Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

Feel Ignored by Your Spouse? Use These 10 Listening Skills to Increase Your Value

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 4 • Episode 13

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Feel Ignored by Your Spouse? Use These 10 Listening Skills

In this episode of Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack, Christian psychologist and relationship coach Dr. Jack Ito breaks down 10 powerful listening skills that can help you reconnect with a distant spouse. If you're tired of feeling ignored, dismissed, or disconnected, these step-by-step strategies will help you become the kind of partner your spouse enjoys talking with again.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to develop a mindset that draws your spouse closer, not pushes them away
  • 10 actionable listening techniques that rebuild emotional connection
  • What behaviors are turning your spouse off (and how to replace them)
  • How clients like John turned around a cold marriage—without needing their spouse’s cooperation

Want to Work With Coach Jack?
If your spouse avoids you or conversations often end in frustration, you don’t need to keep guessing what to do next. My Re-Connections Coaching Package will give you a customized step-by-step plan to help your spouse enjoy talking and being with you again—without needing them to work on the relationship. Learn more at: coachjackito.com

Key Takeaways:

  • A positive mindset is essential before any interaction
  • Validation creates connection; invalidation destroys it
  • Listening is more than hearing—it's how you respond and remember
  • Good listening habits create attraction and reduce avoidance
  • Coaching works by creating small wins that build confidence and change

Additional Resources:

Work one-on-one with Coach Jack to repair your relationship using small, easy steps that rebuild connection quickly. Visit CoachJackIto.com to learn more about relationship coaching.

Feel Ignored by Your Spouse Use These 10 Listening Skills 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction to Reconciling Marriages

[00:00:00]Announcer: On the reconciling marriages with Coach Jack, podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito will help you to build and restore your marriage by learning just a few relationship skills you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more while getting more love and affection from your spouse.

[00:00:20] Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage. Both you and your spouse will love. 

[00:00:29] Understanding Relationship Challenges

[00:00:29]Coach Jack: How can you keep up your loving feelings for your spouse? If you're constantly being ignored, how long will you want to stay in a relationship like that? These are the kinds of feelings that many of my clients experienced before working with me.

[00:00:42] Many even wondered if it was worth trying to save their relationship at all. If you're feeling this way, then I encourage you, like my clients, to find out just how good your relationship can become before deciding you've had enough. 

[00:00:55] Effective Relationship Skills

[00:00:55]Coach Jack: To do that, you'll need to make sure that you are using effective relationship skills.

[00:01:00] Stick with me today and I'll give you 10 things you can start doing immediately to improve your relationship. If you'll gradually start using these methods with your spouse, you'll get improvements in the way your spouse looks at you and talks to you. They will also make your spouse want to spend more time with you rather than avoid you.

[00:01:18] I'll also tell you how you can get a free download with five lessons you can use to boost communication between you and your spouse even more. Let's talk first about the underlying principles of being a good listener. Improving relationships is mainly about helping your spouse to enjoy you more. The more you can do that, the more your spouse is going to want to be with you, talk with you and be intimate with you.

[00:01:41] There are many things that you can do to become more enjoyable. Being a good listener is one of the easiest because it is no conflict and non pursuit. It can be used to build new relationships starting over with relationships or to enhance at any level of closeness. Your spouse ignores you because you seem either unpleasant or uninterested.

[00:02:02] These 10 skills will help to make sure that you are not coming across that way. Then you'll get more time and attention from your spouse. Many of my clients are either defensive listeners or argumentative listeners when we begin working together. My client, John, was that way. It was hard to blame him since his wife was often irritable and just went to him when she either wanted something or to complain about something.

[00:02:27] His attempts at friendly conversation were mainly to ask her about her day. His wife would answer his questions with short answers before walking away to do her own thing. If we couldn't create some changes, John's love for his wife would be gone, and probably John also. Fortunately, there were a number of things that John hadn't tried, which were able to turn his situation around.

[00:02:49] The Power of Positive Mindset

[00:02:49]Coach Jack: The first was creating a positive mindset before interacting. If you do this, it will not only help your husband or wife enjoy you more, you'll also enjoy your husband or wife more. A glass half full of water is a lot more satisfying to drink than a half empty glass of water. Before you encounter your spouse, create a positive mindset.

[00:03:11] You do that by thinking positive things about him or her. Prayer is a good way to prep our mindset. I pray for my clients before our meetings and it helps me to give them my best. Reminding yourself for thanking God for the good things your spouse has done for you will help you create the right mindset, and it will show on your face and in your voice.

[00:03:33] This also happens to be one of the 12 ways you can revive your love for your spouse. An article that I wrote, which you can find on my website, see the link in the podcast description for more information. Another thing you can do is to prepare to respond in a positive way. First off, expect that your spouse might be negative so that you're not caught off guard and reactive.

[00:03:54] When it happens, tell yourself that. If that happens, you will focus on finding something to empathize or agree with. And let the rest go in one ear and out the other. 

[00:04:05] Active Listening Techniques

[00:04:05]Coach Jack: A third thing that you can do is to pay good attention. If I leaned back and closed my eyes when I was listening to a client, or worse yet was looking at my cell phone, they would rightly be upset, even if I was hearing every word they were saying.

[00:04:21] Even just thinking about lunch would be enough not to make me seem present. Why would I do any less with my wife? Why would you do less with your husband or wife? Put your phone down or turn it off. Mute the tv. Look at your spouse and focus on what he or she is saying. If you are actively listening for things to agree or empathize with, it will help you to focus better.

[00:04:45] Fourthly, don't interrupt. If you really need to say something, that's fine. Important conversations are part of any marriage, but hold onto it until your spouse has gone first. Don't interrupt before your spouse finishes, even if it takes five or 10 minutes, unless the house is on fire, it can wait. A good way to avoid interrupting is to wait three to five seconds after your spouse finishes speaking, before responding.

[00:05:14] If your spouse has ever said, Hey, don't interrupt me, I'm still talking, then you need to be extra careful to allow him or her space before responding. 

[00:05:25] Validating and Remembering Important Details

[00:05:25]Coach Jack: Fifthly validate to create relationship connection. Listening with validation means making your spouse feel right or normal about what he or she has said.

[00:05:36] It could also be validating something your spouse says that he or she did to validate. You'll need to either agree, empathize, appreciate, or compliment. Don't do it a lot, but do it at least once per conversation. If you need help learning how to agree with negative things, your spouse says, my book, connecting through Yes, can help you connect even in this situation.

[00:06:00] See the link in the description improvement. Number six, don't invalidate. Invalidation happens when you make your spouse feel wrong or abnormal about what he or she thinks, feels or does. Arguing, criticizing, using negative body language or defensive explaining are things you will absolutely need to avoid.

[00:06:20] Those are just a few of the behaviors characteristic of what needy people do to try to improve relationships. They never work if you do these things. My book on overcoming neediness can help you to break those habits. That link is also in the description improvement. Number seven, remember what's important to your spouse.

[00:06:40] To be a good listener, you need to remember important things your spouse says. What is important, whatever he or she thinks is important. For example, if a friend told you he got a new puppy and you didn't see him for two months, you could ask, so how's your puppy doing? If you remember the puppy's name, even better.

[00:07:00] This shows that you listen, that you think about him and that he matters to you. The same applies to your spouse. If you struggle to remember details, taking notes can help. I talk with 20 or 30 clients a week, and when I meet with them again, it feels like we just talked because I take notes before I meet with them.

[00:07:21] I review my notes to refresh my memory. I write my notes during the session, but you can make your notes after finishing a conversation improvement Number eight, know what your spouse likes to talk about. It helps to remember what your spouse enjoys talking about. Many people say, I just don't know what to talk about with my spouse, but you can figure it out by paying attention to what your spouse likes to talk about with other people.

[00:07:48] Also, you can pay attention to what your spouse does in his or her free time. Everyone has a topic they prefer talking about more than anything else. If you listen carefully, you'll learn what that is, and that makes conversations easier. You can even make a note improvement number nine. 

[00:08:06] Matching Body Language and Observing Behavior

[00:08:06]Coach Jack: Match body language to his or her feelings.

[00:08:10] Essentially, you want to make good eye contact, nod in agreement, and avoid shaking your head in disagreement. However, if your spouse shares something shocking, you might want to shake your head in disbelief. That's fine. Smile or laugh at something they think is funny. It's part of the work of being a good spouse to laugh or smile at stupid jokes just as it is with kids' knock, knock jokes. 

[00:08:34] Wherever you create emotional match, you create connection and improvement. Number 10, observe your own behavior. When I was first learning to be a psychologist many years ago, I learned to not only pay attention to what my client said, but also to the interaction between me and my client.

[00:08:54] We call this a third eye that was observing our interaction. It's like watching a video of yourself interacting with the other person. This awareness of how you interact with your spouse and others is one of your keys to relational success. Little changes can make big differences. This is the power of coaching.

[00:09:14] It helps people build relationships by taking many small steps without creating rejection. By gradually introducing the listening improvements I've given you today. You'll start to notice your spouse enjoying talking to you more. Even the most difficult of relationships can be improved by taking small steps.

[00:09:32] Conclusion and Additional Resources

[00:09:32]Coach Jack: In addition to these 10 ways to improve your listening, you can download five free communication lessons from my website, see the link in the description, or go to my website and click on free downloads. These free lessons will help you to get your spouse to enjoy talking with you. It's my hope that you can discover what John and my other clients have discovered, that no matter how distant your relationship has become, there are always ways to make it better.

[00:09:57] You can do that with me by signing up for my Re-Connections Coaching Package available coachjacketo.com. 

[00:10:05]Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.