All the evidence is that we are not cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary competitors. We are actually bonding animals who are naturally cooperative and empathic. In fact, studies by Michael Tomasello and colleagues show that even 14-month-old babies will offer to help an adult who cannot do a task and will comfort someone in distress. But often in romantic relationships, we feel that our partner is cold and unfeeling. But maybe rather than assuming that John is a Neanderthal, it’s better to get curious about what is getting in the way of his natural empathic response. I ask, “What is blocking John’s ability to tune into you and be moved by your distress?” She raises her brows and looks at me with surprise. (Or is it scorn?) So we set out to see if John is really so cold. Does he have some kind of physical problem, like Asperger’s syndrome or attention deficit disorder, that makes it really difficult for him to focus and grasp her emotions? If not, there are two main two blocks to empathy. Both begin to appear once a couple becomes distressed: “Not much,” he replies. I ask him again. “Can you let yourself feel what you see on her face? Your brain has something called mirror neurons that usually set you up to kind of try on the expressions you see on her face and then sense those feelings in your own body. It’s your brain’s way of predicting other people’s behavior. But something is interfering here. What do you feel in your body as you look at her face?” He leans forward and stares at me. “Tense,” he says. “Kind of waiting.” “Something bad is coming?” I suggest, and he nods. “She is upset, but what I get is that she is mad at me,” John says. “I am not the person she wants me to be. I don’t know what she wants from me…I can’t seem to deliver here.” What John is telling me is that a tidal wave of threat and potential loss bears down on him, and he is so busy coping with the roar that he can’t even register his partner’s pain, let alone tune into it and figure out how to comfort her. To say that John is too distracted with his own emotional turmoil to give his wife the empathic response she needs is an understatement. But once he can talk about this threat and begin to calm himself, he will be able to hear her. But as John expresses his fears of letting her down and as she opens up about how much she needs closeness with him, they do find their natural sympathy and understanding for each other. The good news in all of this is that once we understand the drama of relationships and the blocks to empathy, we can walk around them and find each other, again and again and again. Johnson is a Distinguished Research Professor at Alliant University in San Diego, California, as well as a Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa. She has received a variety of awards acknowledging her development of EFT and her significant contribution to the field of couple and family therapy and adult attachment, including being named Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association in 2016. She has a doctoral degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of British Columbia.
