How to get your man to listen to you

Can we talk?

One Topic at a Time, Please! Stick to one topic at a time and let a man know when you’re changing topics. Perhaps the greatest communication gift my wife has given me and my son is to let us know when she is changing subjects during a conversation. In the past, my wife would cover several different subjects while I was still trying to process the ﬁrst one. If I was lucky, she would eventually circle around and end up back on the original topic, where I would just be getting up to speed. Unfortunately, I had missed all of the other stuff she had talked about in between. I found this especially confusing if she talked about two people with the same name during the conversation.

Can we talk?

Timing Is Everything! If you bombard your man with complaints the minute he walks in the door from a hard day at work, he likely won’t be willing to listen, advises Johnson in The Marriage of Your Dreams: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding Her Man. “When your man is watching television (especially sports) or reading the newspaper, it is not a good time to try and engage him. Men do not multitask very well. If you ask him to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, you will likely both end up frustrated. Watching sports on TV is a downtime of release for men – it’s a time they recharge their batteries. When I am watching a game on television, my wife will usually say, ‘When you have a break in the game can you come and see me? I need to get your opinion on something.’ That prompting allows me to prepare myself mentally for a discussion.”