Empathy in a marriage

Empathy---the ability to reason about how other people perceive things---plays a crucial role in both building up and destroying marriage relationships. On the building up side, my (Ryan's) ability to "read" Leah, to know how she will react to what I do, is a skill I really try to cultivate. It's not just that spoiling her becomes a lot easier if I know what she likes, though that's important. It's also about understanding and carefully avoiding the things she really dislikes, because I care about her and her feelings. Sometimes our likes and dislikes align (cinnamon rolls: yum! unflushed toilets: yuck!). Other times one of us is neutral about the other's dislike (open cupboard doors or small drips of water on the kitchen floor), and sometimes one of us actually enjoys something the other hates (computer games or dancing). Some of these likes and dislikes are a big deal, others not so much. When our likes don't align, it's a chance to empathize with my sweetheart and spoil her by doing it the way she likes, even if I'm not 100% in agreement on how important it is. We go dancing once a year for her sake and, because she likes me, the kitchen floor usually doesn't have any puddles on it. We've both adjusted our vocabularies a little, to eliminate words that have unwanted meanings for one of us. It really doesn't matter what I said, it matters what she heard, so we try to learn each others' dialects.

On the bad side, when a marriage goes bad, it usually goes really, really bad, leaving everyone involved bitter and angry. Why? The cruelest tormentor is always someone who knows, in every situation, precisely the most painful and damaging thing to say or do. This is spite, a twisted and deadly form of empathy. It is one of the fastest, most reliable, and most thorough ways to destroy a relationship. That way lies darkness, avoid it at all costs. It doesn't matter what might go wrong, acting in spite will always make the situation drastically worse.