I thought I was a great listener for 10 years until my wife repeated a story back to me with all the details wrong

Troy Chen · 2026-10-09T08:55:04.744964+00:00

For years I believed I was the guy everyone could talk to. Friends called me, coworkers vented to me, my wife told me everything. But about 5 months ago we were driving home from her sister's place in Sacramento and she said something like 'remember when Dave lost his job?' and then told me the whole story. Only she had the details twisted, and the reason was that she had heard the real version from me. I had heard Dave tell me that story over lunch 6 weeks earlier and I had passed it along with the wrong company name and the wrong reason he got let go. That stung. I started paying attention after that and realized I do this all the time. I nod and say uh huh but I am already thinking about what I want to say next, so I only grab the headline and skip the important stuff. I have been doing this since college and nobody ever called me out on it, which honestly makes it worse. So now I am trying this thing where I repeat the last sentence back in my head before I respond. Early results are rough because it slows me down a lot. Has anyone else figured out how to actually fix this, or do you just accept that you are a headline listener forever?

Vivisector

Loading…

I thought I was a great listener for 10 years until my wife repeated a story back to me with all the details wrong | Ask Anything - Vivisector