A Journey of Hope

The Power of Voice

10 Comments
Experience, Love, Men & Women

A good voice is incredibly attractive to me. I think it is the thing that first attracted me to my husband. I didn’t know what he looked like; he just had a “sexy” voice. It wasn’t particularly deep. It was just mesmerizing to me.

A person’s voice conveys a lot about personality and demeanor. My husband was also attracted to my voice right away, and he said I sounded cute, sweet, shy and nice. Although, I very much dislike my own voice.

In Dune, the Bene Gesserit have a concept called “the Voice,” using their vocal talents to persuade and compel others to follow commands. It’s quite interesting. I feel there is definitely something energetically deeper going on about voices and tones.

I come from an Asian culture (Chinese) that takes for granted the fact that women will cook, clean and stay thin after marriage. But the idea of giving the husband kindness and love verbally is still not common. I watched women do all kinds of chores for their husbands, but also frequently nag, criticize and complain.

I was verbally berated by my mother all the time and decided from a young age to not do it to others, especially not those I love. I knew how much it hurt because it was done to me. People say “sticks and stones may wound me but words don’t hurt,” but Bush has a song with the lyrics “you have broken me… nothing hurts like your mouth.”

As women, one of our gifts is in our Voice; we can cut/wound/insult/attack with words, or we can nurture/heal/support/love with words. In my past, my darkest moments, I did think hurtful thoughts, but I tried not to utter them out loud. There were instances where I failed and intentionally hurt someone with words, but I regret them. I don’t want to gossip or badmouth other people because talking trash behind someone’s back makes me uncomfortable.

The other important thing to realize, which is difficult to convey over the text medium, is that tone of voice matters. The exact same sentence can mean totally different things depending on the way the words were said. Tones reveal intention, and if you say something in a kind, sweet and loving way, it will show your love. And vice versa. When I write posts I try to verbalize them in my mind in a nice way, but sometimes it does not cross the anonymity of the Internet.

I find that it is a good thing to try to be civil, kind and even-tempered with everyone, including those who share one’s views and those who do not. To love one person is to love every person, and the love we send out to one person might multiply onto many others. As we are social creatures, and as it is socially considered more “feminine” to be kind, sweet, nurturing and loving, the power of Voice lies with us.

10 Responses

  1. I, too, am very attracted to a good voice–to the point that I can’t decide whether or not I find a man physically attractive until I’ve heard him speak.

    And when I realized that about myself, I became more sensitive to what else voices can reveal about a person. There was one time I had my back to the TV when someone started to speak (on some reality show) and the quality of his voice made me spin around immediately and yell for everyone in the room to hear: “That kid is smart!”

    But like you, I don’t like my own voice very much. (People have complimented me on my singing voice, but I never believe them. :P) This is probably why I’m not equally sensitive to the gift of my own voice. I’m sure I’ve used it like a club in the past–or even like a flamethrower. On the other hand, I know that I can make people laugh just by the way I say perfectly ordinary statements; so there are some positives, too. But I wouldn’t like it to stop there. I’d love to know how to use my voice to soothe, to comfort, to attract, and even to heal–but I’m not sure how to do that yet.

  2. Those articles make me wish that there were a reference to help us do “voice reading” the way we can do “face reading.” (Coincidentally, I’m learning a lot about Chinese face reading these days.)

  3. Personally, I’m a very auditory person and can clearly remember the voices of people who I haven’t seen for years and whose faces I can’t remember nearly as well.

    I think the right tone of voice at the right moment can make a huge difference in a relationship or in a work context. And conversely, the wrong tone can do tremendous harm.

  4. As an aside, I think cats and dogs are also quite good at using tone of voice to convey messages to humans. They use different pitches of meows, squeals, whimpers and barks to signify different intentions and emotions. We all know when a dog whimpers in sadness or when a cat hisses in anger. It’s unmistakable.

  5. Works the other way around, too: cats & dogs are also very good at detecting tones of voice from humans.

    An interesting story: during WWII, there was an official of the British organization called Special Operations Executive (which supported sabotage in Nazi-occupied Europe) who after the war turned out to have almost certainly been a double agent (though this was never proven in court.) Another SOE officer recounted that when he’d had this man over to his home, his dog–who’d never before or since shown hostility toward another human–bared his teeth and growled.

  6. @David
    That story fascinates me, but I would have said the dog smelled something on the double agent rather than heard something in his voice.

    Perhaps Hope could write another post about the power of scent? ;)

  7. Bellita…another SOE story involving a dog here.

  8. Amazing story, DF, although it sounded like she made men fall in love with her wherever she went. Animals, too.

    I have a friend who is quite a dog and baby whisperer, and she has a bit of that spunk in her as well. I’m fairly sure she is an ENFJ.

    Bellita, great idea! I’ll have to think about it more. :)

  9. This is a bit off-topic now, Hope, but I’d appreciate it if you dropped by my blog to clarify something. I brought up some of your advice in this thread . . .

    http://bloggingbellita.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/not-born-but-trained-part-3/#comments

    . . . and it soon stole the entire conversation!

    I hope I got your point right, but if I didn’t, I’d love it if you set me straight. And if I did, I’d also be glad to read anything else you’d have to add on the matter. Thanks! :)

Leave a Reply

XHTML: These are some of the tags you can use: <a href=""> <b> <blockquote> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>