You can undoubtedly sense when you’re talking to a good listener. Something about the way the person either looks at you or makes empathic comments allows you to feel comfortable with this individual and, therefore, more likely to open up further. If this person is your romantic partner, this ability to listen allows you to feel emotionally closer, supported, and understood.
As much as you may admire and appreciate being in a relationship with a good listener, perhaps you feel that you’re just not all that happy with your own listening skills. You’ve noticed that people, including your partner, seem frustrated with your lack of responsiveness to their needs. When you meet people for the first time, the conversations seem to run out of steam almost as soon as they get started. Coworkers don’t ask you to join them for informal breaks or offline remote chats, and even your relatives seem to get so bored that, at family gatherings, they try to pull away as soon as they can to speak to someone else.
According to a newly-published review paper by University of Haifa’s Guy Itzchakov, collaborating with University of Rochester’s Harry Reis and University of Reading’s Netta Weinstein (2021), decades of previous research support the observation that good listening is a mechanism that drives the “interpersonal connections … known to conduce many positive intrapersonal affective and cognitive outcomes.” “Listening,” they continued, “is a basic social behavior and one of the most fundamental features of a social interaction.” It’s worth sharpening this key aspect of your ability in order to relate well to others.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age/202112/10-ways-become-great-listener
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