It’s late at night and I’ve just come home from my favourite Jazz club in London. And late at night in London, (which by the way is as busy as during the day), there is a very different atmosphere.

Apart from the strangely dressed people, some wearing very little, or rather a lot, like the couple on the train wearing Shakespearean clothing,the guy in the dinner suit on his way back from work, and not forgetting (and how could I?), the man dressed as Woody from Toy Story who sat next to me on the tube, complete with toy gun and holster, there are couples. Just like every couple we know.

There are couples arm in arm, couples kissing, couples who have clearly drunk a little (or a lot) too much and on a Saturday night in London, when I hoped love would be in the cool night air, when most couples out for the evening are at least trying to be couples, there are couples clearly in conflict.

When I am in London on my own, it’s a surreal experience. I go to see jazz and sit at the bar and I observe. What I see from my bar stool is humanity at play and the underlying currents that perhaps even they don’t see, that keep them from playing nicely together.

But tonight it was not from my bar stool but on the way home, discreetly observing the couple on the tube, three seats down, sitting opposite each other, for whom I felt the most compassion.

She said, ‘you don’t give a damn about me. I’ve tried and tried and you are so wrapped up in your own life, I don’t think I can take it any more’. He said, ‘you make me so angry that I want to kill you. Why do you do that to me?’. She said, ‘you talk so much rubbish, how can you talk so much rubbish’. And so it went on, neither hearing the other, both trying to be understood and each of them missing the other’s call for love.

There isn’t always Love in London. Sometimes there is so much sadness, it gets into your bones. I guess its because everyone of us wants to be heard and understood by the one that we love the most. The one who is supposed to love us the most.

So here’s my top tip for you as I begin my blog posts again after a dry spell:

Try hard to listen to what’s hard to hear.

Decide to allow yourself to let go of your need to defend your position and just for a day, let yourself really hear your partner.

I believe that every cry, every complaint, every whinge and every whine, is an unspoken request for love.

Listen for every unspoken request in your partners upsets. In each upset you’ll find a need that is not expressed, that cannot be articulated, but which is dying for its breath. Breath that will allow it to be heard. And when you hear it, and you will, don’t judge or justify. Ask your partner simply ‘what do you want from me’? You may hear something you never heard before.

And whether you live in London or Liverpool, if you spent this Saturday night as a couple in conflict, go ahead and give me a call. I’ll show you how you can begin to understand each other and become lovers for life so you never have to be like the couple I observed on the tube in London tonight.

Lots of Love

Francine