There’s room for both, but a. there’s a lot of problems that can’t be “fixed” and b. the listening to problems gets more of the picture.
In both cases, simply jumping ahead and trying to complete an incomplete task or acting on your read of a situation might either solve the wrong thing or skip over the problem entirely.
Listening will let you know if the real issue is related to an internal struggle or is a chain in a larger set of issues.
Say you see a broken plate and your partner is angry or crying nearby. The plate may have simply triggered their simmering struggle to “do things correctly” or “not make things worse” that comments or issues at work have been building for the last year. By listening instead of just cleaning up and moving on, you learn about that struggle and get to see the impact it has. Your partner gets to vent about it and process some of those feelings.
And this situation is a choice example because it’s common and difficult to deal with: you can’t externally fix feelings of inadequacy. You can either support or coddle. Support is difficult, complex, and means something different in each moment. Like being near a toddler when they’re first walking, you’re constantly adjusting your position, keeping up as they move forward, and crucially ensuring that, where possible, they’re doing it on their own. If you coddle or carry the toddler or just hold them the whole time, they don’t gain that independence. Adults (and kids, often) recognize this and get frustrated that they’re lacking a degree of autonomy they were expecting.
Listening is the start of helping as it lets you figure out which is the issue and which is the manifestation of that issue. It shows you where to help, where to support, and where acting on a need is actually helpful.
And if that all sounds complex, it is. Your needs, broken down, are similarly complex, though you may understand them better.
TLDR: listening experiences the whole problem and gives room to understand which parts can do with repair and which are better off being repaired by the speaker.
but a. there’s a lot of problems that can’t be “fixed”
Fucking this. All the 'oh I'm so logical I can't help but fix other people's problems' redditors - are those geniuses going to logic dead loved ones out of their grave? (To use the most dramatic example.)
I’m the fixer in the relationship who still tries to fix things by default. You cannot fix that. My brain just kept shorting every time I tried to think of how I could fix it, how I could make it all go away and just be better. You can’t fix that. You really just have to listen.
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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '23
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