The Volley: Listening Versus Talking.

Good communication is a volley.

That sounds simple. One person talks, then the other person talks. The conversational ball travels back and forth across the net.

But taking turns is not the same thing as communicating.

A real volley requires you to respond to the ball that was actually sent to you. You have to watch it, receive it, adjust to it, and return it from where it landed. If you decide where you are going to swing before the other person even touches the ball, you are not responding. You are just waiting for your opportunity to perform.

We do that constantly in conversation.

While someone else is speaking, we prepare our defense. We plan our next point. We search for a similar story from our own lives. We rehearse something clever. Sometimes we leave the subject entirely and follow whatever thought happens to light up inside our own heads.

Then the other person stops talking, and we send back something that has very little to do with what they actually gave us.

Technically, we took turns. But there was no volley.

Listening requires more than remaining silent until it is our turn. It means allowing another person’s words to interrupt the conversation already happening inside us. It means staying with their subject long enough to understand not only what they said, but what they were trying to communicate.

Before returning the ball, we have to receive it.

That might mean saying:

“What I hear you saying is…”

“Did I understand that correctly?”

“It sounds like the part that really hurt was…”

Those responses are not revolutionary. They are almost painfully basic. But they communicate something many people rarely experience:

I was with you while you were talking.

Staying on topic is part of that. When someone shares something vulnerable and we immediately redirect the conversation toward ourselves, we may not intend to dismiss them. We may be trying to connect. But intention and impact are not always the same thing.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is resist the impulse to grab the ball and turn it into our own game.

This is difficult for me.

My mind moves quickly. I see connections everywhere, and one idea often produces five more. That can be useful when I am writing, creating, or trying to understand a complicated system. In conversation, however, it can pull me away from the person directly in front of me.

It becomes especially difficult when I am talking with a woman I really like.

Attraction raises the stakes for me. Instead of simply listening, I can become intensely aware of myself. How am I coming across? What should I say next? Am I being interesting? Am I saying too much? Does she like me? Am I about to ruin this?

The conversation outside me becomes overwhelmed by the conversation inside me.

Then I can begin to dissociate. I am physically present, but some part of me has stepped away from the moment. I am no longer comfortably volleying with another person. I am trying to monitor the ball, the net, the score, the audience, my form, and every previous game I have ever lost—all at once.

Of course I become overloaded.

That response did not emerge from nowhere. My history taught me to monitor people closely. It taught me that connection could involve rejection, disappointment, silence, judgment, or the pressure to become whatever another person needed me to be. I learned to scan the room. I learned to anticipate reactions. I learned to think ahead.

Those habits once helped me navigate relationships. Now they can prevent me from fully inhabiting them.

When I dissociate, it is not because I do not care about the person speaking. Sometimes it happens because I care so much that my nervous system begins treating connection like danger. My attention turns inward because I am trying to manage the possibility of being hurt.

But listening requires presence, and presence requires accepting that I cannot control the entire conversation.

I do not need to predict where it is going.

I do not need to produce the perfect response.

I do not need to win the exchange or prove that I deserve to remain in it.

I only need to receive what was actually sent to me.

Maybe that is the practice:

Receive. Hold. Return.

Receive the other person’s words without immediately building an answer.

Hold them long enough to notice what they mean and what they stir inside you.

Then return something honest that belongs to the conversation you are actually having—not the one you feared, rehearsed, or invented.

That is listening.

And maybe good communication is not measured by how brilliantly we express ourselves. Maybe it is measured by whether the other person can recognize what they gave us in what we return.

The goal is not to keep possession of the ball.

The goal is to keep the volley alive.