Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com
"Thanks for Listening"
| I was talking to Laura. Telling
her how hard it has been to work alone for so many years.
I had been looking at the critique I wrote of Goleman's
UTNE magazine so-called emotional intelligence test,
which he later asked them to remove from the site. I
wrote that in 1999. I was telling her that I haven't
found anyone who has wanted to come help me, except
Jerren who had too many of his own needs. Then I told her that I didn't want her to feel guilty but even she didn't have much interest in emotional intelligence. She said something like "What makes you think that?" I said, "Because you don't read about it in your free time. You don't say 'I want to learn more about emotional intelligence.' You don't read about it on the Internet." I am sure this made her start feeling guilty, attacked, defensive etc. But then I said "And it hurts me to think that when we were in Obrajillo you left me because you didn't have enough to do, when actually there was lots and lots you could have done and we could have been doing together." Then she quickly said in a frustrated and defensive tone, "Aagh! But that is not the only reason I left!" I could tell by her tone of voice how defensive she was feeling. So I stopped talking. She got silent and I got silent. I thought about other times when I was talking to her and she felt so defensive she couldn't listen anymore. I need someone who can listen to me. Listen until I am finished talking. Listen without interrupting unless it is an interruption which shows understanding and gives me the green light to keep talking. But Laura is so insecure and feels so guilty about leaving, sleeping with her ex-boyfriend, and possibly getting pregnant, that she just can't listen. So sometimes when I need her most to listen, she can't. And I resent it. And I want to say something hurtful like "Thanks for listening." But I know that saying that is not helpful. And I know I only want to hurt her because it hurts so much that she stopped me from talking when I so desperately need someone to listen to me. I desperately need someone to understand me. I think of Rob Emmerling who showed basically zero understanding and who defamed me, misrepresented me, hurt me profesionally and personally. It hurts so much to feel so misunderstood. So misrepresented. If people only understood how much pain I was in from what I have seen in the world.... If they only felt the pain I have.... I couldn't say anything at all to Laura. We both layed there in silence for several minutes. Eventually she turned away. Before that she had been stroking my arm or caressing my head while I talked. Until it got to her. Then it became too painful. She pulled away. I felt left alone. Abandoned I suppose we could say. I know that what I said was not helpful to our relationship or to her self-esteem or self-confidence etc. I know that telling her that she isn't interested in emotional intelligence isn't likely to help her have much desire to read about it on her own. But I don't know what else to say. Maybe I do but it is buried under all the dysfunctional and love destroying things I learned in my family and in the USA. Things like saying "Thanks for listening." This reminds me of Gretchen, an ex-girlfriend, saying to her mother, "Thanks a lot" to her mother when her mother failed to help her one time as her brother was beating her up in the basement and Gretchen was screaming for help. Actually Gretchen added something like, "asshole" which conveyed more resentment. She said her mother then hit her also, no doubt because her mother felt guilty for not helping. And it reminds me of a time I was chatting to someone in Peru, in Spanish, and I said "I feel sad". Then they said "Don't be sad." And I thought of saying, "Thanks for your understanding." I told someone about this later and we laughed about it several times. But its not that funny now. It is sad, at least for me, how poor listeners most people are, for one reason or another. One of the main reasons Laura is sometimes a poor listener is because of her own insecurities. And I am the same way sometimes. If she is talking about her ex-boyfriend, it is hard or impossible for me to listen. I have to get up and leave. The idea of her leaving me again and going back to him hurts too much to keep listening to anything about him. I wanted to write about why it is so hard for insecure people to listen, but I am not sure I ever did. So this will have to do I guess. I hope you get the idea. So I was thinking "What else can I say besides 'Thanks for listening'"? I tried to think how I was feeling. That is my advice, after all, to just say "I feel...." followed by a feeling word. About the only things I could come up with were "I feel misunderstood" or "I don't feel very listened to." I was thinking something like "I feel blocked, stopped." In other words, I had been talking but when she said that But I felt afraid to tell her anything else about how I felt. And I felt resentful of her not listening to me. I was trying really hard to say something, because silence is painful for both of us and we can almost always talk about things eventually and both feel better, but as so often happens, the thoughts were all locked in my head and no words would come out. She also could not tell me how she felt, as she did one day. I wrote about that in the article called talking about feelings (link below). So later I just got up and left the room. I knew she wouldn't like me to leave, she feels abandoned when I walk out, but I couldn't stay. It was too painful to lay there in silence. And I was feeling resentful about her needs. She knows that sometimes I don't want her around or don't want to be around her. She will say "Does my presence bother you?" Not in a sarcastic attacking way, but in more of a hurt way. She doesn't want to be around me if I don't want her to be near me. But of course it would be just about impossible for me to say "Yes, it does." I am too afraid of hurting her. In other words I am too afraid of pushing her away, and her leaving me. I wrote about this on my page on codepenency. I wrote how codependent people are basically afraid of losing their partners. But also, I simply don't want to hurt her with those words, and I don't know what else to say. So I stay silent and think about it. It seems so easy to write about all of this. It seems so clear. But it is so hard to put it all into practice. I wish so much I could show this to Laura and she could read it and understand it. But I have to translate it to Spanish. It takes so much effort. There are so many things I want to do. I feel so discouraged, so overwhelmed sometimes. I need someone to listen to me so badly. I feel desperate. I feel resentful towards Laura, who is laying here next to me (it is about four thirty in the morning now, btw). I feel resentful towards her because I need someone to listen to me and she is here and she can't do it. Of course it is not her fault she doesn't speak English and can't read this. It's not her fault she is so insecure. Remember her father abandoned her, her mother beat her. Her brother also hit her and insulted her. And she comes from one of the most insecure and dysfunctional cultures I've ever come across in all my years of traveling. I wrote something else about listening and how the Catholic culture seems to produce people who can't listen in the file called "If you want me to talk to you." (link below). Now I guess I can say sincerly, not sarcastically, "thanks for listening" to anyone who is reading this. I know people read these things, at least a few people do, or at least they visit the main page of my site, because the tracker program tells me how many visitors I have, but few people actually write me and say "I just wanted to let you know I read so and so article and I understand." In fact, I almost never get that kind of thing. Which reminds me of something else I wanted to write about, so I guess I will end this here. S. Hein -- |