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A Simple Trick to Argue Less and Feel Closer to Your Partner

It’s a new year, and the days are getting longer as light returns to the world. What the heck, give it a shot and see how it goes.

Avrum G. Weiss
Hello, Love
3 min readJan 1, 2025

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I’ve been writing for Medium for almost five years, and this will be the shortest and most straightforward piece I’ve written. It’s as simple as this.

The next time your partner starts any serious conversation with you, interrupt briefly at the beginning to ask, “Is this one of those times where you just want me to listen, or do you want my help with something?” Imagining yourself as the listener, you may find this suggestion belittling, perhaps even condescending.

You may think that you should know what your partner needs in any particular situation without him or her having to say it out loud. I identify with that because it is precisely what I thought through forty years of struggle in intimate relationships, romantic and otherwise. After all, I’m a psychotherapist. I’m professionally trained to discern what people need. What helped me let go of this particular bit of hubris was the realization that I got it wrong way more times than I got it right. Most often, when I thought my partner needed my help with something, she often got angry at me because she just needed me to listen.

When I thought my partner just needed me to listen, she often got angry at me because she actually needed my help. Think back over some of…

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