When Empathy, Boundaries, Repair, and Perspective Don’t Line Up
Author’s note
This piece is a retrospective reflection written several years after my marriage ended. It is not an attempt to assign blame or re-litigate the past, but to make meaning of it. I share it in the hope that others navigating rupture, grief, or difficult conversations might recognise something of their own experience and approach future relationships with greater clarity, consent, and care.
This reflection includes reference to sudden loss and suicide.
What I learned about timing, boundaries, and repair after my marriage ended
Introduction
Empathy is often treated as the highest relational virtue. If we care enough, listen deeply enough, and stay present long enough, things should work out. That belief kept me trying far longer than I should have.
What I did not understand at the time was this: without shared expectations, mutual consent, and clear agreements about timing and repair, even genuine care is not enough to prevent resentment.
My former spouse and I did not have a shared, embodied capacity for navigating difficult conversations or repairing relational ruptures. Over time, unresolved moments accumulated rather than being metabolised, and what began as occasional disconnection became a pattern.
The Cost of Missing Agreements
Several years after the marriage ended, a mentor, Paul Dunion, shared an insight that helped me make sense of what I had lived through:
“The absence of agreements can lead to resentment in a relationship.”
What we lacked was not goodwill or commitment, but clear relational contracts. We had no shared expectations about when difficult conversations should happen, how repair would occur after rupture, or what mutual responsibility looked like under stress.
Without aligned assumptions or mutual consent about how to engage, even well-intended conversations became destabilising rather than connective.
Timing, Consent, and the Breakdown of Dialogue
The day before I left on an overseas business trip, a difficult conversation was initiated without notice. There was no agreement about readiness or consent. I felt caught off guard and angry.
At the time, I did not yet understand that I could decline or postpone a conversation I was not resourced for. I stayed, became dysregulated, and left the country still carrying unresolved tension and a lot of cold anger.
Sudden Grief and Reduced Capacity
While I was abroad, a sudden and destabilising loss occurred in her family. Sudden events such as medical emergencies, accidents, or unexpected deaths overwhelm the nervous system and significantly reduce capacity for reflection and perspective-taking.
In this case, her brother died by suicide.
I was shocked and wanted to support her. At the same time, I was overseas with professional responsibilities and under acute pressure at work. I needed to inform my manager, confer with my co-facilitator and then speak to the airlines about changing my return flight, not to Singapore where I lived but to Australia where the death had occured.
What made this period so difficult was not indifference, but a stacking of unresolved ruptures without shared expectations. There was no mutual consent about how to engage, no agreement about repair, and no clarity about how to hold each other when both people were under strain.
When Mutual Perspective Is Not Welcome
Looking back, I can see that we held very different assumptions about what a difficult conversation actually requires. At the time, I had more tools and support to work with my own reactivity and stay within my window of tolerance, while my former spouse did not have the same level of resourcing, which shaped what was possible between us.
In Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen describe dialogue as involving multiple layers and perspectives of an event from both parties involved: what happened, feelings, contribution, impact versus intention, identity, and purpose. Central to the framework is a simple premise: meaningful conversation requires more than one perspective.
I am generally less likely to initiate conflict. I often stayed quiet until it became clear that my perspective was not being recognised as equally valid. Only then did I refer to this shared framework from a book we had both read, not to coach or fix her, but to name the need for mutuality.
When I eventually said that I also had a perspective, I was not seeking agreement. I was asserting a basic condition for dialogue: that two inner experiences were present and mattered. The response was not engagement or disagreement, but a refusal to hear my perspective at all.
At that point, the issue was no longer the content of the conversation, but the collapse of dialogue itself.
The Impact on Intimacy
Over time, this dynamic affected intimacy. I lost interest in sex and stopped initiating it, not because of a lack of attraction, but because desire depends on connection.
Connection erodes when repair does not happen and when one person’s inner world has no place to land.
When I tried to name this, the response was clear:
“You’re trying to change me. There’s nothing wrong with me and I’m never going to change.”
Without agreement about growth, influence, or mutual impact, repair was not possible.
Shame, Job Loss, and Problem Ownership
Around the same period, she lost two senior, high-profile roles in the mining industry. In both roles, she had deeper technical and strategic expertise than her direct managers, but lacked the relational skill required to work effectively with people who held greater formal authority. This imbalance of expertise and seniority likely created tension, and her capability may have been experienced as threatening rather than collaborative.
In the second dismissal, she was not given a reason despite asking for one. This understandably left her feeling powerless and unseen. In all fairness, this anger had nothing to do with me. I supported her by joining a call with the Chief Human Resource Manager, who confirmed that the decision was final.
Thomas Gordon’s concept of problem ownership helps clarify what happened next. Her distress about work was real and belonged to her situation. My role was to support, not to absorb or resolve it. When that unresolved anger began to spill into our relationship, the problem shifted from being hers alone to becoming shared. That was the point at which I suggested couples therapy, not to dismiss her pain, but to restore boundaries and shared responsibility.
What I Would Do Differently Now
With hindsight, I can also see my own learning edge. I asked myself:
“Why did I feel the need to engage in a one-way conversation that my body told me was headed in the wrong direction - where there was plenty of evidence that her hurt and anger would result in a lack of curiosity?”
I stayed in the conversation longer than I should have because I did not yet understand boundaries or how to enforce them. I had no internal reference point for when a line had been crossed or what action to take.
If I were to do this differently now, I would not introduce frameworks mid-conflict. I would first ensure we were aligned on the type of conversation we were about to have, whether the timing worked for both of us, and what outcome we were seeking.
Without shared expectations, mutual consent, and aligned assumptions, even the best frameworks cannot create safety or repair.
What This Has Shaped Going Forward
One of the clearest outcomes of this experience is how it has shaped my criteria for intimacy.
For me, intimacy now requires a shared understanding of the window of tolerance, access to nervous system tools for self-regulation and co-regulation, and an active commitment to repair after rupture. This is not about perfection, but about shared capacity and responsibility.
Without that shared practice, intimacy becomes fragile under stress, no matter how strong the initial bond.
Key Takeaways
Empathy alone does not sustain intimacy without boundaries
Timing and consent are prerequisites for difficult conversations
Shame reduces capacity for reflection and perspective-taking
Clear problem ownership prevents resentment and emotional spillover
Repair requires shared expectations and relational contracts
Conclusion
Empathy does not require self-erasure.
Support does not mean absorbing another person’s unprocessed shame or grief while ignoring one’s own limits.
And intimacy cannot be sustained without shared expectations about timing, repair, and mutual impact.
Today, I treat agreement as a prerequisite for intimacy, not an afterthought, both in relationships and in the way I approach difficult conversations.