The author is perfectly right that all couples (to start with) are `potentially mismatched'. His solution in the last paragraph: `stop challenging the prowess of their minds...tolerance and compromise and you can't learn that from any maths professor.'

Indeed, you can't! The solution seems harder! A much simpler solution:

Just listen to your spouse!

I teach and preach listening. It has helped me to practice it at home and at work. Listening is like loving in the highest sense of the word. Nothing less. It is much harder than you think! It's hard work, needs great effort and restraint, but the rewards are immense.

Average listening is poor, terribly poor, barely 20%. If you don't believe it, just try a simple experiment. Next time, your friend asks you: How are you? With a straight face, answer: I died last week!

Chances are that your friend reply: Good, fine, I am fine, too!

Listening has become so rare, that there are professional listeners (in America, for example) whom you can `hire' just to listen to your troubles. Research has shown that a newly married couple listen well to each other, but this drops rapidly with years of marriage. After, say 20-30 years, both are talking and neither listening! That's when the marriage may be on the `rocks' and they need professional advice!

There is no greater love/regard/respect you can pay a person than just listen to him/her. A few quotes to prove our point:

• Chinese proverb: God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we may listen more...

• Ghalib: He has not understood me, nor he will
  Oh God, if you don't give me the extra power of narration,
  Please give him a heart to listen to me more attentively.

• Rabindranath Tagore: There are plenty of men to say Good things
  But very few to listen
  That requires strength of mind

Signed,

dr o p kharbanda,
management consultant
mumbai 400026
(a frequent visitor to Dubai)