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Just wanted to respond to this here... the Dawna Markova book about learning styles addresses this. Some people listen and absorb better when they are NOT looking directly at you. Odd but true. My late H was like that. When he was listening, he would look off into outer space... it used to make me crazy. I'm the kind of person who looks right into your eyes while you're talking and nods, makes little acknowledging noises, etc. What people call "a good listener"-- at least it looks that way. ;\) He was a good listener, too, but it didn't look that way at all. (Don't know if cac was a good listener or not... just wanted to throw in that counter-intuitive observation.)


CAC doesn't always do this, but he always seemed to do it when I wanted to talk about the M. We often joke about "the [insert last name] stare," which DS seems to have inherited from his dad, who inherited it from his dad. H has no difficulty looking me in the eye, as long as the topic isn't his/my feelings or our R. \:\) It's definitely a situational thing.

Looking back on it, I could SEE the wall going up as soon as he knew what was coming. He was terribly uncomfortable and it was obvious. The thing that wasn't obvious to me was that his reaction was about HIM and not about ME.

I think CAC is a good listener in general, but like you said, it was hard for me to tell whether he was hearing me or not. Part of the problem was that he couldn't decipher what I was saying. I would often stop and ask him if he could understood my POV and he'd say "not really." Add the TV or computer to the mix and I was pretty frustrated.

The NVC article on Hairdog's thread was interesting. It certainly would have helped us communicate better.