Empathy with other adults can feel differently than it does between us and kids. This is often because our emotions are used as currency, as power. And also because we are raised to stigmatize negative and uncomfortable emotions. 

So why should we make an effort to master empathy? How can it really improve our connections in our marriage and friendships?

 

The full transcript is at the end of this post.

In this podcast episode I'm sharing:

Why empathy is hard in a marriage

When both partners are in a stressed state because they are dealing with frustrations and negative emotions

Assuming the worst case scenario vs getting curious from a place of love

Empathy's role at bringing us back to the same team rather 

Giving and receiving empathy

The difference between empathy and sympathy

Empathy fatigue and holding space for others 

The scale of an empathetic reaction: too much, not enough 

When you constantly want to change someone else, how can empathy help?

 

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Full episode transcript

This is the Simple on Purpose Podcast, where I'm here encouraging you mamas to love what matters -  to make time for what matters - make space for what matters - make energy for what matters.

In the last episode, we talked about empathy, the two types of empathy, emotional empathy, and cognitive empathy, having empathy in our relationships, specifically in parenting. Being empathetic parents how it's not a form of enabling bad behaviour, but a form of creating a connection point and a way of changing the relationship dynamic where it's the one that handles tough emotions together, rather than punishing them, avoiding them, resisting them or reacting to them.

Today, I want to continue on with empathy, as we can use it in our marriage and in our friendships. Empathy is having an appreciation, almost feeling the feelings of someone else.

Empathy is saying, I know what you're feeling, I can see that I can understand that. It can go even further into compassion, where I have compassion for how you're feeling, but empathy in a marriage, what does that look like? Because often, we have feelings for what we think their feelings are, do you know what I mean? Like we assume the worst so that they're acting this way. And it means all these horrible things. And, and they're just doing this because they're selfish and, and all that matters to them is work and all of these other things, we fill in the blank with the worst-case scenario.

So when it comes to marriage, having empathy means, often asking, asking them, what's happening for them, asking ourselves what's happening for us, because we need empathy for us too. And when it comes to two adults, having empathy in a relationship where emotions are almost power, that emotions can be used as a currency.

And this generation that we're in many of us adults, now we're raised to stigmatize negative emotions, to be uncomfortable with them. So if my partner is uncomfortable with something, he's in his own mind, fighting that discomfort, that stress, and I am uncomfortable by his discomfort and my own discomfort that I've caused by my own thoughts about the whole thing, we're both in a stress mode, we are ready to fight, we're defensive or offensive. Empathy is really hard in the situation.

In marriage, empathy can look like a lot of things. But for me, it often looks like me asking, why would this be hard for him? There was a lot of years where I thought he's overworking. He's working too much 'All that matters is work'. And I can ask myself why and I come up with these negative assumptions. Or I could ask him, 'why is it so important to you?', I might learn he feels pressure to provide for us and at a certain level,