Kindness in a relationship = love

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Kindness glues two persons together. Research has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—loved. A great deal of evidence shows that the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: Either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise.

The hardest time to practice kindness is, of course, during a fight—but this is also the most important time to be kind. Letting contempt and aggression spiral out of control during a conflict can inflict irrevocable damage on a relationship. Kindness doesn’t mean that we don’t express our anger, but the kindness informs how we choose to express our anger.

When people think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of generosity, such as buying each other little gifts. But, kindness can also be built into the very backbone of a relationship through the way partners interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back rubs and chocolates involved.

One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions. The ability to interpret your partner’s actions and intentions charitably can soften the sharp edge of conflict.

Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship. Among the four response styles, active-constructive responding is the kindest. While the other response styles are joy killers, active-constructive responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives an opportunity to bond over the good news.

There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it’s often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up—with children, careers, friends, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and intimacy—we may put less effort into our relationship and let the petty grievances we hold against each other tear us apart.

Among the people who endure together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

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Empathy and compassion

Empathy and compassion stem from the same desire — to better relate and understand others’ experiences. But, there’s also a difference between what it means to be an empathetic person versus a compassionate person.

Compassion and empathy are fundamentally different but closely related. Consider these definitions:

• Empathy definition: empathy is our feeling of awareness toward other people’s emotions and an attempt to understand how they feel.
• Compassion definition: compassion is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help.

Empathy is an understanding of our shared humanity. It’s the ability to see yourself in another person’s shoes. Compassion adds another dimension of a desire to help.

As a person, both are crucial.

The good news is that you can train and improve both empathy and compassion. 

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Kindness to me

Kindness isn’t altruistic, nor is it typically done in a spirit of, ‘do as you would be done by. It’s more akin to our need for attention in that the giving of it is as important as the receiving, and we gain a sense of meaning and wellbeing from both.

Receiving, or witnessing, acts of kindness restores our faith in human nature, reassuring us that most people are intrinsically good and helpful, kind and generous. Kindness is a universally recognized human trait, the manifestation of which can unite us by reminding us that we all have common needs, and we all benefit from a bit of help.

Kindness is sometimes described as ‘selfless’ because the very act of helping another, and even the thought process that has prompted the decision to act, will have taken the perpetrator away from their own ‘selfish’ thoughts. In helping others we get out of our own heads, have a break from our infernal internal monologue, and hey presto, we feel better! Our outlook has widened, our own worries have quietened, and perhaps our perspective on our own situation has changed.

Whatever that is, however big or small a gesture, lending someone a helping hand will help them along their way and make all concerned feel better.