What You're Feeling Matters

One of the greatest marriage counseling tips I’ve ever heard has to do with not trying to invalidate your spouse’s emotions. We’ve all been there with our spouse—they’re hurt for some reason and when you ask why, they tell you it’s because of something you’ve said or done. The natural, fleshly response is to try and correct their emotion and tell them why that feeling isn’t valid and shouldn’t have been felt. The problem is that never works, because the feeling is already there.

In a marriage, the best solution is to scrutinize the cause of those feelings and, right or wrong, address the source. Recognize your spouse’s feelings and put the spotlight on the cause of those feelings and work together to eliminate the pain point. This achieves a few things: your spouse feels heard, you learn how to communicate better to avoid causing pain (whether intentionally or accidentally) and the pain points are addressed in a healthy manner.

The truth is that this principle applies not only to marriages, but all relationships and just about every social or political dispute we can imagine.

It’s certainly true in the relational, political, and cultural climate today.

No matter which side we’re on, our first solution is to jump down the throats of those who disagree and scream all the reasons we believe their feelings are invalid. But no amount of shouting or screaming will ever make those feelings go away.

No matter how enlightened we feel about our viewpoint, the hurts of others will still exist if we don’t seek to address them and listen to them.

We want to get stuck on the issues. We want to live in the comfort of our political stances. We want to debate and argue the what’s-whats and the who’s-whos, but the problem still stands: real people have real feelings and real hurts that just aren’t being addressed.

It’s like if my wife expresses hurt and frustration that I never help clean the kitchen or with other household chores. Sure, I could tell her that my contribution to the family is to work all day every day in order to provide for them (those of you who are married are shaking your heads and begging me not to). That response may be accurate, but is it helpful? Or maybe my natural response would be to rattle off a list of other ways I’m helpful around the house, like mowing the lawn, keeping the cars maintained, managing bills, whatever. Still accurate, but still wildly unhelpful. Now we’ve entered into a debate about facts and I’ve given no concern for her feelings whatsoever, but instead I’ve tried to prove them wrong at every turn.

Here’s the thing about feelings: it’s pretty hard to prove them wrong. Because whether you believe they’re grounded or not, they’re very real to the other person. The art of empathy is letting other people’s feelings be real to you, too.

I’ve had friends whose dogs have died from cancer. When I see they’re heartbroken—even to tears—I may ask what’s wrong, how are they feeling, that sort of thing. They can respond and say, “My dog died from cancer last week.” I could “helpfully” respond, “Actually, you shouldn’t be sad about your dog dying from cancer, technically it’s the injection from the vet that did it,” or, “Hey, dogs are all over the place, you can have more, there’s no need to be sad, you can get another one.” Would that actually be helpful? No! The feelings are still there and the feelings are still real.

And the issues we’re facing today are so much more real, more meaningful, and more troubling. But we give the same kinds of responses—and that’s a best-case scenario.

As Christians, we can’t afford to be tone-deaf.

No, there’s no specific Biblical response to protests or a specific Bible verse to help us know whether to vote Democrat or Republican. We don’t see a whole lot of plain guidance in the Bible for how to march for our voice. But there is a pretty specific calling to help those who are hurting.

Look at 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Look at what verse 4 says: “Comfort those who are in any affliction.”

Paul didn’t say to comfort those we agree with. Paul didn’t say to comfort those who vote the same way we do or look the way we do or act the way we do. There are no underlying qualifications when it comes to comforting those who are hurting. The Bible says that we receive comfort from Jesus “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.”

Whether you agree or not, change needs to happen, in some form, some way. But nothing will change at all in our world without empathetic conversations. People on every side of the debate and discussion need to realize these are human beings we’re talking about. Human beings with legitimate concerns and legitimate feelings.

“But you haven’t seen this video or that article, it’s all a sham or a hoax or a setup or racism or political or…” you can fill in the blank. I can hear and see all the complaints right now. None of those objections or arguments do anything to address a very real problem that nobody actually seems concerned with: 

We need to stop trying to fix people’s feelings and start listening to them.

Most people are hurting because of something they never asked to be a part of—and we should recognize those feelings as valid. Because they are.

It’s not your job to debate back and forth about our opinions or the “totally objective” facts we read online.

It’s your job to comfort. Whether you agree or disagree with all the angles, people are hurting. Rather than tell people why their feelings are invalid, you should be seeking ways to help.

You will never know how you can help those hurts if you’re not asking questions about it—even uncomfortable questions. Consider for just a moment that there is another human being on the other side of that screen, one who has the same core emotions that you do and the same need to be heard and validated.

And here’s a crazy idea: you don’t have to completely agree with someone to say, “Your feelings are real and I want to help. Tell me what I can do.”

I wonder how much injustice in the world would solve itself if that attitude became truly infectious. The truth is, unless that attitude does become viral (something we’re apparently all experts on nowadays anyway) no change will ever happen in the world.

The more we start to listen to and respect how others feel, the more I think we’ll all find we have in common.

This isn’t a rally cry for political, social, or justice reform, and many will be offended by that. But this is a call to action for every single individual. There are 328 million people in America right now. Imagine if each and every one of them was more concerned with helping their neighbor’s hurts than with being right. Do you think that would fix the problem?

Listen. Learn. Understand feelings. Deal with the problem.