***Why Men Don't Listen!

I am about to be politically incorrect. When you reach a certain point in life, however, you discover from experience that some generalizing is correct. From my many years teaching voice improvement, I have found that women tend to be more expressive in speaking. I have also discovered that women carry their stress differently than men. And, it is always interesting to see women’s reactions when I make the statement that men are not good listeners. The fact that your male’s strong suit is not listening can be explained in 3 ways. 1. Simply put, he may be focusing on something else when you speak. Men are not good at multi-tasking. Yes, you may have taken the latest college course on how the sexes are the same (disregarding the obvious physical differences); but, they really are not. Marriage will teach you that even if your professor will not. 2. You may be speaking too softly and he truly doesn’t hear you. We (men and women alike) often do not speak with enough volume after we have settled comfortably into our lives together. We never take into account that the other person may be upstairs, downstairs or in another room when we try to hold a conversation. If you do not increase your volume, your words will not be heard. It is as simple as that. 3. He may find the sound of your speaking voice annoying. If you have a voice that is nasal, high-pitched, whiny, shrill, strident, harsh, or childlike, can you blame him for not listening? Recently, I was showing a client the difference between my trained speaking voice and how I would sound today without training. He was stunned. I knew from his reaction to my strident sound that it was more than unpleasant. Ladies, I do wish I could say that the reason men don’t listen is because they are men. But that is indeed unfair. An unpleasant voice – which you may hear on your voicemail when you change your message – is what he has to contend with. Why did it not bother him in your earlier years together? Because it was still the honeymoon phase. Once that phases ends, however, things within the relationship change. If your voice is a shrill squeal or you are 50 with a voice that sounds like a 12-year-old, his ears do not want to listen. If you know that your voice bothers him, consider finding your ‘real’ voice. It will be a richer, warmer sound that he will find extremely pleasing to listen to!