Empathize by Imagining Your Own Painful Situation

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

Now that you and your partner have come to an agreement that you understand the pain he or she has gone through, it’s time to bring this home to yourself fully and develop some real empathy for the pain you have caused.

The way to do this is to go into your own history and see if you can find something in your past that you think would make you feel similar to what your spouse has described to you.

You don’t talk about this step. You simply do this in your own mind. Don’t say it aloud, and don’t talk about it with your spouse (at least not yet). Get the piece of your history firmly in your mind first. Later you will share what you experienced with your partner.

If you can’t find a scenario in your past that you think relates to the feelings your spouse is having, you can create a story. To get a sense for the pain you have caused, an imagined scenario can be just as powerful as something that actually happened in your past.

This is exactly the process you should go through as the listener. Once your partner agrees that you understand what he or she has been going through, look back on your history or create an imagined situation which contains similar characteristics. The feelings you might have had then or the feelings you imagine you might have had are probably similar to your partner’s in this situation. Probably similar, but not necessarily similar, and certainly not necessarily the same. Listen to your spouse’s response to find out how close you were. If you weren’t very close, start again.

In other words, you have to keep in mind that you are still just guessing about how your partner feels. Your spouse might say, “Yes, that’s exactly right. Now you get it.” Or your partner could say, “Actually, that’s not it at all. You are still missing the point.” Either way is okay. If you have connected with your partner and you understand the emotions, then you can move on toward deeper healing and forgiveness. If not, you go back to Step 1 in the process and start over in trying to understand your spouse more completely.

To be honest, you can’t expect to get the feelings down the first time. For one thing, when you start learning a new skill, like this communication program we have been working on, you are going to be a beginner, and beginners need practice. This means you will probably have to do this exercise quite a bit before you can truly understand your partner. Don’t condemn yourself for this, it’s perfectly natural.

For another thing, the emotions you are dealing with here are incredibly complex and real and, most likely, about you. They have many different aspects to them and they are tied to many other things. The examples I used above are simple. When you are dealing with betrayal and deceit, the problem becomes much more uncomfortable to manage.

But all the same principles still apply. I have seen this communication program help couples work out even the most complicated issues like lying and infidelity. You can use this system of communication no matter what problems you are trying to overcome.

If you practice this method, in time, you will come to a deeper understanding of one another. The offending partner will be able to understand the pain he or she caused and the hurt partner will be able to see clearly that this is the case. There is a moment in the process where both of you really get it. You will know when it happens, and it will be a marker that things are starting to shift for you.

This process is effective going both ways. Each of you should take turns being the talker and the listener at different times. Each position has its own challenges.

The possibilities that communicating this way open for you, the injured party, are enormous. For one thing, it allows you to show how much pain you have been suffering, which in itself is huge. For another, it gives your partner the opportunity to use the information he or she gathers to make a real apology and possibly change his or her behavior in meaningful ways which will help you move past your anger and create more steps on your path of acceptance.

This is how you eventually come to a place where forgiveness happens. You begin to see that your partner truly understands your pain.

Of course, not all of your communication will be like this. You reserve this comprehensive communication for emotionally charged issues. The deeper level of understanding you achieve by working through this style of communication leads to closeness. You start to believe that your spouse really gets what he or she has done to you, which makes it easier for you to let go of your anger and resentment and move on with your life together.

But there are other problems that crop up on your path to forgiveness. What if you do begin to develop this understanding between the two of you and you do begin to feel that your spouse understand you, but you are still haunted by images of the transgression? How can you move toward forgiveness, even if you do develop this connection, when images of the situation that are totally beyond your control pop into your mind, dragging you back down into the whirlpool of anger and suffering all over again?

The key is getting rid of those images, right? That’s the only way you will be free to move on with your life and your marriage. In Step 3 of this program, I am going teach you how to do that.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.

For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/

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