Tactics Tuesdays: Listen to Women Better with Active Listening

One piece of guidance I often give to guys looking to improve with women is to start doing active listening in order to better listen to women and build great connections with them fast. It's simple, straightforward advice that's easy to start implementing right away -- or at least, that was what I'd been thinking.

A reader writes in reminding me of a realization I had years ago but since forgot about the right way to do active listening:

“Wow man just had a great convo with my mom of all people about how to handle women. We talked a lot about things I already knew but it gave me a fresh perspective. But the one thing she told me about was "paraphrasing what she said"

She told me that a lot of guys like "reiterate" what a woman says. For example if I was talking to a woman and she told me a story about jogging and how it makes her feel great. Reiterating would be me saying "Hmmm so what you're really saying is you feel great because of this...." Then the woman tells me "NO I'm feeling great because of what I just said! Your not listening to me!"

Now that same situation as a paraphrase would go "so let me see if I understand you, your saying you feel great because of this..." then she says "Yes exactly I was feeling great because growing up my mom..."

Now at that point I've got her opening up because she's feeling understoood. And sorry for the vocab lesson I"m sure you already knew this but it helps me illustrate my idea in my mind lol! But I'm just emailing you about this because I've noticed that A LOT of your game is based off of paraphrasing.

When a woman is challenging you paraphrase. When you want to deep dive you paraphrase. When you try to connect with her emotionally you paraphrase.

Once you can paraphrase her words she feels understood and now you guys can truly connect. And it was something that had been bothering me for YEARS man because I was trying SO HARD to listen to women lol! But I found out that I was just doing it the wrong way which was from a frame of reiteration (male comm) and not paraphrase (female comm).

It's crazy because now I can look back at some of your old post and say OHHHHH that's how he did that! IT's amazing how much power paraphrasing gives you when it comes to communicating with others.

Just wanted to share that with you because it really struck me as gold.”

After reading this email, in a flash, I remembered the years I spent straining and striving to understand women and feed back to them what they'd said, only to have my efforts be tossed right back in my face when girls replied with, "Uh, no, that's not what I meant," or tersely corrected me.

Man, that was frustrating. But it doesn't happen anymore. Why? Well... let me tell you.

You see, our good reader highlights the difference between what a guy who's learning tries to do, and a guy who's got it down does. And I'm going to delve deeper into doing it the right way here, in this post on active listening.