Esty had a hard day at work, her boss was taking advantage of her again. Today’s problem was that he told her to come in to work on Sunday. Esty didn’t want to but she didn’t want to upset him so she agreed.
When Esty came home, she began venting to her husband, Shimmy. She started talking about the injustice of her having to come in on Sunday, and how her boss always took advantage of her. Shimmy listened for about a minute but then started getting frustrated. “ Why don’t you just tell him you can’t come in?” Shimmy asked. Esty responded with more frustration, Shimmy wasn’t understanding that she couldn’t say that to her boss. Shimmy responded that he actually DID understand, he thought Esty needed to learn to stand up for herself. After another minute or two of this, the conversation ended with both of them feeling upset and irritated.
This conversation or something similar happens in many homes. The wife vents, the husband gives solutions, the wife gets more frustrated, the husband does too. Both feel upset at the end.
There’s a few dynamics in this example, I want to focus on one skill that Shimmy can learn that would make this exchange an opportunity for connection instead of divisiveness. That skill is called empathy. Many men don’t like the word empathy because they think it means saying something like “That must be upsetting” or asking questions like “How do you feel about that?” Saying these types of things doesn’t fit their personality. Luckily, empathy doesn’t mean any of that!
Empathy is when we can genuinely understand the other person’s inner experience on an emotional level. It’s when we truly “get it.” Communicating our empathy is when we convey our understanding to that person in a way that is real and authentic to us.
Let’s take another look at Shimmy and Esty’s conversation. Esty was venting, she felt mistreated and was resentful towards her boss. When she vented to Shimmy, he mistakenly thought that she wanted him to fix the issue. Shimmy made this mistake because when he shares work issues with Esty, he’s usually seeking advice from her. However, that’s not what Esty wanted. Esty wanted him to listen and understand how she felt. That’s it.
It’s important to identify the specifics of what Esty needed Shimmy to understand. She didn’t need him to understand her difficulty in asserting herself to her boss. Esty only needed him to understand her feeling of being mistreated and taken advantage of. If Shimmy wants to, he could relate to that. Every one of us has felt mistreated or taken advantage of at least once in our lives. That being so, what Shimmy can relate to is the feeling of being mistreated, even though he doesn’t believe that to be the facts in this case. If Shimmy pauses and notices that Esty is feeling frustrated and resentful, he can “get it”. He can then convey to Esty in his own personality style that he gets it, because he does get that feeling. For Shimmy, that may be as simple as shaking his head. The key point is that it is an authentic way for Shimmy to convey to Esty that he gets it. Shimmy may not agree that this situation warrants that feeling, but that doesn’t matter. Esty only needs him to understand her feeling, her inner experience, she doesn’t need him to agree to anything. She also doesn’t need him to say some generic, canned, “empathetic” response. Shimmy’s head shaking is a genuine expression of his empathy, because for Shimmy, that’s real. Esty knows that, so she feels understood.
When understood properly, empathy becomes easy. We don’t need to relate to the facts that give rise to the other person’s feelings. We also don’t need to say things that are unnatural to us. We just need to relate to what it feels like to have those emotions and then convey that to the other person authentically. When practiced, empathy transforms a hard day into an opportunity for closeness!
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Chaim Moshe Steinmetz, LISW
Chaimmoshesteinmetz.com
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