Active Listening: The Modern Couple’s Al Qaeda

“It’s like you don’t hear a word I say anymore. Like you’ve grown tired of understanding me.”

This was what Anna said before she moved out five years ago. Technically, she said a lot of things before the door finally shut, unfortunately this is the only statement I remember and I just remembered it Thursday.

While holding up the alley wall of a downtown dive, I was lucky enough to share my cigarette with the millionth arguing couple of the evening. Being only the three of us in that damp, reverberating tunnel of early-twenties angst, I was an involuntarily witness to the dramatic reenactment of every breakup I experienced between ’02 and ’07, including Anna’s.

She wanted to leave earlier.

He didn’t know because he can’t read minds.

He should know her by now.

Blah, blah, blah.

This continued on through the myriad of classic problems all of us experience when communicating with the opposite sex.

When you no longer yearn to know what the other person is thinking, the relationship has run its course. It’s harsh but true.

We have filled our lives with subterfuge to the point where we can barely identify the needs of the person closest to us. I stopped caring what Anna thought or said. Not rudely but complacently, seeing as two years prior I was hanging from her every syllable. I allowed the minutia of life to blind me from the responsibility I assumed when I told her I loved her and would do anything for her.

“We have communication problems because you’re phoning it in half the time,” Anna once texted.

We’ve all heard the comedian’s riff on relationships: what she says vs. what he hears. It’s exaggerated, but what makes it funny is that it’s rooted in truth. Now, what if that same routine included how our communication issues stem from inflated self-worth, impossible needs and expectations, and an entertainment industry selling dishonesty and sexism dirt cheap? It probably wouldn’t go over like gangbusters because the truth is never funny. In fact it’s ugly and its mother dresses it funny.

Anna: “You should have known I wanted a red coat. How do you not know by now that I love red? Everything I own is red.”

Atticus: “Exactly. Everything you own is red. Thought you might want to step out a bit and try something new. Oh, and about the coat, you’re welcome.”

The degeneration of intersex communication is almost Pavlovian. Early in a relationship we are starving for sex, comfort, sex, companionship, sex; a hungry kid hears the ice cream truck a mile away. As time passes, the fragments of reality reassemble and we get lost again in the mundane. The hunger that drove us was rewarded with companionship, and like a kid that eats ice cream every day, we begin taking for granted the deliciousness of love because we are no longer thankful for it. We have been conditioned only to expect it.

How do we right the ship? Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is absurdist guruism that complicates our instincts. Besides, the title is caustic and tantamount to an anatomy teacher reciting, “Milk, milk, lemonade…”. In my opinion, the solution is far simpler than we believe.

The ability to communicate well with your partner is a free choice made every day. Tear yourself away from the reality show and ask your boyfriend how his day was. Stop playing videogames for ten minutes and clean up the kitchen with your wife. Take a night off from partying with your friends to cuddle up on the couch and take in a movie. If you genuinely want this person in your life, you need to make them an active part of your life. We assume the roles of mother/father, cook/handyman, cleaner/provider, but we forget that the person making us dinner or working fifty hours every week needs to be listened to and loved just like us.

The best part about Anna was her smile, and in the clutter of everyday life I stopped trying to see it.