A 2012 study by Harvard neuroscientists found that people often took more pleasure from sharing information about themselves than from receiving money. The Belgian psychologist Bernard Rimé found that people feel especially compelled to talk about negative experiences. The more negative the experience was, the more they want to talk about it. Over the course of my career as a journalist I, too, have found that if you respectfully ask people about themselves, they will answer with a candor that takes your breath away. Studs Terkel was a journalist who collected oral histories over his long career in Chicago. He’d ask people big questions and then sit back and let their answers unfold. “Listen, listen, listen, listen, and if you do, people will talk,” he once observed. “They always talk. Why? Because no one has ever listened to them before in all their lives.

Perhaps they’ve not ever even listened to themselves.” Each person is a mystery. And when you are surrounded by mysteries, as the saying goes, it’s best to live life in the form of a question.

As people are telling me their stories, I’m listening hard for a few specific things. First, I’m listening for the person’s characteristic tone of voice. Just as every piece of writing has an implied narrator—the person the writer wants you to think he is—every person has a characteristic narrative tone: sassy or sarcastic, ironic or earnest, cheerful or grave. The narrative tone reflects the person’s basic attitude toward the world—is it safe or

threatening, welcoming, disappointing, or absurd? A person’s narrative tone often reveals their sense of “self-efficacy,” their overall confidence in their own abilities.

There’s one more thing that happens as I listen to life stories. I realize I’m not just listening to other people’s stories; I’m helping them create their stories. Very few of us sit down one day and write out the story of our lives and then go out and recite it when somebody asks. For most of us it’s only when somebody asks us to tell a story about ourselves that we have to step back and organize the events and turn them into a coherent narrative. When you ask somebody to tell part of their story, you’re giving them an occasion to take that step back. You’re giving them an opportunity to construct an account of themselves and maybe see themselves in a new way. None of us can have an identity unless it is affirmed and acknowledged by others. So as you are telling me your story, you’re seeing the ways I affirm you and the ways I do not. You’re sensing the parts of the story that work and those that do not. If you feed me empty slogans about yourself, I withdraw. But if you stand more transparently before me, showing both your warts and your gifts, you feel my respectful and friendly gaze upon you, and that brings forth growth. In every life there is a pattern, a story line running through it all. We find that story when somebody gives an opportunity to tell it.

Right now, you’re reading a book I’ve written. Reading and writing are both forms of communication. So are speaking and listening. In fact, those are the four basic types of communication. And think of all the hours you spend doing at least one of those four things. The ability to do them well is absolutely critical to your effectiveness. Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You’ve spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training or education have you had that enables you to listen so that you really, deeply understand another human being from that individual’s own frame of reference? Comparatively few people have had any training in listening at all. And, for the most part, their training has been in the Personality Ethic of technique, truncated from the character base and the relationship base absolutely vital to authentic understanding of another person. If you want to interact effectively with me, to influence me—your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your boss, your coworker, your friend—you first need to understand me. And you can’t do that with technique alone. If I sense you’re using some technique, I sense duplicity, manipulation. I wonder why you’re doing it, what your motives are. And I don’t feel safe enough to open myself up to you. The real key to your influence with me is your example, your actual conduct. Your example flows naturally out of your character, or the kind of person you truly are—not what others say you are or what you may want me to think you are. It is evident in how I actually experience you. Your character is constantly radiating, communicating. From it, in the long run, I come to instinctively trust or distrust you and your efforts with me. If your life runs hot and cold, if you’re both caustic and kind, and, above all, if your private performance doesn’t square with your public performance, it’s very hard for me to open up with you. Then, as much as I may want and even need to receive your love and influence, I don’t feel safe enough to expose my opinions and experiences and my tender feelings. Who knows what will happen?

First, listen without commenting.

Then, try to communicate what you’ve heard your partner say without judgment (this is the hard part). You might begin with something like: What I’m hearing you say is ___. Is that right?

A second technique that is helpful in its own right and can make reflective listening even more valuable is to offer some understanding of your partner’s reasons for a feeling or behavior. The goal is not to point out your brilliance and ability to see things your partner cannot, but to let your partner know that you see them. You want to communicate that it makes sense that she feels this way or that he is behaving in that way, and to nurture that bedrock of empathy and affection that research has shown to be valuable. For example, you might say, It makes sense that you feel so strongly about this... and then continue with something like: since you care so much about being kind. Or: ... since this was the way you’ve described things happening in your family growing up.

A third useful practice is to try to step back a bit from the conversation, a practice that psychologists call “self-distancing,” and look at your experience as if you are watching someone else. You might notice the thoughts that this person (i.e., you) is having, and recognize them as fleeting thoughts that may shift. This is a technique that shares much in common with mindfulness approaches, and the psychologists Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk have done a lot of research showing its utility. Together these practices may help you to get started with challenging conversations and hang in there emotionally when things get tough, to slow down, and to show your partner that you’re trying to understand.