@Velvet: yeah, I think you are right. I jumped too soon in the "don't be a wussy" wagon, and I was wrong. I think Jehosephat wants the right kind of empathy, which is to resonate with his girlfriend's feelings.
@Jehosephat: yeah, what you are trying to do is very good. That kind of empathy will get you very close to your girlfriend and to other people.
One thing you can do in these situations is to
elicit, that is, to draw out the core feelings that she is experiencing at that moment. For instance:
Her car breaks: she might have feelings of importence, of weakness, because a random incident can cause her a lot of inconvenience.
She gets fired from a job: feelings of being unfit, of not being able to find another job, unworthyness.
What I do is to listen to her and try to draw the core feeling at each moment:
Girl (upset): hey, my girlfriends set up a meeting and didn't call me.
Me: what? wow, you surely must feel betrayed right now. It's very ungrateful when you trust some people and then they don't correspond.
Girl: exactly!
Sometimes, girls don't want help to fix their problems (I am pretty convinced that girls can fix their own logistic problems on their own), but they want their feelings resonating with someone else. They want someone to understand their feelings. We men communicate facts, girls communicate feelings.
A man that can understand his girl's feelings has a very valuable trait indeed
.
What is the best way to acquire this skill? First, practice this with many people, not just your girlfriend. This is a valuable skill with everyone. Second, when someone tells you that something happened, try to remember if you ever had any similar situation, and instead of telling him/her the facts of your similar situation, try to recall your feelings at that moment, and verbalize them.
Bad:
Coworker: hey, Word crashed and I lost a lot of work in this document!
You: yeah, it happened to me several times. I learnt to turn autosave on.
Coworker: hrrm. (thinking: hindsight is 20/20, smartass!)
Good:
Coworker: hey, Word crashed and I lost a lot of work in this document!
You: ouch! It's really annoying when that happens, and I really really hate to start it over! When this happens I always want to forget about the whole damn thing!
Coworker: yeaaah!