A short conversational excerpt from a YouTube video by Dr. Arthur Brooks about how partners (and children) need to feel understood when upset. The speakers contrast right-brain (feeling, meaning, desire to be understood) with left-brain responses (immediate problem-solving), and advise listeners—especially husbands—to prioritize listening and demonstrating understanding before offering solutions.
This is the most common thing that men get wrong. This is utterly characteristic of any marriage, is not trying to listen, to understand. And that's a left brain, right brain thing. The left brain is. I got it, I got it, I got it. Three words in I got it. Now I'm going to help you solve it. That's not right brain. She's expressing frustration from the highly developed right brain, which is mystery, which is meaning. And I just want you to understand me. Understanding is on the right side. Solutions are on the left side.
Yeah, and we do that with kids, too, right? When they come to us and they say, oh, such and such told me that I'm. I don't want to play with me. So the first thing you say is that, why don't they want to play? Okay, I'm going to talk to her mom. I'm going to talk, you know, instead of just listening, because they need that understanding and they can figure out what to do if we just listen and pay attention and they feel that we understand. So I think, like, that's the same thing. You too want to be understood. But to me, it's very important that I know that you're understanding what I'm saying. Otherwise I feel that I'm not. You're not. This is advice I give to young.
Husbands a lot because it took me a long time to figure this one out.
