Most men have been told that empathy is the key to being a better partner — to listen more, feel more, and understand more. But when empathy goes too far, it can quietly destroy attraction, drain your confidence, and lead to relationships that feel one-sided or exhausting. In this video, Kimberly Hill reveals how good men often lose themselves by over-identifying with women’s emotions, why empathy without boundaries becomes self-abandonment, and how to rebuild emotional strength without losing compassion. If you’ve ever felt unseen, overextended, or confused about what women really want, this is the mindset shift that will change how you connect, lead, and love again.
P.S. If you’re a man navigating dating after divorce, don’t go it alone. My free masterclass was made for you—learn how to rebuild confidence, attract the right women, and avoid common post-divorce mistakes. Watch it here.
Ready for tailored support? Book your 1:1 dating strategy call with me here and let’s map out your next steps.
See you next week,
Kimberly
Here’s the transcript:
Many of you have been told to be a lot more empathetic in today’s world, that as a man you need to listen better to women, that you need to understand women better, that you need to be able to feel what other people feel so you can walk a mile in their shoes. And for a lot of men, especially men that are dating.
Again, after divorce, separation, long-term relationship. This message is going to hit deep because I know that you guys want to do your relationship. Right this time, you want to get it right. You want to listen and be supportive to women, and you certainly don’t wanna repeat the same mistakes that landed you, the painful divorce or separation that you’ve gone through, but listen out because here is the problem.
What if the thing that you have been told that will make you a better man or a better partner is [00:01:00] actually the very thing. Making your relationships with women worse. And today, what I want to share with you and what I wanna unpack in this video is the dark side of empathy. And I’m not here to say empathy in, in and of itself is a bad thing.
It’s a good tool, but what I wanna do is show you how empathy can quickly become toxic when it is misplaced, overused, or weaponized against you. And this is something that many men won’t have heard of before. Maybe you’ve never even. Thought about empathy being a negative thing in certain circumstances, but truthfully, this could actually be the key to saving you many years of frustration with dating and with women.
It can save you a lot of emotional burnout, and it can save you from a [00:02:00] failed connection. So. Firstly, welcome to this channel. My name is Kimberly Hill. I’m a dating and relationship coach for men. I support good hearted men to attract deeply loving relationships and go on to maintain those deeply loving relationships.
And that means I gotta talk about all sorts of wild, wacky things, because if you’re entering into the dating world, you’re entering into a wild, wacky world. So that’s what we address here. In this channel and in the work that I do now, uh, a side note, if you’re of course, a man who’s dating after divorce and you want some guidance, um, you’re welcome to book a complimentary call to see of working with me is right.
But today, obviously I wanna unpack the dark side of empathy, and I want us to begin with, well, let’s go back to what we have been taught about empathy. Now, especially for the last few decades, you guys, men have been told. You need to be more sensitive. You need to be more understanding of women and women’s feelings and rights and all these types of things.
And God forbid you need to get in touch with your [00:03:00] feelings and emotions, men and okay. Honestly, on the surface this is good advice, but somewhere along the way. Empathy in all of this, in the sensitivity, in this understanding, in this learning to validate and be a good listener and get in touch with your feelings, and therefore be able to get in touch with other people’s feelings.
Somewhere along the way, empathy turned into a darn moral currency, and it became proof of your goodness as a man. And for many men, especially men that are, you know, reentering this dating world after a painful divorce, they, what I at least notice in my practice over many years, these men tend to overcorrect.
So you go from being a man who maybe you would say, you know what? I was more emotionally shut down, um, to becoming. Too emotionally exposed or overexposed. You go from being very stoic to [00:04:00] self erasing. And if you are thinking something along the lines of, well, if I can just show women that I really care, if I can understand her pain, she’ll finally feel safe with me, or she’ll feel like I’m a good guy.
She can really love me for who I am. So I’m gonna be really, really empathetic to women. But empathy without boundaries. Ain’t love. It’s actually self abandonment. So I have coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men at this point in my career, and I’ve coached a lot of good-hearted men who confuse.
Empathy with compassion and kindness. And they think that if they are the understanding guy, especially ear early on in the dating, uh, you know, phases of getting to know a woman, that means that they need to be endlessly available. They think that if they can absorb enough of a woman’s pain or just enough of her story, um, she’ll [00:05:00] see his worth because wow, this guy listens really great to me.
Um, but here’s what really happens. The more you as a man focus on her emotions, the less connected you become to your own truth. In fact, if you are living in the experience of someone else’s emotions, which is empathy. Too much. You’ll actually start to change. You’ll start adjusting your tone. You’ll start suppressing your needs, and I bet you won’t share your opinions as much.
Why? Because you just don’t wanna upset her, because you can imagine how it would feel being in her shoes and being upset. And so very, very quickly you end up walking on. Emotional eggshells, right? And maybe you even feel proud of your empathy, but at the same time, you’re actually losing your sense of self.
So empathy without [00:06:00] discernment isn’t actually love, it’s emotional fusion. You’re, you’re too connected to the experience of your partner to have your own experience. And many men end up like this in relationships and polarity dies. So you think, well, I’ve given everything to this woman, and at the end of the day, she just chewed me out and spat me out.
It’s because you might not have enough of your own autonomy. You’re too much in her feelings and emotions, um, to be even, to be leading that relationship anymore. Now I wanna talk about what some of the research actually tells us, and one of the world’s leading empathy researchers, a neuroscientist Dr.
Jean Deity from the University of Chicago. Found something very fascinating in, um, a lot of his work and studies that he has done on empathy in particular, and empathy. While a very powerful tool can bias our [00:07:00] moral decision making, in other words, feeling someone else’s pain, feeling a woman’s pain in dating or in relationships can actually lead you to make emotionally driven irrational choices.
And so isn’t that exactly what happens in relationships? Sometimes you feel really bad for her, so you stop setting boundaries. You feel her hurt and pain, so you downplay your own needs. Here’s an example. You wanna go fishing with your buddies, but she’s upset because she’s alone at home. So you don’t go fishing with your buddies and you stay home with her to make her happy.
But you know what you’re not doing. You ain’t making yourself happy, and you’re letting your buddies down. And if you keep doing that over and over again. Soon enough, you won’t have those buddies. You’ll just have this woman who needs you all of the time because she can’t live her life without you or whatever the story is.
And you’re not even the person that you were when you both met and fell in love with each [00:08:00] other. So if you’re feeling too much of your partner’s hurt, you will downplay your needs in a relationship. You’ll get so emotionally tuned into her world. That you will lose sight of your own. And DC’s research shows that empathy doesn’t always make us more moral.
Sometimes it just makes us more compliant and that’s not compassion. Now we’re talking about codependence. So there’s a psychologist called Dr. Mark Goulston. Who has worked with hundreds of high performing men, and he uses a phrase that I really like and I think is very relevant to highlight in today’s video, and he calls it surgical empathy.
So the point that he is making is that empathy should be used like a scalpel, right? It’s gotta be precise, it’s gotta be clean, and it’s gotta be intentional, not like endlessly given, right? So you don’t [00:09:00] open the whole body of a patient there laying on the. Surgery bed, you target exactly what needs care.
Otherwise, it’s incredibly destructive. It could ruin the life of the relationship, so to speak. So that means that you can listen to women very deeply. Without drowning yourself, you can feel her emotions without absorbing them like a sponge. You can care for her without losing your clarity. That is healthy empathy in the right dosage.
That is leadership, not caretaking. And you don’t wanna get in a relationship where you become a care taker, not a partner. So I wanna share a story that might be familiar to a lot of men that are watching this video. Now, one of my clients, let’s just call him Dan, for the sake of this [00:10:00] video. Had just finalized his divorce and what did he do?
Well, Dan got excited and he went online right away and he met a very smart, funny, emotionally deep woman online. Very beautiful too, of course. And on their first date she opened up to him. She said she felt really safe with him on this date and really comfortable with him. On this date, which he took as a really great sign and he was like, yeah, I’m gonna listen to this woman.
And he listened to guess what? How much her ex-husband hurt her. How she lost trust as a result of this and how men always let her down. And Dan being the chivalrous great guy was a lot of empathy and being the good man that he believes that he is. Thought, well, I, I, I’m a different guy. I’m not like these other guys that she has been in a relationship with, or certainly not like this other guy.
So. What did Dan do? He listened on [00:11:00] that date. He empathized with her. He reassured her. He paid for her dinner. He texted her afterwards to check in just to make sure she didn’t think of him like any of these other men, and he thought, well, this woman just needs a man like me to feel safe. But over the next few weeks, she became distant.
The more he cared for her, the less she seemed attracted to him. And he’s going like, what on earth? Like, I’m embodying and doing everything she described to me that her ex didn’t and, and why isn’t this working out? And he, he got clarity, which many men don’t do in this dating process, but she basically said to him, look, Dan, you’re a really great guy.
I just, I’m not feeling it with you. And he was like, are you kidding me? He felt crushed. Now, there’s probably a lot of Dans out there listening to this video that maybe have gone through very similar [00:12:00] experiences because you’re thinking to yourself, well, I did everything right. I did everything this woman said she wanted from a person.
I gave consistency. I, I followed up with, with like, if I said something, I would, I would do the corresponding action. I was, I was sweet. I complimented her. I paid for everything. I was really chivalrous. And you’re going, but this isn’t working with this woman. Like what gives, but here’s the truth. The empathy that he had for her turned into immediately caretaking for her.
And caretaking is the death of a relationship. It just kills the polarity. And in fact, it might even have killed. The respect she had for Dan, which you wouldn’t think would be the outcome, but if he was too afraid to rattle the boat. Right. He’s too afraid to share his true opinion on something. Then how can a woman respect a man who doesn’t really advocate for [00:13:00] himself, or at least in the early phases of courting her didn’t advocate at all.
She didn’t want a emotional lifeguard. She wanted a partner. She wanted a man with a backbone with spine. Someone who could feel with her. Not for her. She didn’t wanna be pitied. She clearly had some of her own healing to do because if you’re talking about how your ex hurt you on a first date, guys, then be forewarned.
That’s a glaring red flag and it’s not some challenge for you to overcome and convince her otherwise. That’s a woman who has to go on her own journey to figure out how to heal from her ex relationship. You’re not the therapist or shoulder she needs to cry on, so. It’s an important lesson to say that while you might be thinking you’re acting in the best interest of courting this woman, you might actually be create, creating, [00:14:00] um, an environment where there can be no spark or polarity because you’re immediately this quote, super nice guy, this overly empathetic guy who is too afraid to hurt her feelings because bless she’s been hurt before in the past and I can’t hurt a woman’s feelings.
’cause women are so fragile, right? It’s important to understand that even empathy can be used against you. There’s a clinical psychologist, Dr. Ramani, uh, who studies narcissistic and emotionally manipulative relationships and says that highly empathetic people. Are often the easiest to manipulate because empathy can very easily be weaponized and not always consciously.
Sometimes it’s very subtle and hard to pick up on, but you’ve probably heard lines like, you’re the only man who really understands me, or You’re being so cold. Don’t you care what I’ve been through? Don’t you care about any of my feelings? Don’t you [00:15:00] care about how I feel? Ah, suddenly your boundaries, right?
Sorry. Something’s in there. Your boundaries. Um, they, they become the problem and you find that you’re now apologizing just because you had some self respect. That is not empathy, that’s control dressed up as an emotion, and it keeps you very small and it keeps you doubting your right to say no or stand up for yourself or, um, boldly go into the necessary conflict that we need to have in relationships so people learn, uh, you know, boundaries and respect for one another.
So. I really want you to think about how to redefine this, and maybe you have heard about similar situations where, you know, oftentimes this can be called like, you know, being too nice of a guy [00:16:00] and being, being nice and being compassionate and being kind. Have bucket loads of that, that’s not the issue.
The issue might be that you’re too empathetic, that you’re too much in your partner’s feelings in order to even think about yourself. And if you can’t think about yourself and have a direction and aim for your own life, then a woman can’t join that journey with you. She’s going to overtake it and there’s gonna be no respect.
Or in the case that you’re dating a woman who’s quite narcissistic, or maybe she’s very benevolent, or she’s been very abused in her life. She will weaponize these tools against you. Now, of course not all women are like that, but many women have been raised to learn these traits, right? Instead of women like myself growing up, I.
You know, there were times in my life where it was okay to be outspoken, but most of the times it wasn’t because if I was outspoken or had a, a bold, explicit opinion, that was too masculine of equality. So we learned to control [00:17:00] in, in implicit ways, right? And that can be through passive aggressiveness or, um, you know, using empathy as a weapon.
So empathy isn’t about absorbing somebody else’s. Uh, feelings and taking them on board. It’s about understanding them while staying anchored in your own truth. It’s saying, I see you. I hear you. I care, but I still need to honor what is right for me. That’s not cold, guys. Doesn’t make you a cold, heartless man, even though maybe you’ve heard that before.
Right. That’s confidence. That’s, that’s self-esteem. And, uh, research on emotional resilience from, you know, ample places like positive psychology.com, there’s plenty of articles out there, shows that people with strong emotional boundaries. Actually connect deeper, not less. So the fear sometimes we have that if I am setting boundaries, it’s gonna [00:18:00] stop me from having good connections.
And obviously there’s extremes to everything. If you have no boundaries, you’re gonna be taken advantage of. If your boundaries are far too rigid, you’re not gonna be able to form deep connections. But having healthy, strong emotional boundaries will allow you to connect deeper with somebody, not less, because empathy.
Uh, without, with boundaries is what is the sustainable option. So maybe guys, too much empathy is actually your problem, and maybe it’s time to really rethink. What kind of empathy you need to have for women in dating and relationships because the kind that is going to drain you isn’t love. It’s self betrayal.
So if you’ve been through a marriage where you’re like, shit, I was actually too empathetic when I thought I wasn’t empathetic enough, you might be going, holy, I’m having like an epiphany here. Um, because the kind of boundaries that makes you feel [00:19:00] really small. Isn’t compassion, it’s control. Em. Empathy needs to be anchored in strength, which means that in order to be able to have healthy empathy for somebody else.
You need to be emotionally grounded yourself because if you are not emotionally grounded, you will get swept up and drift off to sea with whatever feeling somebody else is having in the moment. And that is not standing in your own power, that is that you’re just a floating buoy going wherever the tide goes.
And um, that’s not what makes women feel safe. And that’s not what makes relationships last. You can care deeply, but you can’t care for someone and be collapsing at the same time. You can feel for somebody but you, you don’t wanna fuse with them at the same time you wanna lead with your heart, okay? Your heart, and you stay rooted in your back, in your spine.
And I wanted to address this today because. [00:20:00] Nobody talks about empathy in this way. You know, many of you guys are out there dating and you’re probably consuming content, content that is constantly telling you how to do something specific, to be more empathetic to a woman. And I’m a woman that here saying like, yeah, we want you to have empathy for us, but I, I don’t, as a woman, I do not want you to have so much empathy for me that you start absorbing all of my feelings.
Then any emotion I have becomes yours. Then if I’m sad, then we’re all sad. Well, shit, if I’m angry, then we’re all angry. That doesn’t help anybody. I wanna be able to express my emotions without knowing that my emotional expression drags you down the depths with me. And I say that as someone who just recently, okay.
I just recently, I’ve gone through some serious health stuff in the last few years. I was diagnosed with cancer. I went through cancer treatment. I’m now on the other side of all of that, still getting my follow up tests and scans. Just recently I had a CT scan and an MRI, just to make sure [00:21:00] I’m still like.
Healthy and gonna be living. And I wanna be able to share that with my partner and say like, Hey, I’m feeling X, y, z about things. By the way, everything is really positive. So thank you for all the love that I’ve gotten from this community too. Even though I, I don’t talk about it a whole, whole lot. It’s definitely something that’s always going on in my inner gut, um, every day.
But to be able to. Even share something that I’m feeling or going through. Um, I don’t want my partner to absorb all of it like a sponge or feel like he has to now carry the weight of my emotions so that I can just like float freely through life. I want a partner who’s grounded enough in his own thoughts, feelings, and emotions that I can share what’s going on for me and know that he’s strongly rooted, um, in his own thoughts and opinions.
And because I’m blessed to have a partner that is, um, you know, he can say to me, he can say to me. Like, you’re being a mess right now. He can say like, you know, I can see that you’re like completely distressed by all of this, but the fact that he can stand in his frame instead of just mushing and [00:22:00] gushing with me or being overly empathetic gives me the safe container and space to, um, express the truth of what’s going on for me.
And I want to be able to do that for my partner as well. When he has stressful things going on in his life, he wants to be able to come and share them with me without me getting frazzled with him. Um, because that’s just not, that’s like two chickens with their heads cut off, running around, like nothing is getting solved at this point in time.
So I hope that this video was really impactful for you. Um, you know, when I. Really learned about empathy being used, um, you know, as a manipulative tool. You know, I’m naive enough to not really considered it deeply like I’ve shared with you in today’s video. So I would love to hear your thoughts and comments below.
Um, have you been the one that’s been too empathetic? What happened in your relationship as a result? Or have you opened up to friends and family and had them be too empathetic that you, you know, you feel like, hey, this isn’t even a safe place [00:23:00] to express myself. Or have you found that there’s been people in your life that have weaponized empathy?
Like, you need to feel what I’m feeling. You just don’t get me. Um, and, and therefore you feel like having a boundary is not okay or not appropriate. I love to hear your thoughts and open up a healthy dialogue and discussion on this. And if this is a video that somebody in your life needs to hear, send it their way.
Certainly, I wish someone had sent this to me many, many, many years ago, um, and hoping you guys all have an amazing day, cia.
