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: If we want to reduce speeding, what do you think actually changes driver behaviour? 🛻🚨🚓
In the Post's article on speeding penalties, the question is asked whether speeding fines are truly about road safety, or are they just a way to boost revenue for the Crown?
What do you think? Should speeding motorists receive speeding fines or demerit points?
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37.5% The sting of a fine (Money talks!)
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62.5% The threat of demerit points (Nobody wants to lose their license!)
Some Choice News!
DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
We hope this brings a smile!
💨 Wellington: Is the real summer finally here?
It’s the talk of the town (and every coffee queue): the Wellington "summer" has felt more like a very long, very damp spring! 🌧️ We’ve definitely had our fair share of grey skies and raincoats lately.
In fact, The Post reports that our "pretty average" summer has been tough on the local venues and events that usually thrive under the sun. But don't pack away the sunscreen just yet!
The good news? The next couple of weeks are looking a bit more "settled" (the Wellington word for "not a gale-force downpour"). With autumn officially here, now is the time to squeeze every last drop out of the season! ☀️
Any local hidden spots or activities you’d recommend for a calm Wellington day? Drop them in the comments! 👇
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