I think we are getting into semantics here. ("wants to hear" vs. "expects to hear")
I do believe it is human nature to place value in opinions that agree with our own and discount opinions that disagree with us.
When I began suspecting that much of my wife's behavior could be caused by menopause, I found some information on the web concerning mood swings and emotional behavior caused by menopause that confirmed many of my suspicions. I showed this information to my wife in hopes that she would read the information and be able to understand that I wasn't the cause of all of her problems that in fact, there were chemical processes going on in her brain which affected her mood and thus affected her perceptions.
Since she did not believe that these chemical imbalances were happening to her, she immediately accused me of only finding evidence which agreed with my point of view.
Well, one thing she was right about...I was looking for information which supported my own point of view. I had passed over information which my not have supported it or weakly supported it. I did the research again and tried to be objective. The preponderance of the evidence did indeed support my thinking about mood and menopause. However, there was some convincing evidence to the contrary. After looking objectively, I still believe that the majority of the evidence supports my position. Unfortunately, my wife does not approach this in an objective manner. She doesn't want to hear about it and consequently any information I presented to her was discounted from the start with no attempt to weigh it on its own merit.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it was useless to even attempt to discuss it with her. Her emotions had overcome her reason and despite which information was correct, she was going to believe only what she wanted to believe and hear only what she wanted to hear.
I believe that how open-minded we are on an issue depends greatly upon how emotionally involved we are in the issue. I believe this is why in Divorce Busting we are encouraged to "detach" ourselves emotionally from the heartaches caused by going through our various situations. The more detached we can become, the more objective we can be in evaluating and correcting the situation.
