideas and offering opinions nobody asked for, you'll wear out just about anyone sitting across from you. They may smile and nod. They may even agree. But inside, they're quietly checking out, the same way I was on that call.
I've felt this from the other side of the table too. I've met a few women online, and when we got to the point of actually talking on the phone, I got a real lesson in listening, and in how not to do it. The conversation goes one-sided when one person takes control and never pauses to hear a response, let alone ask a single question back. I'd offer something about myself and it would vanish into the air, unacknowledged, while she moved on to her next point. By the end of the call I didn't feel rejected. I felt invisible, which is somehow worse.
More than once, I've ended a call with: "Thank you for your time. I don't think we're a good match." It wasn't that they were bad women. It's that they preferred to talk and not listen, and they never noticed the difference.
If you're a woman reading this, I'm not pointing the finger at you. I hear from women all the time who've sat through the exact same thing with men. He spends the whole call talking about himself, or walking through every chapter of his ex, or reciting the long list of bad dates and disappointments that brought him to that moment. She showed up hoping to be asked one real question, and instead she got a one-man show. So let's be clear. This isn't a man problem or a woman problem. It's a listening problem, and it doesn't care who you are.
Here's what I want you to sit with. We all carry a deep need to feel heard. It might be the most underrated longing there is. When someone truly listens to you, asks a follow-up question, remembers what you said and circles back to it, something in you relaxes. You feel like you matter. And you simply cannot give that gift to a partner, new or longtime, while you're doing all the talking.
So for real communication to happen, you have to ask questions and then listen to the answers. And I mean truly listen, without quietly rehearsing your response while the other person is still speaking. Listening isn't waiting for your turn. It's setting your turn down for a moment so someone else can feel what it's like to be received.
If you're not sure whether listening is the thing quietly getting in your way, that's exactly the kind of blind spot a Discovery Call is built to uncover. Book one with me and let's take an honest, no pressure look at what's really happening in your conversations.