I noticed something a long time ago in arguments that took me a while to put into words.

Most people in a disagreement are not actually listening. They are waiting. There is a difference. Listening means you are taking in what the other person is saying and letting it land before you respond. Waiting means you have your next line ready and you are just holding it behind your teeth until there is a pause long enough to release it.

When you are actually listening to someone you might change your mind mid-sentence. You might find yourself saying — wait, I did not consider that. You might arrive somewhere different than where you started. That is what understanding feels like when it is happening in real time.

When you are waiting your response was already decided before the other person finished talking. You were not in a conversation. You were in a performance. Two people performing their positions at each other and calling it communication.

I have been in enough of those performances to know exactly what they feel like from the inside. You say something honest. Something measured. Something you chose carefully because you actually want to be understood. And you watch the other person’s eyes. Not for a sign that they heard you. For a sign of what they are about to fire back.

It is exhausting.

Not because the disagreement is hard. Because the pretense is hard. The pretense that what is happening is a conversation when it is actually two people in a room who stopped listening a long time ago and are now just managing the performance until someone gives up or walks away.

Real listening is rarer than people admit. Most of us are better performers than we are listeners. And the gap between those two things is where most relationships quietly break down.

Stephon Rudd