Empathy

Empathy is the key to maintaining good relationships with others. It is what narcissists lack. To care about your partner means that you have empathy towards them, that you can feel their experience and understand their feelings from a feeling perspective instead of from an intellectual perspective. When you are an empathetic person, you have the ability to put yourself into the other person's shoes and see things from their point of view. You prioritize their perspective instead of your own only. Often times in martial relationships a problem in the marriage is one or both people lacking empathy towards their partner. They see things only from their point of view and fail to connect in communication with their partner in terms of being on the same page with an issue. Therefore it would be important to work on fostering more empathy in the relationship if one or both people are lacking in it. How is empathy formed? Is it innate or is it learned? It is unclear if we naturally are born either more or less empathetic and then continue that in our lives or see our parents being that way with others and thus learn this feeling and way of being. It can be increased though if you put effort into cultivating more empathy. Simply ask youself, what must it be like to be in their shoes and how do they feel and think? You will never really know, but you can imagine it. Many of the world's problems would be solved if more people were more empathetic. So, go ahead and meet your partner on the same page of things by putting yourself in their shoes and coming to the common ground.

#empathy #communication #relationships