I have a couple's consultation. Standard complaints about each other. You often hear such phrases from couples during a crisis: “he knows everything perfectly, but does nothing,” “she understands everything perfectly, but does it to spite me,” “I know why you did that,” “yells all the time.” , and am I going to remain silent..." etc. For some reason, each of us believes that he knows his partner very well - that the partner feels, that the partner thinks, why he acts one way or another. Sometimes a person cannot immediately understand himself, but he definitely “knows” everything about his husband/wife. Having listened to one and the other side, all their complaints, I suggest using one of the techniques of the imago method. The essence of the task is that one partner says a phrase, the other, starting with the words “I hear what you say ...” and repeats exactly (which is very important - not my words and without replacing them with others) the phrase of his partner. The husband says: “I get very tired at work” (intonation emphasizes the words “very” and “very”) Wife (intonations slightly careless): “I hear you say that you get tired at work” I draw the woman’s attention , for inaccurate repetition of the phrase. There was obvious surprise in both her voice and her gaze as she added the key words “very” and “strongly.” Wife: “Yes, I know you have a difficult job.” Husband: “I hear you say that you understand how difficult my job is.” I again focus the spouses’ attention on the distortion of the meaning of what they heard: “Your wife said that she knows about the difficulties, but did not say anything about the fact that she understands WHAT a difficult job you have.” Knowing and understanding are also different things. I have given a very small fragment from this consultation, but how clearly it reflects the essence of how the inability to hear prevents us from building harmonious relationships in life. There are an incredible number of reasons why people do not hear each other. Yes, there can be many of these reasons, but we can deal with all of them if we have the desire. In order to learn to hear, we need to know what prevents us from hearing. Absorption in one's own thoughts, wounded pride. At such moments, we are concentrated, perhaps, on ourselves and our offense, but not on hearing what they tell us. It is unpleasant to listen to what we perceive as an attack on our authority. One way to protect yourself in such situations is to refuse to talk at all. But there is another tactic: the best defense is an attack, and the person tries to answer the interlocutor in the same way, and also does not listen to him. Scandals in such situations are inevitable. Many of us, listening to a person, try to interpret his words and explain for ourselves, based on our experience and knowledge that we have, as well as based on exactly how we perceive the world around us, and completely forget that our the partner may perceive the world or situation completely differently. So it turns out that during a conversation we are immersed in our own thoughts, and not in “listening” to the interlocutor. Emotional imbalance is another “bad” helper. We don’t listen because we don’t control ourselves. The ability to cope with your emotions is another big topic for discussion, but in this article I only want to outline the probable reasons for “not hearing” another. Categorical judgments, harsh criticism, condemnation, of course, cause aggression. All this does little to establish mutual understanding. In communication, you can and should talk about YOUR emotions and experiences, but do not attribute them to your partner. It is advisable to clarify what your partner meant, and not to think for him. It is best to abandon the “you messages” and switch to “I messages.” For example: “I’m starting to get angry, I don’t like it when people put pressure on me,” instead of “you’ve already bothered me with your instructions.” Learning to hear each other and respect the opinion of your partner is sometimes not so easy. But if you plant nothing, then nothing will grow. And if something doesn’t work out right away, it’s not a problem, the main thing is the desire to achieve success in this matter.