Sometimes, within a couple, someone’s feelings get hurt. When this happens, it is important for both members of the couple to not just default to a knee-jerk reaction, but to take time to understand the situation and how best to respond to it. How a couple reacts after one of the members of the couple does something that hurts the other one’s feelings can matter considerably.
For married couples, responses to hurt feelings can have impacts on the marriage’s overall strength. When the Huffington Post asked a group of relationship therapists what they thought were the biggest relationship problems for couples, one of the answers given was not responding properly when feelings are hurt. When members of a couple don’t respond properly when feelings are hurt, it can create resentment and other negative feelings within a relationship, which can erode a marriage’s strength, making it more vulnerable to breaking down.
The importance of not relying on knee-jerk reactions to hurt feelings does not disappear if a married couple decides to end the marriage and get divorced. Hurt feelings can easily come up during a divorce. When divorcing couples aren’t careful when it comes to how they respond to incidents that cause hurt feelings, it could result on them going on paths they don’t want to go down, such as becoming embroiled in unnecessary contentious legal battles.
Thus, when an incident that causes hurt feelings happens in a divorce, it can be important for a divorcing individual to not let the incident cause them to lose sight of the bigger picture in the divorce and drive them to actions that could ultimately hurt their interests. Family law attorneys can assist divorcing individuals with staying focused on the big picture in a divorce.
Source: The Huffington Post, “The Number One Relationship Problem, According to Therapists,” Casey Lewis, Sept. 2, 2015