Nurture the Relationship

Make a point to regularly practice caring behaviors with this person. When you act lovingly toward someone, it actually increases your feelings of love, as well as, your ability to empathize with that person.

Set Aside Your Beliefs, Concerns and Personal Agenda

When you are dealing directly with this person, you have to go into the conversation empty handed—with no personal expectations or goal of fixing them. Very often couples come at each other with baggage from their past or presuppositions that muddy the communication waters. Instead, you must be willing and eager to have your mind and perspective changed. Your only agenda is listening to your partner’s feelings and trying to understand your partner’s point of view.

Gain Personal Perspective

This method involves working on your personal identity. In other words, you need to learn who you are separate from the other person. If you do not have a clear sense of identity, then you will tend to take things too personally. When you take things personally, you cannot separate yourself enough to feel the other person’s pain. Begin to practice emotionally detaching—not allowing the other person’s negative behavior to determine your mood or choices. In time, you will gain a greater sense of identity and separateness that will offer you the advantage of perspective.

"If you’ve suddenly found yourself without the job you know and love to identify yourself with, don’t feel that you have to betray your longing, go on with grace and confidence. 

Those who don’t have a dream can form a new identity, in their own time and on their own terms. "

"Personal identity has been discussed since the origins of Western philosophy, and most major figures have had something to say about it. (There is also a rich literature on this topic in Eastern philosophy...[which I am arguably more familiar with]...)"

who?  "Your identity...what makes you unique as an individual and different from others, or the way  you see or define yourself, or the network of values and convictions that structure your life. it is one you have only contingently: you may be perhaps getting by without any."

who are people?  who are "the people"?  who are the people you love?  how/why?

Psychological , some psychological relation is necessary or sufficient (or both) for one to persist. You are that future being that in some sense inherits its mental features—beliefs, memories, preferences, the capacity for rational thought, that sort of thing—from you; and you are that past being whose mental features you have inherited in this way

Somatic You are that past or future being that has your body, or that is the same biological organism as you are

Mental and physical continuity are evidence for identity, it says, but do not always guarantee it, and may not be required.

Your current stage is also a part of a being whose temporal boundaries are determined by relations of psychological connectedness

Fission is death. In the fission case, the sorts of practical concerns you ordinarily have for yourself seem to apply to someone who isn't strictly you. This suggests more generally that facts about who is numerically identical with whom have no practical importance.

Heal Past Hurts

obviously, not emptiness emptiness

"It seems you fall into a category called “Emptiness”, a pretty high category of pain. ... Your mind, body, and heart are basically saying to you, “Hey, what’s the point of any of this?"

agency scare word:   why empathy was and should be regarded to be of such central importance in understanding human agency in ordinary contexts, in the human sciences and for the constitution of ourselves as social and moral agents.

If you don’t heal past hurts, anyone who brushes up against you will send shock waves of pain through your body. This keeps you from seeing the other person’s feelings. Instead, you become self-absorbed with your own pain. If you find ways to resolve your hurts, you can turn your focus off of yourself and clearly see your partner’s pain.

I'm essentially living in mine:  The first tip to overcome the emptiness is to identify the triggers (times, places, and things) that cause you the most pain. Triggers can cause fits of sadness, grief,