Are you being heard by your partner when you speak openly from your heart?
You may get all the right outward signals that your partner is listening, giving you the impression that you have been understood. There may be a tacit agreement to a certain plan or point of view. But then, a short while later your partner appears to think differently, and you wonder if you imagined it all!
Being heard by your partner is important in so many ways.
• It makes you feel you have gotten through – that you matter enough for the door to be open, so you can get in and find a safe spot to reside.
• Being heard by your partner makes you feel wanted, trusted, and valued.
• Being heard by your partner gives you a sense of security that you are on the same page and no longer need to prove yourself.
But when your partner later denies hearing your perspective, your needs, and fears, or reframes your experience, it’s like you are in separate universes. Your mind spins and you either defend yourself or doubt your own experience. Either way it makes you insecure, unsafe, and wanting distance from the partner with whom you recently felt close and shared intimacies with.
Being Heard by Your Partner – How your partner’s brain chooses what to remember
Being heard by your partner assumes that they took in, stored, and can recall the exchange as you intended. But research about how memories are chosen for storage suggests that your assumptions are mistaken.
A report in the March 2024 journal Science indicates that it all depends on the occurrence of a momentary burst of brain wave activity during your daily interactions. Each daytime experience needs to be immediately followed by 5-20 sharp wave-ripples in the brain, marking it for later memory consolidation – in practical terms, it is highlighted as important to be replayed thousands of times during sleep to form an actual memory that is then stored for later recall.
Being Heard by Your Partner – the ‘idle pause’ that’s crucial for remembering
The researchers noted that there has to be an ‘idle pause’ between experiences so that each one is explored by all the senses, made sense of, integrated into the current knowledge/experiential map, and then and only then, marked for memory making and consolidation during sleep.
In other words, if you pause/idle after an event, that sets up sharp-wave ripples that are chosen for replaying millions of times during sleep for consolidation.
If however there isn’t that immediate sharp wave ripple occurrence, facilitated by that ‘idle pause,’ then it will be passed out as waste matter.
Being Heard by Your Partner Involves Stopping to Engage with Your Words
Being heard by your partner involves that short, sharp rippled brain wave pattern immediately after you have spoken. That involves your partner taking a moment or two to absorb it, be with it fully, explore it, ‘taste it’ and TAKE IT IN in order to make it into a long term memory.
If on the other hand there is no ‘idle pause’ between you finishing off saying what you intended and your partner getting on their stuff, it means that the space for that spindle of short sharp brain wave-ripples is lost. Nothing gets taken in and your partner is unlikely to remember what you said or what you agreed on.
Malik, a 42-year-old solar-power consultant became increasingly dumbfounded at the way he and his partner Taylor, a 40-year-old fitness instructor seemed to agree on something, but then she would change her mind and deny that she had heard his plan or agreed to anything in the first place.
One such occasion occurred when a recently divorced friend Wendy was spending a lot of time at their place, and from Malik’s point of view, should be transitioning out and finding other friends to support her. He wanted his house to himself again, without having to worry about his appearance, or to plan his time around Wendy. He talked to Taylor about it, and she appeared to understand and agree to organize things so that their lives went back to normal. Taylor seemed to hear, nodding her head, and saying okay. Barely had Malik spoken his last word, when Taylor went right into Wendy’s problem and what a bad person Wendy’s ex was!
Being Heard by Your Partner – are you the focus or someone else?
Being heard by your partner involves attending in all ways to what you are saying. Taylor looked as if she was listening, but obviously wasn’t attending. Let’s look at where she was at:
When she heard the word Wendy, she probably identified her as a victim.
Taylor most likely went on to think of needing to protect and comfort her.
Taylor was focused on taking care of Wendy, not Malik
Her emotions got activated in much the same way when she had felt badly treated by her family and how no one cared or kept her safe.
Malik is out of the picture. She hasn’t taken him in. There was no ‘idle pause’ between what Malik said, and where Taylor was in relation to his feelings and his needs. Therefore there was no spindle of sharp wave-ripples that would enable her to have a memory of what he shared with her. No wonder she genuinely didn’t recall what he had said, and why – his experience had been superimposed by a picture of needy Wendy.
Being Heard by Your Partner – the importance of checking in
It’s understandable that Malik was dumbfounded by Taylor’s denials and or reframing of his experience. But the fact that he allowed this to continue and expect something different to happen next time, tells us that his longing for her to want to tune in, absorb what he said and recall it later held more power than getting her to focus.
Growing up, Malik’s feeling and needs were drowned out by his parents’ psychodrama of accusing one and other of not fulfilling their roles in the family. So he developed a deep longing to be heard in his rawest, most vulnerable mode and attended to as if he mattered. This wish got lodged in his emotional esophagus, forcing him into trying to either swallow it (give up) or vomit it out so that it was seen and properly treated. He payed the price with constant anxiety about sharing himself with his wife.
He couldn’t do either until he discovered in his individual psychotherapy that he needed to check in with Taylor about what she actually heard when he spoke. It was hard for him because there was no ‘idle pause’ for exploration, and he had to make one by checking in with her. Malik had to create the opportunity for that crucial ‘idle pause’ so that both of them had space to explore:
• Malik’s intent versus Taylor’s version
• Whether Malik made himself clear about his feelings, needs and wants
• Where the discrepancies are between what Malik stressed and what landed with Taylor
• What the preconceptions were on both sides that facilitated the misattunement
These exchanges will themselves need many ‘idle pauses’ in between the shared communications, and the best way of enabling them is for both Malik and Taylor to be curious.
Malik needs to be curious about why Taylor heard him the way she did and not as he intended. Taylor has to be curious about what Malik believes they agreed on before each goes about their business, keeping the false assumptions intact. The cycle of disappointment and distance stresses the relationship. Being heard by your partner is the keystone of an intimate connection. Malik and Taylor can prepare for safer and more fulfilling intimate connections if they both have more ‘idle pauses’ between exchanges so that they can take each other in and remember – a sought after sign that you care enough to hold each other in mind.
You’re probably thinking that its impossible to do this each and every time there is an exchange, and you are right. The issue is to begin implementing the check in process when there is something that is bugging you – when your feelings need to get across. The more often you do it, the less often you will rely on preconceptions that result in disappointments and distance. You’d be surprised how ‘off’ you can be about what you think your partner took in.
You might also like:
Couples Communication Issues: Interaction Styles
Marital Anxiety Ruins Your Relationship
Being Honest With Your Partner is Hard – the brutal reason why!
