Why Listening to Fix Is Not the Same as Listening to Love

Last night your spouse started a sentence about something hard, and you were already assembling a solution before they reached the period. It’s not that the fix you had in mind was wrong. It’s that nobody asked for it yet — and the reflex to supply it anyway is one you’ve spent years training at the office, where fast, right answers are exactly what get rewarded.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C: Clarity — The Reflex to Solve Before You’ve Heard

You built your career on fast, right answers — someone names a problem, and you supply the fix before they finish the sentence. That instinct made you valuable in the boardroom. Aimed at your spouse, though, it can quietly communicate something you didn’t intend: that the problem mattered more to you than the person bringing it did. This week, pay attention to how quickly you start solving before you’ve actually heard the whole thing.

H: Hear — The Folly of Answering Before You’ve Heard

Proverbs 18:13 — “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”

Solomon isn’t warning against bad advice here — he’s warning against premature advice. The Hebrew word behind “hears” is shama, and it carries more weight than sound simply reaching an ear. It’s attentive, engaged reception — hearing that intends to actually receive what’s said, not just wait for a gap to jump in with a reply. Answering before that kind of hearing has happened isn’t described in this proverb as merely unhelpful. It’s called kesel — folly, a confident, self-assured foolishness that acts on an incomplete picture as though it were the whole one.

A fast, right answer is still the wrong gift when no one asked you to fix anything.

Applied to marriage, the fix you offer at minute one may be technically correct and still land as the wrong gift, because your spouse wasn’t asking for your solution — they were asking to be heard first. The two aren’t opposites; they’re sequential. Hearing has to happen before answering does, or the answer, however accurate, arrives at the wrong door.

E: Exchange — What Your Spouse Is Actually Asking For

Trade the instinct that a fast, right answer proves you care, for the harder yet more caring discipline of receiving the whole story before you offer anything at all.

Because God’s love is patient enough to let you finish the whole story before He responds, how does that change what you do in the first ten seconds after your spouse starts talking tonight?

W: Walk — Ask Before You Advise

Tonight, when your spouse brings you something hard, ask one question before you offer a single solution: “Do you want me to help you fix this, or do you just need me to hear it?” Then do only what they answer — nothing more, no matter how clear the fix seems to you.

Closing question: Where else this week have you been offering fixes to someone who was only asking to be heard?