How To Add Listeners In A Object

I am having some issues with my GUI. I have a UserList GUI (not finished) that, on button click, will check for an open chat window and open a new window if none exists or add a tab if one does (this is working fine). My issue is that the listeners I added to my chat window only work for the last tab added. If I switch back to a previous tab, I can no longer use my input textField and send button to write to my textArea. I add listeners when I initially create the window and first tab. I thought about adding ChangeState listener, but couldn't work out how it would be any different than what I am doing now. Do I not fully understand how listeners are added to a particular object?

I will post my code for the whole class so you can get the full picture.

Java Code: public class Chat extends JFrame{
private JPanel tabPanels, mainPanel;
private JTextArea chatArea;
private JTextField inputArea;
private JButton send;
private JTabbedPane tabPane;
private JScrollPane scroll;
private String name;

[Code]...