Stop Trying to Fix Your Partner’s Feelings
Empathy is the willingness to feel with your partner. To understand their inner world.
This critical skill is part of Dr. Gottman’s State of the Union Meeting and is key to reaching resolution in conflict conversations. During conflict is also when empathy is most difficult. To empathize with your partner when their hurt feelings are a result of something you said or did without defending yourself requires skill and practice.
Couples that have mastered empathy tell me “it’s like a light switch has been turned on in their relationship” and their cycles of conflict drastically change. This is because partners stop defending their positions and instead seek to understand each other. They become a team against the conflict.
Stop trying to fix your partner
Empathy is easy when our partner is happy. It’s more difficult to empathize when our partner is hurting, angry, or sad. As Marshall Rosenberg says in Nonviolent Communication, “It may be difficult to empathize with those who are closest to us.” Since we care about them, we try to help minimize their feelings because we know that they are difficult, but sympathizing can be damaging despite positive intentions.
Empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of the person you love. Sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity without experiencing their feelings with them. Brené Brown’s description of sympathy as trying to paint a silver-lining around pain is a very common response.
“Well, it could be worse…”
“I think you should…”
“This could turn into a positive experience for you if you just…”
The problem with this kind of response is that it invalidates the other person. I know when others have tried to “fix” my feelings, I’ve ended up resenting them because it made me feel foolish for feeling that way in the first place.
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Poll: Is it ok to regift something that you have been given?
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Do you ever regift?
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79.4% Yes! It's better to regift what I don't need
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Some Choice News!
Many New Zealand gardens aren’t seeing as many monarch butterflies fluttering around their swan plants and flower beds these days — the hungry Asian paper wasp has been taking its toll.
Thanks to people like Alan Baldick, who’s made it his mission to protect the monarch, his neighbours still get to enjoy these beautiful butterflies in their own backyards.
Thinking about planting something to invite more butterflies, bees, and birds into your garden?
Thanks for your mahi, Alan! We hope this brings a smile!
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