The Most Common Relationship Mistake Women Make! (Alison Armstrong)

I've heard many women who have absorbed your work say, wow, I didn't know if I just waited 30 seconds for him to finish speaking, how much it would radically transform our marriage. And I'm like, how could you not know that?

Right?

So can you go over. Let's just start with, like, the interruption piece because there's so much more that typically I, we as men have to say, but we don't feel like we have the space to say it in because our woman, God love her, she's jumping in and saying, well, let me give you the field report. Let me, let me tell you all these things and let me sometimes unfortunately tell you how your experience in life is wrong and how you're not saying it the right way. And here's a better way to say it. And that happens in her in a split second, right? Meanwhile, we're piecing together the sentence. We're still finishing. Can you talk about the power of this? I think if there was one tool, one tool that could revolutionize everyone's marriage, everyone's relationship, it would be to let each other finish what we're saying. Not just for women to men, but also men to women. But I think it's really easy because a lot of women, when they talk to each other, they interrupt each other, and that's a natural thing. I watch women, I'm like, oh, they're like, speaking over each other all the time. Men, we don't do that to each other. When I have, I have a men's group here that we meet twice a month, we let our men finish and we take a breath after he's done talking, and then we give him feedback or questions. Women tend to interrupt each other and that's a normal thing. Can you share about this?

Well, if you just take it apart, engineering wise, what people normally think of as listening, I'm listening. There's a question at the top of our heads might occur over here or over here. This question, and I just discovered a few weeks ago, I have something different than a question, but it also makes me interrupt. So we'll have a question. And there are default questions like, what do I think about that? What do I know about that? What do I want to say about that? Do I agree with that? Is that true for me? Do I feel that way? Right? I, I. They're all I, I and me questions is what's natural for, for men? And if someone's fine, the default question is usually, what's the point? Because what does it have to do with productivity, Right? What's the point if the person's upset? The default question is what's the problem? And that so what's the problem? So what's the problem? So what's the problem? The problem isn't becoming clear. So you'll interrupt this unproductive communication to ask a question that you think is. Is going to have the problem become clear so you can be productive by solving it. And you can save her from her upset, you can save her from her problem. It makes perfect sense except for she's vomiting and she just needs you to hold the trash. Right? So we'll. You can tell the question that people are have in their head by what they interrupt with. Because they'll. They'll just. When. When what they're thinking about what you, what you said provoked. Mostly you're just provoking thought. You're not being heard. If you're speaking, you're provoking thought. And you can tell the question that they're filtering with by. They interrupt with something that their own mind answered that compelled them. And they don't know how dis. People don't know how disrespectful it is. It's not even a willful self centeredness. It's just normal human behavior. But someone I know, I don't want to talk to them because I get a few words out and they interrupt with what I know about that is every time it's guaranteed I will be told what they know about that when I haven't even finished the sentence. So they don't even know what that is yet. Right. So what do I think about that? What do I know about that? Is that women will be like, is that true for me? And we'll get so excited when it is true for me. Oh, me too. We're having a connection, right? When man's expressing a strong opinion and we disagree with it, we just get more and more scared. We call it the cliff.

So women interrupt men because they feel scared or because they were trained by watching their mother or other things.

There's very little training. There's a lot of modeling. Okay. I think we learn by what we see. There's things we hear, but we, we learn by what we see what is modeled. Which is why I'm have such an emphasis in my curriculum on implementation. I don't care if you know my work, what do you do with it? What choices are being made in the moment when instinct is compelling you to dominate, for example, which is a normal instinct to flee another instinct, what do you do instead? Are you aware of the compulsion there? Do you celebrate your brain setting the alarm off? You know you're experiencing tension. You're having instinctual behavior right now. You're probably going to make it worse. Deep breath. Switch nervous systems. Hmm. What am I really committed to? Ah, let's say this instead. I'm so sorry I interrupted you. Please finish what you were talking about. But without the awareness, we don't have the choice. We're just pinball machines going off at each other. And Dan, my boyfriend, is deep in working on this, and they're actually inventing a game. He gets to name the game because one of the ways he owns things is by naming them. And there are points. There are going to be periods in which they win. They get a point for noticing an unconscious way of listening. They get another point from shifting to a choice, like what's true for them, what matters to them, what's important to them, what's real for them. Those are all awesome questions to have, right? They get a point for shifting, then they get a point for noticing that they already flipped back, and then they get a point for shifting again. I mean, you could get, like, 20 points in about three minutes.

How do you keep score on this?

I don't know. I'm not playing the game. I just helped them invent it because Dan stopped listening to me. He stopped listening to me, and I broke up with him. He stopped taking care of himself, and he stopped listening to me. And it's like, okay, I've never given up the right to walk away. I'm. I won't do this. So God bless him, he came out of the death spiral of not taking care of his health. He said that was an accurate description. And the thing that I need him to implement most is how he's listening to me. And we have become so diligent in the last five weeks of noticing. Interrupting the other person. I'm having to practice even more than ever, waiting 30 seconds. Because each man has a different tolerance. Like for Greg or. Mm, that was encouragement to keep going to Dan. That's running the train off the track.

Just the sound.

Just a little, tiny sound.

So you literally be in silence.

I do, Yeah, I do. If he says, are you still there? I am doing well. When we're talking on the phone and we have these walk and talk since we've been apart, but I have been searching, well, what is the question that I listen with? Because I know I'm interrupting him. So what am I listening with? And I finally figured it out. It's this other kind of listening that I didn't realize. I do so much. I call it picture listening. So Dan says something to me. I'm picturing what he's saying. I have a video of Hannah and her dance recital, right? So I'm picturing his daughter Hannah dancing. She's an adult and dances, right? I'm picturing it. And I'll interrupt when he doesn't state the obvious. So he'll not say a city or not say which daughter or not. He'll have switched from one thing to another. But they're similar. And now I can't picture it. I'm like lost in the woods. Because we have an instinct that says there's no point in stating the obvious. That's a waste of time and energy. So much of the conflict what you wanted me to get to ages ago between men and women is because we assume what's obvious to ourselves is obvious to the other person. We assume that what's important to me is obviously important. Why should I have to say it? Why should I have to illuminate for you the basis of all my decisions? It's obvious. No, it's not. We have something called your hidden dominant drivers, where we distinguish six different compulsions, things that compel us to spend our time and money and energy. Six different ones. And each one is its own.

Obvious.

Like if you said so at the end of your life, you were thinking about how. How what your life was like and the joys in your life or the success of your life. What would you attribute it to? What people say after that is their obvious. Well, obviously, who I shared it with, obviously, what I've left behind, obviously, how much joy I experienced and brought to others, obviously, obviously, what I expressed that needed to be expressed, obviously, how I grew, obviously, everything I learned. Six different ones. Knowing, which is all about learning. It's all about acquisition of knowledge. There are people to them. That is a point of life, how much knowledge they can acquire. And they'll interrupt you with what they know, right? Evolving. How much they've grown, obviously, the point of life, who you shared it with. I know a man. Literally, everything is better together. Grief is better together. Loneliness is better together. Despair is better together. Everything is better together. For his introverted partner who really wants to be home alone, right? Building for some people what they built, obviously. What have you built? What did you build? Did you build a family? Did you build a fortune? Did you build a company? Did you? What? Legacy, right? Legacy appeals to men. That's one of the most it's one of the oldest. Right. It's the most ancient building. Acquiring knowledge, growing, sharing, expressing, building, enjoying. Enjoying is amazing because it could be anything from total hedonism to can you bring joy in the midst of despair?

Just last week, I was working with a coach, and he's like, what's your goal? What's your thing? And I said, well, I get to be this embodiment of authentic joy. That's what I'd want to give to my children.

Yeah.

Legacy and everything else you mentioned is really great.

Yes.

But that's really the best, most juicy, amazing gift. If you love that video, you'll love the one on the screen right now. Click the one on the screen and enjoy.