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When partners sit down for a meal, food is not the only source of nourishment that counts. The attitudes and emotions they share through word and gesture are also crucial. When partners enjoy each other’s company, the emotional nutrition they generate provides much-needed sustenance. If eating together fails to bring good feeling, they will leave the table hungry.
Compassion, curiosity, generosity, attention, affection, reassurance, honesty, willingness—these are some of the essential "emotional nutrients" that partners can bake into the way they interact. These qualities, as part of a steady emotional “diet,” protect relationships from disconnection and loneliness. In addition, research indicates that healthy emotional nutrition raises sexual satisfaction.
Couples who suffer in relationships with poor emotional nutrition often say things like: “My partner doesn’t know me and makes no effort to know me better.” “My thoughts and feelings have no impact on my partner.” “I don’t matter much to my partner.” These and other similar feelings are evidence of emotional malnutrition.
Honoring Healthy Dependency
If humans were biologically self-sufficient, we would be able to produce the vast majority of our dietary needs within our bodies. We cannot. If we were emotionally self-sufficient, the same would be true regarding emotional nutrients. It is not.
We depend on our environments and on those close to us for our emotional well-being. This is not a sign of weakness, it is simply the way we are constituted and how we grow.
Like the diseases caused by lack of specific vitamins, emotional malnutrition develops along a continuum ranging from mild to moderate to severe. For lack of the right kinds of attention, affection, and acceptance, thousands of marriages end. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, approximately 787,000 divorces occur yearly in the United States. And many more non-marital relationships crash and burn.
A Case Study in Emotional Nutrition
Carlos and Angela loved each other passionately in their early days together. Fast forward five years, and they are in counseling with me to talk about feelings of disconnection following the birth of Joujou, their second child.
Days before an exhausting and protracted breech delivery, Angela’s grandmother and two of her cousins were killed instantly in a pile-up on the Long Island Expressway. Angela’s grandmother had been the most important maternal figure in her life. Angela’s joy and grief combined to catapult her into a massive postpartum depression.
Carlos had responded with a show of quiet fortitude. He took initiative to do what he imagined he would want done, were he in her place. He did the cooking, cleaning, shopping and attended to everything he could that would allow Angela the time and space to grieve.
He felt that his actions “came from the best part of who I am. I was being as unselfish and empathic as I could be.” He didn’t bother talking to her about his plan, but simply moved ahead with it.
What Angela wanted, however, was for Carlos to ask about her feelings and give her a platform to explore her grief with him. “I craved feeling closer with him and wished he could have figured out what I needed.”
I asked Angela to speak to Carlos directly about how she had been feeling since returning from the hospital. She was sitting next to him on the office sofa. She turned to face him and said, “I felt and still feel shattered and abandoned.” Her face red with anger, she paused and took a deep breath.
“I hate that you think taking care of me is on a par with household chores. How is it that you don’t get how alone I’ve felt? Not being able to rely on you when I needed you was almost as painful for me as losing my grandma.”
Paradoxically, Carlos’ determination to keep to a strict schedule of household responsibilities caused Angela to feel that he had deliberately chosen to prioritize these tasks over her emotional needs.
“How can he take time all this time for vacuuming and tidying but not make it his business to keep track of my thoughts and feelings?” Angela asked. “Where was his compassion? His generosity? Why wasn’t he curious enough to inquire about how distressed I felt? Where was the attention from him that would have helped me to stop replaying the horrible accident that took my grandma and cousins away from me?”
Looking at me, Carlos replied, “I wanted Angela to feel that our home, at least, was orderly. That there was a predictability to how things got done in spite of the tragedy. I wanted to compensate for the chaos that her depression had created. She was spending a lot of time in bed, not wanting to be up and active much. My goal was to create a refuge for her so that she could heal without having to worry about anything but mending herself. I wanted her to feel free to do whatever she needed to do, at her own pace.”
Carlos had grown up with two alcoholic parents who bickered constantly. He was adept at responding to chaotic developments by asserting control. On many occasions, he prepared food for himself and his younger sisters. He made sure that they all had what they needed to get to school on time and function as close to normally as possible. He learned to take these challenges in stride.
Nuances of Empathy
Carlos believed he had acted empathically towards Angela. He assumed that she felt grateful towards him for what he had been doing. However, true empathy rests on an accurate perception of what is going on within the person to whom empathy is directed.
In this instance, Carlos, trying to provide Empathy, was unable to bring this nutrient to Angela because he had not grasped what she felt and wanted accurately. Empathy heals primarily when it conveys to a person that they are well-understood, easing feelings of aloneness and isolation. Carlos, from Angela’s viewpoint, had demonstrated that he did not “get her.” Rather than feeling known and/or cherished by him, she felt invisible.
A Reciprocal Failure in Empathy
Angela, however, also failed to empathize with Carlos in important respects. She incorrectly interpreted his “not getting her” as proof that he did not care enough about her to make the effort to see her clearly.
She saw his preoccupation with cleaning as evidence that he was choosing to avoid dealing with her pain. Her view of him lacked the empathy, compassion, curiosity, and reassurance that he had needed if he were to feel rightly understood for the efforts he was making to care for her.
Curiosity Deficiency
Curiosity might have led Carlos to monitor how his efforts were received by Angela. If he had checked in with her, he might have learned how far away from him she felt, and been able to adjust accordingly. Curiosity, combined with compassion and humility, can heal gaps in empathy, especially when partners demonstrate the Willingness to learn from their experience with one another. Willingness to learn, in some respects, is the master nutrient.
Protesting Insecure Attachment
Angela was angry that Carlos hadn’t been attentive to her in the way that she would have wanted, and this caused her to lash out at him in session. But if she had felt securely attached, she might have assumed that his actions were not coming from a deficit in love and caring. Secure attachment slows rancor dramatically. Perhaps, on the other hand, if Carlos had provided Reassurance—a nutrient that is especially important at times of transition—Angela would have had a much easier time bearing her disappointment with him.
What would reassurance have looked like? If Carlos had exposed his intention to make this difficult period as bearable as possible for Angela, she might have felt less alone. He could have spoken about his desire to create a refuge for her; this could have reassured her. He might have explained that his love for her was the driving force behind everything he did.
Angela had accused Carlos of withdrawing from her when she needed him most. In response, he initially felt rejected, criticized, and misunderstood. This sequence in conversation might easily have led to a counterattack from Carlos. Fortunately for this couple, Carlos stayed cool.
In spite of feeling attacked and hurt by Angela’s negative characterization of him, he recognized the distress embedded in her anger. In this instance, his Empathy was on target. He realized that what she was trying to get from him was a connection. His calm in this situation was like another dose of Vitamin R (reassurance). Rather than causing further disruption, this conversation became part of a bridge to renewed closeness.
Honoring Possibilities for Healing
After we had spent time exploring how Carlos’ intention to comfort Angela was not initially appreciated, Angela said, “I was reeling with grief. I wanted to tell you what I needed but, in fairness, I don’t think I ever did. Somehow I felt that if you loved me, you would know what I felt and what to do about it. Maybe I was ashamed of appearing to be that needy to you, or even to acknowledge it to myself.”
Angela provides honesty and vulnerability. She explicitly delivers the awareness of her own failure to communicate what she needed and in doing so, takes responsibility for not having helped Carlos to better understand what she needed from him. This can also be seen as an offer of generosity and reassurance.
Carlos said, “I wish I had understood that you needed me to listen with patience and acceptance, to engage you in conversation and grapple with the depth of your depressed feelings. Then you could have felt loved and understood by me.” These were nutrient-rich interactions that galvanized healing.
Accentuating the Positive
Both Angela and Carlos had acknowledged ways in which they might have done better. They also were de-emphasizing (not the same as minimizing) what had gone wrong in favor of seeing underscoring the positive.* All this constitutes valuable emotional nutrition that, taken alongside doses of gratitude, were just the healing their disconnection required.
During our work together, the couple came to understand the efforts that each was making to help the other. They each had begun our work feeling doubtful about whether there was a mutual and reciprocal commitment to support one another’s hopes for their future together, those fears subsided.
Carlos explained to Angela, “I believed that you needed space and time to yourself. That’s what I thought I would have wanted and needed if I were in your situation.”
Angela replied, “I understand what you are saying. I know that the situation was hard for both of us and you were doing, I see this now, what you thought would be best for me even though it was the opposite of what I actually wanted. I understand you were putting a lot of energy into doing what you thought would help me most.” She reached over and took Carlos’ hand in hers.
Carlos replied, “Thank you for saying that,” and a tear slid down his cheek
Angela had credited Carlos with the intention to ‘be there’ for her and affirmed a view of him as caring and engaged rather than dispassionate, disengaged and uncaring. A repair had been made.
Improving emotional nutrition rests on a mutual willingness to do the work together. This makes the critical difference between feeling secure in the relationship or not.
Knowing how to neutralize blame and shame if and when these issues emerge is essential to healing and, again, depends on the vital provision of emotional nutrients to each other and the relationship.
In my career as a writer and therapist, my goal is to help readers and clients understand what improved communication looks and feels like. And what emotional nutrition is and how powerful the perspective can be in helping partners work together. Envisioning these goals enhances possibilities for achieving them.
Emotional nutrition and mindful reflection go hand in hand. They set the stage for relational health. As partners provide emotional nourishment, they simultaneously improve and sustain mindful hope.
As usual, questions and/or comments are welcome.
