Thirty Minutes
in the Listener’s Seat

I asked my partner, Abi, to sit with me in the living room for a conversation I had been successfully avoiding.

The assignment was to listen for thirty minutes to someone whose point of view is hard for me to hear. My intention was not to debate her, but to hear her words. I was not supposed to sit there building my rebuttal while waiting for my turn. My goal was to simply practice listening.

I chose my partner because she has been telling me something for a while now, and I have gotten very good at not hearing it. She believes I cut people off too quickly. In her words, I lock people out before they can come around. Once I decide someone has crossed a line, I am excellent at walking out the door and shutting it behind me. I am not excellent at waiting to find out whether anything on the other side of the closed door has changed.

That is hard to hear because I do not think of myself as cold. I consider myself to be careful and calculated. I have a whole catalog of reasons for every boundary I have ever created, and I can produce them on the spot, like a filing cabinet sorted, organized, and ready for exactly this kind of conversation. That has been my whole strategy. Abi points out the pattern. I counter with folders of evidence proving why I was right. I never let this conversation progress.

For this assignment, I picked the issue that makes me feel like a defendant on the stand being cross-examined. I could not tell yet whether Abi was wrong about me, or whether she was naming something I had gotten too good at defending.

One of the ground rules: when the urge to defend showed up, I was ideally going ask a clarifying question first. I would paraphrase what I heard and let Abi correct my perception, rather than correcting her.

It sounded simple as we prepared our tea and got the space ready. As hard as I tried to imagine this time would be different, I knew I would be fighting the urge to view my partner as the prosecution.

I began by asking what the pattern looked like from her side of the room. I wanted to sound neutral, but I could hear how strained my composure was. I reassured Abi that I was ready to hear her words.

Abi chose those words deliberately and carefully. I could tell that she was hesitant to speak. Probably because it didn’t go well when we had this conversation in the past. I tried to listen as she spoke. She told me that my rubric for deciding whether someone is safe is too rigid. I cut people out too quickly once I decide they are unsafe. Once I decide, I do not make room for them to grow. She said growth is usually challenging and uncomfortable before it becomes visible, and sometimes people need someone willing to stay by their side long enough to see whether they are capable of growing.

My body responded before my brain had anything to add. My shoulders tensed and my jaw locked up. My face did not hide my frustration, no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to tell her that what she was calling “room for growth” looked like self-abandonment to me. I wanted to explain that I am just logically holding people accountable. I wanted to say all of this with my arms crossed and my feet planted.

I stayed sitting. I tried to reflect back to her what I heard: from her perspective, I sometimes treat the first sign of an issue as a final verdict. She nodded and added that when I leave no pathway back, the relationship becomes defined by its worst moment.

After the moment of insight passed, my body tensed up again. I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Why does that have to be my role?” What I meant was: Why am I responsible for walking other people through their growth? Why am I the classroom for someone else’s learning curve?

It had the inflection of a question, but it was really the start of an argument. I was already preparing my defenses. Arguments formed in my head. I told myself: I am allowed to protect my peace. I am not required to do unpaid emotional labor. It was clear that I was struggling to remain in the listener’s seat.

Thankfully Abi stuck with me and answered. She said she believes relationships require some responsibility to help each other grow. She described relationships as staying with people through uncomfortable questions, being available even through mistakes, and not assuming that a harmful moment communicates the whole story about a person. I did not agree with everything I heard, and my resistance remained visible.

I started noticing something else happening in the conversation. My resistance to her words was making it harder for her to keep talking. Abi’s voice got quieter; she started hedging. My barrier was in the room now, teaching Abi to take up less space.

At that moment, I caught myself in the act. I could see the costs of my combative attitude. The impact on a person I cared about was right in front of me.

I let go of the philosophy and asked for examples. I wanted to know where she felt the impact most.

In class terms, I was redirecting the urge to correct into the practice of asking a clarifying question. In terms of where my mind was, I recognized the two pathways this could take and chose the one that led toward a stronger relationship. My readied rebuttals lay strewn along the other path.

On this pathway, her answers brought a new clarity. She spoke about her family, specifically her mother. She pointed out that while it is fair for me not to want the burden of explaining my identity to them, my desire to avoid that burden can lead me to extreme positions, where I shut them out entirely. She explained that when I close them off, she splits in two, pulled in multiple directions, unsure of what to do.

We weren’t debating whether all difficult or unsafe people deserve my unlimited patience. We were talking about people Abi loves. She is choosing to stay and encourage their growth, rather than walking away. My refusal to stay engaged created burdens in places where I could have offered support.

I asked what she needed from me if she did not need me to be the person who explains, teaches, and smooths everything over. I wanted to understand what this help would look like. Until then, I had not interpreted these requests as anything other than demands that I defend my identity.

Abi said she was not asking me to do all the explaining. She was asking me to stay close and support her as she did some of it. She would like it if I came to dinner when her family was in town, stayed flexible when things with them were imperfect, and stopped making my discomfort the loudest thing in the room every time the subject came up.

This seemed like a new conversation, entirely different from the one I had shown up ready for. Part of me had prepared to debate whether people are owed access to me after causing harm. Instead, Abi was asking whether I could sit next to her while she chose to give her family room to grow. I realized I had been responding to the wrong question for months.

After that breakthrough, the conversation became easier.

Abi acknowledged the parts I needed to hear: some of my distance stems from real concerns about safety, and is not simply stubbornness. Being trans around people who may question or misunderstand you can be scary. She still understood that and wanted to keep me safe.

I had to acknowledge the part she needed me to hear: She was not asking me to dissolve my boundaries, but instead to hold them in a way that left room for her needs.

We landed on a concrete step: the next time her mom came into town, we would get lunch or dinner with her together.

It is a small and specific promise that signals progress. This conversation could have easily fallen back into the version we have had before: the one where I defend, she retreats, and nobody gets closer to anything.

I was not a perfect listener during this conversation. Early on, I was tense and asked questions that were nothing more than objections to what I was being told. I saw this and redirected my approach. I remained present in the conversation until we reached mutual understanding. Moving forward, I want to catch these physical and emotional signs in the moment. I hope to use these as signals to pause and adjust my listening, ensuring I approach future conversations with self-awareness and intentional active listening strategies.