The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups (20 page)

“
Nothing’s
the matter with her,” I replied. “That’s the point.”

“Are you insane?” he asked. “You know what she’s like. She just goes on and on and on, and it drives me nuts.”

“Nope. I’m not kidding. And let me tell you what to do the next time she’s talking.”

“What should I do?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

His jaw dropped open. “Are you freaking kidding me?” he asked.

I shook my head and laughed. “No, I’m not. The real problem here isn’t your wife’s chattering.
You
don’t know how to listen.

One of the simplest, yet most difficult things a man can do to foster togetherness is to simply listen to his wife. And stop making faces—really, this isn’t as trivial as you think it is.”

Of course this was when he started rolling his eyes.

“Once you figure it out and you do start listening,” I continued, “you’re gonna be amazed at how much better your relationship will be. Better communication, better understanding, and much, much better sex.”

Of course, that is when he stopped rolling his eyes.

It’s a simple but crucial point. The more a man can listen, and listen well, the more his partner will know that he’s there for her, that he isn’t surreptitiously texting under the table, for example, or thinking about the game on TV when she’s looking for understanding and sympathy. His loved one will be happy to be acknowledged and feel cared about, and that often translates into vastly improved communication and happiness when you’re having sex.

You’re not going to want to have sex when you feel your partner couldn’t be bothered about you. But you will want a lot of sex when you’re perfectly attuned to each other, listening to and acknowledging what each of you has to say. As I’ve found out over the years with my wife—as well as with all the couples who’ve come to me as patients—a deepening of intimacy, security, and desire becomes rooted when a woman knows the man in her life is truly listening.

But there’s an even bigger point: Once you start listening and
the woman you love knows you’re listening for real,
she won’t talk as much.
She won’t need to! Your conversations will become more economical, more succinct, more comprehensible, and a lot more loving. You won’t be at cross-purposes, arguing over every little thing. She won’t be bottling up frustration at you or your relationship and then feeling the need to let it all out in one long spew that leaves you both hurt, confused, and angry.

When you feel like your partner truly listens to you and pays attention, you also find it easier to let go of a lot of the little things that bothered you before. You won’t need them as ammo any longer. You’ll joke more and fight less. You’ll get what each other is saying.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that you won’t mess up sometimes and really let each other have it. All couples fight, even the happiest and most devoted. Fighting once in a while can be productive if it clears the air and allows you to get your feelings out or resolve an issue that has come up. Nobody can go through life in a state of mellow bliss, avoiding all arguments and never once raising his or her voice.

While constructive fighting ends with resolution, leaving you both feeling more connected and having more faith in your relationship and your ability to work things out, destructive fighting doesn’t allow you to appreciate your overall happiness or to grow together and continue to strengthen your bond. But once he’s better at listening, your fighting spats and episodes will go way down. Why? Because you will have prevented the same old arguments about the same old topics from even coming up. He will have acknowledged who you are and what you need and what you are saying. He will make you feel loved. And that is a potent aphrodisiac.

A man who knows how to listen is going to have a much happier, healthier, and more satisfying sexual relationship. That is why, when I’m talking to male patients or callers on the radio, I often joke, “How do you know when a woman is finished talking? Her lips stop moving.”

Call me crass—it doesn’t matter. Men get the joke (and yes, it’s a
joke
!). They laugh. Sometimes they laugh a little too hard. They know what I mean. Because they know, deep down, that they
don’t
know how to listen.

They’re so used to not listening to their wives or girlfriends that they think this is how things work. That not listening is acceptable for men. They just don’t get it.

That’s because they haven’t reached the point in their relationships where the word “communication” isn’t just about he said, she said. Good communication between partners is a bedrock for a healthy relationship—especially a sexual relationship, because if you can’t say what you want, how will you ever get it?—and for overcoming a wide range of challenges in all aspects of your life together, whether they’re about sex and desire, raising the kids, or who takes out the garbage. Good communication is also one of the most difficult things to do well in a relationship, especially for men.

For women, it’s simple. You listen and then you respond, and then you listen some more and then you respond again. Women are by nature more in touch with their emotions and have had years of practice doing this with their girlfriends, family, and colleagues. This facility with emotional intelligence helps women foster openness in all their communication and an instinctive ability to know when to speak and when to listen.

Your ears are finely attuned to pick up subtle communication skills, to assess body language, and to hear what others are saying and process it, even if you don’t like what’s being said. Because you’ve been listening well since you were a child, this skill is now as simple as breathing. It’s just part of your nature as a woman.

But just as women can’t understand why men have such a hard time listening, men can’t understand why women have so much trouble keeping their lips zipped. That’s because men aren’t innately able to maintain or stay invested in the natural give-and-take of conversations that comes more easily to women. They just aren’t.

Are there stats to prove that men don’t listen? A study done at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and published in the journal
NeuroImage
discovered that men have to work harder at listening to women because their brains process the sound waves of speech differently. Men use the part of the brain designed to hear music, not voices. (This means he can blame his listening problems on basic physiology, so I suggest you don’t mention this study to him!)

I’ll push past this anatomical quirk and say that men basically don’t have a clue. You may also have learned from personal experience that they are far less skilled than women at opening up and coping with the emotional aspects of relationships, especially if the guy is dealing with a male sexual problem. They are less emotionally intelligent than women and approach problems from a more analytical, “how-can-I-fix it?” point of view. But that doesn’t mean that men can’t learn more effective ways to promote harmony in a relationship.

So it’s up to you to teach the man in your life how to listen. You
need to teach him that listening is a skill, like learning how to surf or ski, close a deal, cook a steak to perfect doneness, or change a diaper.

And what’s the easiest way for a guy to learn how to listen?

By following this simple rule:
Guys—shut the fuck up.

For guys, this doesn’t just mean to shut your mouth and let her talk without being interrupted. It means shut off the running commentary in your head while she’s talking—the silent commentary that she can tell is going on when you look at her with blank eyes and ask, “What did you just say?”

You’d be surprised at the number of subtle ways in which the listening problem can manifest itself. Here’s an example of a typical couple in my office—typical because he doesn’t listen and she is totally frustrated.

Chloe and James were sitting opposite me. Chloe was making full eye contact with me, while James was busy inspecting the window blinds. Before I’d even opened my mouth, James’s body language had signaled to both of us—but mostly Chloe—that he’d tuned out. His posture was rigid, and he had shifted sideways in his chair to look out the window, practically turning his back on his wife. Then he slumped even further. This was tantamount to saying, “I’m not interested, and I don’t want to hear it.” Talk about shutting down the conversation before it even started!

Swift action was required. Simply by assessing their body language, I could tell that this couple had no idea how to have a conversation. Their pattern started with each person stating their opinion. James didn’t listen when Chloe was talking, and she knew it. She felt dismissed and he got annoyed. They both were vexed and frustrated, and that started a fight. It was almost as though a visible wall hovered between them.

I looked down at their paperwork. Chloe was on the fertility drug Clomid and had been through a series of inseminations. She was worried that the clock was ticking and needed advice—and some hopefulness.

Chloe sighed. “I really want to have a baby,” she said, looking right at me.

“Here we go again,” said James.

“Should we continue the inseminations, or move on to in vitro?” she asked.

When a woman wants to have a baby, she’s super motivated. Now more than ever, her husband or partner needs to listen to what she has to say. Did James understand this? Obviously not.

“She wants to have the baby too quickly,” he said, still looking out the window before meeting my gaze. “I don’t know why we’re rushing. We’ve only been married three years.”

Notice how Chloe and James were not talking to each other—they were talking to
me
.

“We’re
not
rushing,” Chloe said as her eyes filled with tears.

“Why don’t we wait?” James retorted. He glanced down at his cell phone.

“Look,” I explained, because I know all too well that infertility can be an extreme test for a relationship, and a man who doesn’t understand this is lost and risks losing his partner, too. “I always say ‘wait’ is a four-letter word when it comes to having children. I never say wait to a woman who wants to have a child, because a woman who wants to have a child wants to have a child
yesterday
. If you don’t know that yet, it’s time to start listening to your wife because she’s driving the car—and she’s driving at one hundred miles an hour right now. You are going to have to learn to listen to her or suffer the consequences.”

“Don’t I have any say in this marriage?” James said.

“No,” I replied. “When it comes to having a baby, not at this time. What I mean is it’s her body. So yes, in theory this is a joint decision, but when a woman really wants that baby, it’s going to become an overwhelming focus for her. Her clock is ticking, and that’s a valid tick because her eggs won’t last as long as your sperm can.”

Chloe and James looked at each other.

“Does James interrupt you a lot?” I asked Chloe.

“Absolutely,” she replied.

“So what?” said James.

“When do you guys talk?” I asked.

“We never talk,” Chloe said. “I try to bring up how worried I am about not getting pregnant and he doesn’t care. He says he’s too busy, but I know he’s not listening.”

“That’s because she talks too much,” he said unkindly.

“Well,” I went on, “when that happens, I immediately tell the man in the room to sit up and turn to his wife. That’s a great start. The next step is to let her have her say and to
not
interrupt. Look her straight in the eye, and look at her lips if you’re having trouble following, but just listen without interrupting. She doesn’t want to hear your opinions right now. She just wants to talk it out.”

Chloe nodded vigorously while James rolled his eyes. She didn’t see him, but I did.

Take a look at their dialogue again. Chloe was stating what she wanted (a baby). James had tuned out. He was busy thinking about what
he
wanted, not understanding that part of the deal when they got married was to have children. He was dismissive
to her, bordering on rude. I had a feeling that they never properly discussed when to have children before they got married. Chloe might have thought her desire was crystal clear, but with James so bad at listening, it didn’t matter now how much she’d stated what she wanted then.

This scenario and similar ones have happened many times in my office. The man sits in the chair, looking out the window and not even acknowledging that he’s not listening. Sometimes he interrupts and sometimes he silently sits, bored or seething or frustrated, or all three. I’ve never had a wife say, “You know, honey, thanks for not listening to me.” Why would she? He knows he’s not listening. He’s just never been told
how important it is that he shuts the fuck up!

So how do you get him to talk? I wish there was a one-size-fits-all answer. Sometimes you just can’t. That’s the case with men who go past not listening. They tune everyone out so much that they become experts with the silent treatment. That’s a communication emergency, and you need to call Relationship 911. (You need professional counseling to get to the root of his inability to talk to you.) It’s hard to believe a man cares about his partner if he’s so unwilling to talk to her. That’s so fundamental that no relationship can survive without it.

For most people, it’s much easier than that. Here’s how I resolved things with Chloe and James. First, I taught him the basics on how to listen that you’ll learn in the next section.

And then I added, “When you leave this office, I want the two of you to go to a restaurant, and I want you to sit in front of each other without any distractions. You need to look at each other when you’re talking. You need to talk about having a baby. And
you, James, need to keep it zipped when Chloe is telling you what she wants.”

I wish I could say that James looked sheepish at their next appointment. He didn’t, of course. He’s a typical guy, and he’s not going to admit that he was wrong. But he did say, “Okay, I get it now. It’s such an obvious thing. I understand what I need to do.” He sighed. “And we’re going to keep trying for that baby.”