In Defense of Not Having Empathy

Should we be so quick to empathize after someone betrays us?

Dear Reader,

First of all, thank you for being so patient with me as I took a little writing break. Some really tough life events had caught up to me, and I’ve really realized that my creative flow gets so stifled during times of stress, especially when it’s multiple stressors. I just had to let it ease in its own time rather than forcibly creating content for content’s sake. Anyways, I’m happy to report that I am able to lean back into it!

I wanted my first post back after my mini-hiatus to be about empathy after being betrayed by your spouse/partner. It’s often suggested that one of the main ways through a healing process of betrayal in a relationship, is for the betrayed to be able to empathize with what the betrayer has gone through. Perhaps their unspoken childhood traumas that were the catalyst of their behavior, or maybe feelings of inadequacy, or stressors, or a myriad of factors that come together all at once for someone to make the decision to betray. I see it suggested quite a bit that the betrayed must begin to feel empathy in order for a partnership to come through this successfully.

I’d like to politely call B.S. on this notion. To suggest that there must be an instant sense of empathy from someone who has been traumatized, to the person that traumatized them, is one of the most backwards things I’ve ever heard.

I want to talk about my own experience with this.

Luckily, I was never asked by a therapist/coach/or anyone else, to empathize with my husband and try to understand why he did the things he did. I am so grateful that this was never told to me, because I think when someone is in such a shattered state and they are barely able to make sense of their reality, reaching for empathy can be tempting. It can maybe (superficially) quell some of the feelings of overwhelming anger and rage at being violated. But it is my opinion that those overwhelming feelings should not try to be quelled or silenced, even if it is with good intentions of a healing process for a relationship. I believe that because each of our experiences were not treated as equal in importance, and the empathy was VERY clearly made to be for me only, it allowed me to arrive at a place of empathy eventually and with actual truth behind it. The motivation wasn’t to move into forgiveness, it wasn’t to feel better or to regulate my emotions somehow. It took many months for me to get to a space where I felt actual empathy for something my partner had been going through, and to understand his life better, aside from me. And while my husband did learn through therapy the background reasons for the ‘why’ of his behaviors and he would explain those to me, he did not offer those as reasons to why this all was okay, or why I should be more understanding, or why I should have any sort of empathy for him and his choices. It was simply offered to me as his own research and self-education that he wanted to share with me because he was trying to give himself some compassion, instead of only self-loathing. Which is definitely a good practice.

Had I been encouraged to empathize with my husband in the reasons why he shattered my perception of love, trust, bodily violations— it would have harmed me significantly. It would have made me feel like our experiences were equal, and they simply were not. I had no say in what happened to me, when, why, how, and he did. And had I been asked within the first year or so of repair, to not only practice some buddha-level amount of self-regulation to get through a conversation, but also to reach for a loving understanding toward my trauma, is absolutely harmful toward a betrayed partner.

Of course, everyone going through this finds themselves in their own particular experience, and maybe for some, empathy can be extended to a partner who betrayed you relatively quickly. I have seen that happen, and that is truly wonderful because for some people, it really is their truth that they can have that. But for many, it is not possible to get there right away, and for them, I want to normalize this and give you permission to not rush that process if your decision is to stay together. I don’t even really think it should be of top priority for you. I believe that adjusting to this new reality in your own ways is going to be messy, and you will likely turn into someone you don’t really recognize for a little while. That alone is very confusing. So from where I sat, and am sitting now in a successful healing process with my partner, self-compassion should be more top of mind for you. Giving yourself empathy freely and quickly. I really believe that we are less able to extend that type of love toward ourselves than we are to other people, especially women. So learning that skill will help immensely.

Finally, I’d like to just say that I do believe empathy is a good and productive part of healing together. I just don’t believe it should be rushed or pressured onto someone who is reeling from being betrayed. The more the betrayer can extend empathy to you and your reactions, emotions, experience— the more you will then feel safe to extend it in return. Eventually. From my own experience as someone who was deeply wounded by betrayal, my sense of empathy grew only when my partner was able to give that to me first. Because he understood that our experiences were not equal. That my pain was more tender and urgent for a while into this. That I needed to be given space to feel exactly how I needed to feel, and not what I was expected to feel in any other regular situation. Being betrayed is not regular, and the word ‘equal’ should really be erased for some time until the wounded person feels safe enough to give space to the betrayers life experience.

I hope that gives you something to reflect on if you find yourself in this situation.

Always,
Annabelle