Real communication starts long before the words. It starts with whether the other person feels received.
Most of us were never really taught to listen. We were taught to answer, to advise, to defend, to be right. So when someone we love comes to us carrying something heavy, our first instinct is to reach for a solution: "Here is what you should do." It feels like love. Yet jumping straight to fixing so often turns a moment of reaching out into a high-tension exchange, because the people we love need validation before they can hear solutions. And on the speaking side of the exchange, adults communicate their needs directly: no guilt, no pouting, no nagging, just honesty and clarity, offered as a request rather than a demand.
That is why we return, on this page and throughout this site, to one golden rule: listen twice as much as you speak. It sounds simple, and it asks a great deal of us. It asks us to put down the rebuttal we are quietly preparing, to let another person's experience matter more than our own comfort for a moment, and to trust that being heard is itself a kind of healing.
"People don't need you to agree with their experience. They need you to witness it."
— Derek Hart, shared in Newsletter Vol 5
In Newsletter Vol 5 I shared a poem by Derek Hart that has stayed with me ever since, because it names something most of us would rather not admit: staying quiet is not the same as listening. We can nod, hold eye contact, even repeat someone's words back correctly, and still be miles away. Hart calls that waiting, not listening. We hear the first sentence and immediately begin assembling our defence, our justification, our counterexample. As he puts it, most people interrupt emotionally long before they interrupt verbally. While our loved one is still talking, we are already gone.
Real listening, the poem insists, costs something. It means letting the other person's pain actually reach us. It means seeing a little suffering in someone's eyes and not turning away, not fixing, not defending ourselves, not correcting the story. Just staying. That is what it means to witness: to let the person in front of us know, with our whole presence, that what they feel is real and that they are no longer alone with it.
Most people think listening means staying quiet.
It doesn't.
Real listening costs something.
…
When someone finally feels listened to,
their nervous system softens.
Not because the problem is solved.
But because they are no longer alone with it.
Notice what those last lines are saying. The relief does not come from the problem being solved. It comes from the end of aloneness. This is why witnessing is never passive: it is an act of courage, and it is love in action. When we stay present while another person hurts, without making it about ourselves, something in them settles that no advice could ever settle. You can read the poem in full in Newsletter Vol 5; I warmly recommend sitting with it slowly.
Why do we leap so quickly to fixing? Usually it comes from love, and from discomfort. Watching someone we care about struggle is hard, and a solution promises to end the discomfort quickly, ours as much as theirs. But advice given before a person feels heard rarely lands as love. Our silence can be received as support, while our "wisdom" can be received as control. Poor listening keeps a relationship vertical, quietly signalling that only our perspective matters. Generous listening makes it horizontal: two people meeting heart to heart, as equals.
I learned this the slow way. As I shared in Vol 5, my own urge to fix turned many conversations with my adult children into tense exchanges. What they needed first was validation; only after that could anything I offered actually be received. Validation does not mean agreement. It simply means acknowledging the other person's emotions without judgment: their feelings are real, their perspective makes sense from where they stand, and they matter to us.
"Not being heard or seen is at the root of most arguments and conflicts."
Misattunement rarely looks dramatic. In daily life it usually wears one of these three faces:
Offering a solution when someone just wants to be listened to and understood. The advice may even be good; the timing tells them their feelings are a problem to be solved.
Scrolling on your phone while they try to share a story about their day. Half-presence quietly tells a person they are competing for your attention, and losing.
Brushing an emotion aside because it seems too big, too small, or inconvenient. Dismissal slowly teaches the people we love to stop bringing us their hearts.
If you recognise yourself in any of these, take heart: so do I, and so does everyone honest. These habits do not make us unloving; they make us human. The repair is usually only a sentence away.
Attunement is the "silent glue" of relationships: the proactive process of tuning in to another person's internal world. In parenting, it is our ability to be aware of and respond to our child's needs. Between adults, it is less about the words themselves and more about staying aware of the other person's needs and non-verbal clues. Think of a radio: when you are attuned, you are dialled into your loved one's specific frequency, not distracted and not making assumptions. You truly hear them. When people are attuned, they feel secure, as if they were in Heaven.
Here is the mercy in this framework: research shared in Gottman's work suggests partners and parents are "good enough" when they are attuned just 30 to 40 percent of the time. The key is the practice of forgiveness and repair when things go wrong. Attunement is not a test we pass once; it is a rhythm we keep returning to. And whoever is more aware in the relationship leads this process of tuning in. With children who are still growing, that responsibility rests fully with us as parents.
"The subject and object elements of every entity form a common base and enter into interaction… The interaction generating these forces is called give and take action."
— Exposition of the Divine PrincipleThe Divine Principle describes the whole of creation as sustained by this circuit of giving and receiving. Communication is give and take action carried in words and silences: one heart offers, the other receives, and the direction reverses, over and over, keeping a circular dynamic of energy alive between us. When we only broadcast and never receive, the circuit breaks and love stops flowing. Listening twice as much as we speak is simply how we keep the current moving.
Good communication has two halves: receiving the other person well, and offering ourselves honestly. The movements below weave both together. You will not manage all six every time; nobody does. Choose one to focus on this week, and let it become natural before you add another.
We must be attuned to ourselves, aware of our own emotions and triggers, before we can tune in to anyone else. Before you respond, take one slow breath and scan your body for the early signs of reactivity.
"Is my chest tight? Am I holding my breath?"
Put the phone face down. Turn your body toward the person. Listen to understand rather than to prepare a response: the moment you begin rehearsing your reply, you have already left the room. Watch tone, posture, and energy as well as words; they often say more.
Solutions offered uninvited often land as control. One honest question protects you both, and it works with spouses, adult children, teenagers, and friends alike.
"Do you want my advice, or do you just want me to listen?"
Acknowledge the feeling without judging it and without rushing in with your own version of events. You do not have to agree with their account in order to honour their experience of it.
"I see that this hurt you. I see that this matters."
When it is your turn to speak, ask for what you need with honesty and clarity, as a request rather than a demand. Own your emotions as yours, so the other person does not feel attacked, and invite them to tell you when you cross a boundary. Hinting, guilt, and nagging ask our loved ones to read our minds; a clear request honours them as adults.
You will jump in with advice, glance at your phone, grow defensive. We all do. What matters is going back: naming the miss, asking forgiveness, and trying again. Repair is not the consolation prize of communication; it is the heart of it.
"Surely staying quiet counts as listening?" Not by itself. Listening is not nodding, eye contact, or repeating words back correctly; it is letting what the other person says actually reach you. If someone we love is sharing something vulnerable and we feel nothing at all, the poem in Vol 5 gently suggests we are not listening yet, only waiting. Presence, not silence, is the measure.
"If I validate them, am I not saying they are right?" This is the most common fear, and it keeps so many of us defending instead of witnessing. Validation is not a verdict on the facts; it is a welcome for the feeling. The moment we correct someone's pain with "that's not what I meant" or "you're misunderstanding me," even when that is true, we erase the pain instead of receiving it, and something between us breaks. There is time for the facts later, after the person feels received.
"I find it almost impossible to say what I need." Many of us learned young that stating a need directly felt unsafe, so we hint instead. We make small comments, offer cups of coffee, mention the weather, and hope the people we love will decode the reach underneath. Often they cannot. As I explored in Vol 8, two people can sit inches apart, both reaching for each other in unrecognisable languages, both concluding the other has stopped trying. The double practice that heals this is simple to say and slow to learn: state your own needs in plain words, and listen for the bid for connection hiding beneath other people's small gestures.
"Why do I keep exploding when I truly meant to listen?" Most triggers are not about what is happening now; they are echoes of what happened then. If the same conversation keeps collapsing however hard you try, your body may be answering an old threat rather than the person in front of you. That is not a failure of love. Begin by noticing the heat, the tight jaw, the urge to flee, and give yourself a moment before you speak.
Communication is not a technique we master once; it is a practice we return to every day, with the same beloved people, around the same kitchen table. Take one of these questions with you this week. Sit with it in a quiet moment, bring it to your journal or your prayer, and notice what it stirs.
Derek Hart's poem in full: why real listening costs something, and what it gives back.
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