Empathy Can Improve Your Relationships – Check Out How?

Do you think you are highly supportive and empathetic toward your partner? Maybe, maybe not! How can you make sure that you are not just sympathetic towards your loved ones but also empathetic towards them? For that, you need to know the difference between them. 

When you feel pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune, it means you are sympathetic to the person. Sympathy involves understanding from your own perspective. For example, I feel sorry for John’s loss. 

On the other hand, when you feel pity and sorrow along with the person, it means you are empathetic for the person. Empathy involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and understanding why they may have these particular feelings. For example, when you see someone in pain you tell them that “I know it must be really difficult to go about your normal life with this pain. Let’s see what we can do to help.”

Showing empathy is very important and is a vital human skill. In a relationship, it can help you feel more connected with your partner. Empathy is not limited to personal or romantic relationships but to social & professional relationships as well. 

When we are empathetic toward a person, they feel more connected to us. And our relationship gets stronger with those empathetic moments. 

In a personal relationships also, when you make your partner feel that you are feeling their emotion too, they feel connected to you more and automatically make your bond stronger. The way you empathize with your partner makes a huge difference in the way they will feel about you. 

You will also start having a team-like essence and not just a sense of individuality. It is difficult for the relationship to survive without empathy as it is truly the heart of a relationship. There are several ways by which one can show empathy towards their loved ones, a few of them as follows:- 

Genuinely paying attention to your partner 

You need to make sure that your partner is never feeling neglected or ignored. If they are expressing emotion, for instance, it’s anger, you need to be patient with them and understand their issue. 

Sit with them, and listen to them very carefully. Notice their body language and make sure you are sending the right message with your body language too. 

To make them feel that you are paying attention to them, show them small gestures, nod in between the communications and use words like “hmm hmm”, “ah haan”, and “right” so that they know you are listening to them. 

Showing the positive side 

Very often the partner seeks to get the wrong outcome out of the situation and make their partner feel bad about it, because that is what they feel about it. Rather analyzing the complete situation is important. 

Even if you feel angry, disappointed or disheartened with the situation and you see your partner needs some comfort, try and keep your emotions aside, look at the positive side of the situation and make your partner look at it too! 

Understanding the signals 

Whenever your partner feels some emotion, they might not be able to express it directly. That is the time when you need to notice and observe the signals that they might be sending intentionally or unintentionally, which will be justifying their emotion. 

Once you understand how they are feeling, confront them about it and ask if you are getting the correct signals. 

Communication is the key

Communication can help you resolve any issue. If there is a lag in communication between you and your partner, you will never know how your partner feels about things and you can have conflicts later. 

It’s always good to talk prior to the situation about each other’s emotions and know what your partner is comfortable with and what not. This will help you understand each other even better and hence lead to a better bond between you two. 

Compassion towards self 

Before you try and understand your partner, you need to make sure you understand yourself. You should be clear with the way you perceive things around you and how you feel about them. If you are unclear about your feelings, you can hardly ever empathize with your partner. This can even lead to misunderstandings between you and your partner and further deteriorate your relationship. 

Wrapping Up

You can always follow these steps and improve your relationship with your partner. Empathy plays such a role that you might not even realize it until you apply it with your partner. Your love and compassion need to be visible to your partner just like your empathy. 

If you and your loved ones are empathic to each other, you play equal roles in each other’s life and understand the problems that your partner is going through, your relationship will be stronger than oak. It’s not that difficult to be patient and calm with the person you want to spend your life with. So follow the five easy steps mentioned above and see the magic!