When it comes to marriage, empathy is a crucial ingredient. You need empathy to help you be a better listener. We’ve discussed listening in this blog before. Active listeners are people who not only listen to their partner, but they hear them. They try not to color the words of their partner with their own emotions or suppositions. This is also referred to as listening without judgment.
Complain Without Judgment
When you can complain to your spouse and not have them yell at you for your thoughts or try to adjust how you are thinking or even repair what it is you are complaining about – that’s a wonderful feeling. Too often disagreements or upset in marriage can come when one partner or the other is trying to vent and the other doesn’t listen or empathize. Instead, their spouse tries to ‘fix’ the problem or worse – they tell you, that you are ‘wrong’ to ‘feel’ the way that ‘you’ feel.
Loving someone means you love all parts of them. You love their quirks. You love their eccentricities. You even love the parts of their personalities and beliefs that differ from your own. Your partner’s perspective is important to you and you respect it whether it agrees with your own or not.
Our Differences Make Us Special
Empathy with those that we love let us embrace our differences. Our differences are what make us special. I’ve heard people say that it’s a bad idea to marry someone outside their own faith or outside their own sphere of experience.
Yet, marriage made when hearts unite in spite of personal differences can really enrich the relationship. But for that to be the case, the couple must have empathy for each other. My husband and I come from very different backgrounds. In many ways, we are very much alike and yet in many other ways, we are different. Those similarities and differences enrich our marriage and we build on our strengths and empower each other with our differences.
How do we do this?
We can do this, because we can empathize with each other — even our differences or maybe I should say especially our differences. Can you empathize with your spouse?