65 Why Catholic Spouses Find it Hard to Empathize with Each Other, Especially about Sex -- with Solutions.

Apr 26, 2021

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Intro
1. It is good to have you with us,
1. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist
1. Weekly Podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
1. Part of our Online outreach Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com
1. Episode 65 Why Catholic Spouses Find it Hard to Empathize with Each Other, Especially About Sex -- with Solutions. -- we are in the middle of a series on Sexuality in Catholic Marriages, but don't worry if you are not married, there is so much for you in today's episode that applies to any close relationship.
Definitions of Empathy:
1. Daniel Siegel: Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. Interpersonal Neurobiology.
  1. Interpersonal Neurobiology
    1. Wikipedia: Interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) or relational neurobiology is an interdisciplinary framework associated with human development and functioning. It was developed in the 1990s by Daniel J. Siegel who sought to bring together a wide range of scientific disciplines in demonstrating how the mind, brain, and relationships integrate to alter one another.
  3. Dan Siegel's work is very accessible -- easier for non-professionals to understand, very available.
  4. Five types of Empathy -- Short YouTube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdhMY_DNb1M 5 Levels. There's an order to them.
    1. Emotional Resonance or attunement
    2. Perspective Taking
    3. Cognitive Empathy
    4. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern
    5. Empathetic Joy
  5. I am going to expand on his basic presentation.
  6. Expanded definitions of empathy
    1. Emotional Resonance, attunement, empathic resonance -- receiver begins to feel what the sender is feeling. You feel the feelings of the other person.
      1. Attunement ‘is a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin, and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal affect and/or resonating response’. (Clinical psychologist Richard Erksine 1998).
      2. When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships. Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected." Dan Siegel
      3. Moderation
        
        Emotional contagion. This really can be overwhelming
        
        Experience of being sucked into the other's experience -- blending or fusing with the other with a loss of boundaries
  7. 1. Perspective Taking: Let me put myself in the other's skin -- in the other shoes. Not a fusion
      1. Capacity to enter into your spouse's internal world with your own mind to consider the other's experience
    2. 1. You remain separate from the other person.
  8. 1. Cognitive Empathy: -- a bit further -- what does the experience mean for the person. Memory, emotion, history influences the other. Empathetic understanding.
      1. So much of our suffering comes not from the facts of our situation, but from the meaning we make from those facts.
  9. 1. Compassion: Empathic Concern -- synonym for compassion. I feel your pain, I want to reduce your suffering.
      1. You feel the suffering
    2. 1. Take the suffering in
    3. 1. Use of the imagination -- what could I do now to help you feel better.
    4. 1. Be with the person -- doing flows from that being
  10. 1. Empathic joy -- I get so excited about your success -- delighting in and with the other.
      1. Joy in who the spouse is, not what the child does -- "delighting in the spouses very being
      2. Wife believes in the husband's goodness -- the husband is precious, worth sacrificing for and vice versa.
      3. Song of Songs -- Joy 1:4 We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine
  12. Review
    1. Emotional Resonance or attunement
  13. 1. Perspective Taking
  14. 1. Cognitive Empathy
  15. 1. Compassion -- Seigel calls it Empathetic Concern
  16. 1. Empathetic Joy
Empathy is the mattress on our Catholic Canopied Marriage bed, which I introduced in episode 58 -- working with that metaphor. The mattress on a bed -- we want the mattress to be consistent and solid, firm and not lumpy.
1. The frame and box spring -- firm commitment between the husband and the wife, the upholding of the marriage vows Episode 64
  1. It's the charity. Willing the highest good for one another -- sacrificial love
3. four legs of the bed.
  1. Leg 1 -- the husband's commitment to his own interior integration, his own human formation, his psychological health, his emotional wellbeing -- removing the beam from his own eye -- last episode. Episode 63
4. 1. Leg 2. the wife's commitment to her own interior integration, her own human formation, her own psychological health, her own emotional wellbeing -- her taking on her own personal responsibility for her natural life last episode. Episode 63
  2. Leg 3. Attachment Needs and Integrity Needs -- Episode 62,
  3. Leg 4. Internal Family Systems approaches -- understanding deeply how the human person is both a unity and a multiplicity -- like an orchestra is a unity -- one orchestra, but also has within it multiplicity, multiple musicians -- check out Episodes 60 and 61
5. The rock-solid floor in the bedroom is the Foundation -- The presence of God -- and an active belief in God's Providence
  1. This is the foundation
6. 1. Childlike trust, absolute confidence
7. 1. Reflects the reality of our existential dependence and God's paternal care, Mary's maternal care for us.
8. 1. So many Catholic try to solve their marriage issues without bringing in anything spiritual
9. 1. Or they avoid any meeting between faith and sex.
Why we lack different kinds of empathy
1. In General
  1. Lack of interior integration
2. 1. Lack of benevolence -- good will. Lack of seeking the good for our spouse and being willing to suffer for it
    1. Conditionality
      1. I'll work on it if my wife does X and Y
    2. 1. I'll start trying again if my husband stops behavior Z.
    3. 1. Not what your vows say.
  2. 1. Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile from them, and you'll have their shoes. Jack Handey.
3. 1. Lack of consistency...