Understanding each other's emotions

Knowing your own feelings goes hand in hand with a happier relationship, though that's a link, not proof that one causes the other. Emotional intelligence (roughly, noticing and handling feelings, yours and other people's) is linked with higher relationship satisfaction¹, and people with more of it are often better at handling conflict². Speaking openly about how you feel, and listening to your partner in return, can strengthen a relationship and ease relationship anxiety³.

The first step is simply noticing. Being able to recognise and label your emotions is an important place to begin⁴. A few ways to try it:

• Pause and ask two questions: 'What am I feeling?' and 'Why?'
• Put a name on it, even a rough one, before you say anything to your partner.
• Try mindfulness as a way to notice your feelings more clearly².
• Then share it, and listen to theirs.

These tips come from health organisations rather than tests with couples, so treat them as sensible starting points, not proven fixes. Even so, 'I'm tired and a bit anxious about Friday' gives your partner far more to work with than a slammed cupboard door.

It isn't clear yet whether a bigger feelings vocabulary helps couples; the closest research is about individuals. In individuals, telling negative emotions apart tends to be linked with fewer unhelpful behaviours, although the link is small⁵. Putting a word to a feeling also seems to shape how it's experienced, though how that works is still unclear⁶.

So it's a reasonable thing to try, with no promises attached. Some ways to play with it:

• Get more specific. 'Upset' could be anxious, angry, hurt or just hungry. Telling 'anxious' from 'angry' gives you both something to respond to.
• Ask what a word means to your partner. 'Fine' or 'stressed' can mean quite different things to the two of you, and emotion words can carry different meanings across cultures and families.
• Keep it light. A rough 'a bit flat today' is better than waiting until you've found the perfect word.

You don't need a thesaurus. The point is to give each other a clearer picture, and a gentle 'what do you mean by that?' is often enough.

Ask rather than guess. Accurately reading a partner's thoughts and feelings is only weakly linked with relationship satisfaction, and the link is stronger for reading negative emotions than positive ones⁷. That's a good reason to check your reading of the tricky moments, not to trust a hunch.

Some ways to check:

• Listen actively. Repeat back what you heard, or ask for more detail if it isn't clear³.
• Skip the mind-reading. Don't jump to conclusions, and ask questions if you're unsure⁴.
• Check in regularly. Small things are easier to manage as they come up than after they've piled up³.
• Write it down in a message or letter if saying it out loud feels hard³.
• Say what you need. Hoping your partner will simply know is a lot to ask of anyone.

Partners may express and read emotions differently, so a question like 'Do you want comfort, ideas or just company?' beats assuming.

Yes, it looks like it can. Empathy training tends to be effective⁸, and trials in medical students and physicians found moderate gains in both cognitive empathy (understanding what someone feels) and affective empathy (feeling it with them)⁹. In a small group of young adults, a training programme improved how accurately people read others' emotions on an objective test, though their own ratings of their empathy didn't change¹⁰.

None of those trials were of couples, and the researchers on the young-adult study note that in a longstanding relationship, empathic accuracy is also shaped by past interactions, so it may respond less to training¹⁰. Still, the idea that empathy is a skill rather than a fixed trait is a hopeful one.

What can you practise at home?

• Active listening: repeat back what your partner said and check you've understood.
• Curiosity: ask what it's like for them before offering a fix.
• Patience with yourselves: skills take repeated practice, and the occasional fumble is part of it.

Treat it as a difference to work with, not a fault in either of you. How much emotion each of you shows doesn't seem to be the problem in itself. What matters more is whether your partner feels you're responsive. In couples where one person's emotions were very stuck or very erratic, their partner tended to see them as less responsive, and that was linked with steeper drops in relationship satisfaction over 12 months¹¹. That describes extremes, not simply feeling more or less.

Try to avoid labelling one of you 'too emotional' and the other 'cold'. Those labels end conversations. Instead:

• Agree a regular time to talk. The partner who finds it harder to speak can write their feelings down first³.
• Take time out when it heats up, then come back when you're both calmer³.
• Use 'I' statements. 'I feel upset when you arrive late and I haven't heard from you' invites a helpful discussion; 'You always…' tends to invite a defence⁴.
• Stay on the issue, not the person. Try to see their point of view.

The talkative one can leave pauses, and the quieter one can offer a short answer rather than none. Meeting in the middle is a skill you both get to practise.