The essential ingredient for a healthy and lasting relationship.

My name is Antero Inman, I’m a psychotherapist, and in this article, I explain why empathy is the silent pillar of healthy, loving, enjoyable, and lasting relationships. How to develop it can transform your way of loving, communicating, and building conscious bonds.

It’s not enough to “be empathetic”; one must first become what one expects from the other. You can’t ask for what you’re not willing to give; that, in fact, is the first of my “Ten Commandments” for relationships.

It’s interesting to note that, at the level of ontological beliefs, one of the few rules shared by virtually all the world’s religions is some version of the so-called Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” or “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.” All of these phrases essentially point to the same thing: Empathy.

Now, this is a virtue to develop because, although we’d like to believe it comes naturally, the truth is that it’s not innate in everyone. Our biological tendency toward selfishness means that its development depends largely on the socialization process during childhood. This process usually begins with siblings, although it can also occur with cousins, friends, neighbors, or classmates. It’s particularly effective when it occurs with people we perceive as peers, on an equal footing.

For example:

“Dany, did it hurt when your sister bit you? It wasn’t nice, but do you remember that you bit her yesterday? Now you know what she felt. Since you both know it feels really bad, it’s best not to do it again.”

Cases like this abound in childhood. Through these experiences, we learn to “play well with others,” and this is essential. When a child doesn’t develop empathy, they are often rejected or excluded by their peers, which can lead to a series of high-impact psycho-emotional problems.

The truth is that education (especially through example) is essential for the development of empathy and for understanding that our freedom ends where that of others begins. When, for various reasons, a person doesn’t socialize properly and hasn’t learned to empathize, they often end up developing abusive, utilitarian, and disloyal behaviors, thus becoming “persona non grata” to others. In fact, the so-called “four dark profiles” of personality (psychopath, Machiavellian, sadist, and narcissist) share a central characteristic: severe difficulties empathizing.

Furthermore, when empathy is lacking, there is often a disproportionate sense of self-importance, which leads us to take everything very personally and nurture pride, one of the greatest saboteurs of relationships. Given all of the above, it’s not difficult to see how important empathy is for successful relationships and how disastrous the consequences can be when it’s lacking.

Now, I want to define what I mean by empathy, as I’ve often heard people use reductionist definitions like, “Put yourself in their shoes,” “What would I do in that situation?” or “How would I feel if that happened to me?” But true empathy goes further. It’s not about imagining what you would do if you were the other person, but rather trying to understand the other person’s own history, their resources, their limitations, their wounds, their fears, and their defense mechanisms. It’s about putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, as if you were the other person, not as you in their shoes.

When we can do this, we are able to truly understand our partner’s emotional needs, as well as the fear and pain behind some of their behaviors. This is essential to avoid unconsciously “pushing our finger on the sore spot” with our partner and to be able to reach agreements, which is another requirement of successful couples.

The above, like almost everything in life, requires practice, willpower, and above all, the determination not to let our ego take control, because the ego is the number one enemy of empathy.

Relationships can become extraordinary tools for our personal growth. Our partners are the ones who most easily reflect back to us our insecurities, our shadows, and what we most need to work on within ourselves. The same often happens with our families of origin, where our deepest “emotional buttons” are often activated.

Empathy is also essential to understanding our parents’ story: What was their childhood like? How loved, approved of, supported, accompanied, or seen did they feel? Understanding this allows us to understand why they were the way they were with us. In my therapeutic experience, I have seen that most parents—even those who made mistakes—were somewhat better with their children than their own parents were with them. Recognizing this is no small feat; it helps us integrate, forgive, let go, and heal the wounds.

I want to close with an important clarification: Understanding others doesn’t mean justifying them or tolerating the unacceptable. Empathy doesn’t imply resignation or remaining in harmful situations. However, this is a profound topic and will be the subject of a future blog post. For now, my intention is to invite you to reflect on the enormous importance of developing empathy in building healthy, stable, and enriching relationships.

If this content resonated with you and you’d like to delve deeper into your personal or couple growth, I invite you to schedule your first psychotherapy session.