“The most desired gift of love is not diamonds, or roses, or chocolate. It’s focused attention.” - Anonymous

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

8 November

How to Handle a Woman: One Right Way. 

Suppose they’re talking about you at work behind your back and you’re really angry, and that night when you sit down to dinner at 6:00 PM you ask your wife how her day went. And your wife says, “They’re talking about me at work behind my back and I’m really angry.” And your very first thought is, “hey, that’s exacrtly what I wanted to unload onto you about!” And instead you exercise some emotional self-discipline and say, simply, “tell me about it.” And she does, in a big way. Like, for the next two hours she does 90% of the talking. You’re the poster child for empathy; all you do is ask clarifying questions or make summarizing statements. Somewhere along the line you learned [by watching her?] the one-mouth-two-ears thing, and they need to be used in those proportions. In short, you don’t judge, you don’t fix anything. At this particular point she’s not looking for a string of answers but a shoulder to lean on. The last thing she needs is for you to say, “Why did you do that?! Or, “This is what you need to say to him tomorrow.” Never mind, “That was really stupid.”  It’d be far more respectful for you to say, humbly, “So you said this and she said that and you said this other; do I have that right?” and then go back to listening big time. Or, “What do you think would happen if you had said _____ to her instead?” Or, “That was the very best thing you could have said/done!” Or, “I’m really proud that you _____!”  Assuming you handle those two hours right, assuming you’ve learnt how to listen-listen-listen, it’s possible you will have provided her with 

·      a chance to diffuse a ton of obfuscating emotional pyrotechnics so she can find her way through to a workable solution or two, and

·      a service no man has ever given her in her life - not her father, or her brother, or her teacher[s], or her priest, or any of her boy friend[s]. It’s quite possible that this two-hour experience is a great water-shed moment in her life, in this relationship. 

You listen effectively to her from 6 to 8 on the night you want to unload on her and you could end up with a friend for life. When all the dust is settled, that friend-for-life thing could be far more important than your eventually answering her question later: “By the way, how was your day?”