As humans, it’s in our nature to empathize.
All the evidence is that we arenotcutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary competitors.
We are actually bonding animals who are naturally cooperative and empathic.
But often in romantic relationships, we feel that our partner is cold and unfeeling.
Why some people lack empathy in relationships.
Let me give you an example from my decades of working with couples in distress.
She raises her brows and looks at me with surprise.
(Or is it scorn?)
So we set out to see if John is really so cold.
If not, there are two main two blocks to empathy.
Both begin to appear once a couple becomes distressed:
1.
There is too much emotional static in the one receiving the message.
John sits and stares at the floor.
So I ask him if he sees her tears.
He looks up, glances at her and says he does.
What does he feel?
“Not much,” he replies.
I ask him again.
“Can you let yourself feel what you see on her face?
It’s your brain’s way of predicting other people’s behavior.
But something is interfering here.
What do you feel in your body as you look at her face?”
He leans forward and stares at me.
“Tense,” he says.
“Kind of waiting.”
“Something bad is coming?”
I suggest, and he nods.
“I am not the person she wants me to be.
I don’t know what she wants from me…I can’t seem to deliver here.”
The message is hard to decode.
The other block to empathy is that themessage is unclearand just hard to hear.
Amy coats her message aboutbeing lonelyand needing John in criticism and anger.
Because of this, he doesn’t hear her vulnerability.
