Listen To Your Partner Like She/He's Not Dumb, Crazy, or Just Mean

Listening with Love

When I sit with couples in the therapy room, one of their most transformative moments often starts with a very simple invitation:

What if you listened to each other like neither of you is dumb, crazy, or mean?

Yeah, that may sound like DRAMA, but I've had to watch so many couples play the BadGuy game so often, and it's hard to watch. Now, not every couple believes their partner is bad or broken, but these attitudes come out in both subtle and less subtle ways. When we feel hurt, unheard, misunderstood, or triggered, it’s surprisingly easy for our brains to slip into protective mode. And in that space, we can start interpreting our partner’s words or actions through a lens of our own pain, suspicion, or frustration:

“Why would they say that?” “Are they just trying to pick a fight?” “They must not care how I feel.”

In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) we try to slow the process down to keep both partners in their thinking/feeling brains and not in the fight, flight, or freeze reactive brain. We step back and look underneath the surface—beneath the words, the tone, the raised voice, the silence, a look or even body language. What’s really going on here? I call it the storm in the counseling room, and I want to run TO the storm (much to the horror of clients sometimes, haha). Let's go there! That's where the pain action is really happening between couples.

EFT reminds us that most conflict in close relationships is not about power, control, or disrespect. It’s about disconnection. It’s about two people reaching for each other in clumsy, painful ways, often driven by fear.

That fear might sound like:

• “Do I matter to you?”

• “Are you there for me?”

• “Am I safe with you?”

And when we don’t feel safe or seen, we start to brace ourselves (build walls). That’s when we stop listening with openness and start reacting out of self-protection.

But what if we did the opposite?What if, even in the heat of the moment, we paused and told ourselves:

“This is a person I love and who loves me. They’re not dumb. They’re not crazy. They’re not trying to hurt me. They’re hurting. Or scared. Or stuck. And I really want to understand what's happening for them.”

This is the EFT tone: softening toward our partner, even when we’re hurting—not because it’s easy, but because that softening is what invites connection.

So the next time you’re in a tense conversation, try this:

• Take a breath.

• Remind yourself that this person is human, just like you.

• Listen as if there’s a story behind their words—because there is.

• Get curious instead of critical.

• Show your partner you're prepared to care for them.

  
  

Listening this way doesn’t mean you have to agree. It doesn’t mean your pain doesn’t matter. But it does mean you’re choosing connection over defense. You’re choosing to see your partner not as an adversary, but as someone who, like you, is longing to be seen, understood, and held in love.

And that—more than any clever argument or perfect wording—is what truly heals relationships. One caveat: This process ONLY works when both partners are engaged in it. If only one partner is creating the safety and the listening, the process will and MUST break down. If one of you doesn't feel safe, then you have NOT built safety together. Caveat 2: This takes practice, and to be honest, some failure to get better. There's always a path out of the storm, but it takes some work to notice it and then execute it, and you can only do that together.

Warmly, A counselor who sees brave couples do this work every day, and never stops being moved by it.