How being empathetic to 3 specific emotions can help your partner to change…

Monday, September 11, 2023. 22 years later… but still painfully fresh in our national memory.

• Building interpersonal compassion and empathy for the emotions of shame, embarrassment, and sadness helps may help couples conduct difficult discussions about change, according to recent research.

• Communicating directly is also the best way to get your partner to change.

  If you want to open a difficult discussion about your partner’s weight, spending habits, alcohol, or pot use, or other areas of growing concern, it makes sense that you’d both feel a bit apprehensive about it. These sorts of discussions can be fraught with peril.

Your emotional awareness during such a hard conversation is vital. Your tone and stance matter.

One essential element for difficult discussions is compassionate empathy… recognizing softer, negative emotions…

• Research reveals that humans with more resilient relationships tend to have an enhanced ability to read the emotions of embarrassment, shame and sadness in their partner.

• Humans who perceived these softer negative emotions more clearly reported a higher level of relationship satisfaction.

• In contrast, humans who could quickly spot negative emotions, such as contempt, or anger, experienced intimate relationships of less quality.

Dr. Bonnie Le, the study’s first author, explained the reason:

“If you are appeasing with your partner — or feel embarrassed or bashful — and your partner accurately picks up on this, it can signal to your partner that you care about their feelings and recognize a change request might be hurtful.

Or if your partner is angry or contemptuous — what we call dominance emotions — that signals very different, negative information that may hurt a partner if they accurately perceive it.”

How the study was conducted

The was a smallish sort of study. It was based on 11 couples who had dated for an average of three years.

They were each asked to discuss what facets of their partner’s personality they wanted to change.

Naturally, this raised some strong emotions which the researchers explored after the discussion.

This process simulates a common way of dealing with relationship conflict: flat out asking your partner to change.

• The results showed that couples able to read emotions like sadness, embarrassment and shame had stronger relationships.

This is probably because the ability to read these emotions and make effective protests and repairs, helped hard conversations — like those asking your partner to change — to conclude more successfully.

However, when partners react to an anger and contempt emerging early in the discourse, difficult discussions are derailed prematurely.

Professor Stéphane Côté, study co-author, said:

“We think reading emotions allows partners to coordinate what they do and say to each other, and perhaps that is helpful when appeasement emotions are read, but not when anger emotions are read.

Anger seems to overpower any effect of reading emotions, which is consistent with lots of research findings on how anger harms relationships.”

Direct communication is the best way to get a partner to change

It must be done sensitively, though, said Dr. Le:

“It’s not bad to feel a little bashful or embarrassed when raising these issues because it signals to the partner that you care and it’s valuable for your partner to see that.

You acknowledge that what you raise may hurt their feelings.

It shows that you are invested, that you are committed to having this conversation, and committed to not hurting them.

And the extent to which this is noted by your partner may foster a more positive relationship.”

Some thoughts on compassion and empathy

The challenge with a stance that starts out with “the problem with you is..” is that you’re inviting a defensive response.
This research suggests that it is possible to conduct difficult conversations. But we have to carefully monitor how they are undertaken. I can help with that.

When we see our partner struggle with emotions such as shame, embarrassment, and sadness, our ability to be compassionately curious, and empathetic can make a vast difference.

Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Le, B. M., Côté, S., Stellar, J., & Impett, E. A. (2020). The Distinct Effects of Empathic Accuracy for a Romantic Partner’s Appeasement and Dominance Emotions. Psychological Science, 31(6), 607–622. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620904975