Did you know self-compassion in the climate crisis benefits your romantic relationships?

Why being kind to yourself is good for you and your partner

How can romantic love function healthfully and hopefully in a climate crisis?

For this Valentine’s Day edition of Gen Dread, we want to go a little deeper than the usual celebration of romantic love and explore the hard work of actually nurturing and sustaining that love. As people who carry an acute awareness of climate into everything we do, who often can’t just switch it off, how are we showing up in our most intimate relationships? How are our feelings of eco-distress affecting our partners? And what can we do to arrive at a place of compassion and understanding toward partners who may not see or cope with the climate crisis the same way?

Image credit: Prostock-studio. Design by Gen Dread.

Within the Gen Dread team and our wider network of climate colleagues and comrades, many people have commented that it’s really tough to be in a relationship with “one of us”. One climate broadcaster who’d like to comment anonymously shares:

“I like to think I don’t overburden my wife of many years with climate talk. But it still oozes into our relationship. I live and breathe climate, all day, every day. I have been darn preachy, and we are so close she can sense my angst and judgment about individual choices. I can’t expect her to be in the same place as me when I talk every day with experts about water and energy embedded in the food, clothes and products we buy. Sure, we went solar in 2005 and bought our first EV in 2011. But individual action never feels sufficient. And it’s what we can control so I obsess about it. And that affects her in ways I often don’t see, but she surely feels. Ultimately, I have pledged – with mixed success – to put aside the righteousness and eyerolls in favor of valuing relationships. First, be in right relation. Second, pursue eco purity. Living one’s values is important, but I can take that to extremes and self-flagellate”.

Britt has experienced moments of similar struggle. She shares:

“There was a time when [my partner] Sebastian had to put a time-out on how I was talking about the climate at home because it was affecting his day to day wellbeing.”

Sophie, the writer on our team, notes that even when two people are closely aligned in their level of eco-distress, they can have different ways of holding that distress, of coping and coexisting with how it makes them feel. She explains:

“A huge epiphany in my relationship was that my partner and I are driven by very different things in life generally – and we needed to name and discuss what those are. Whereas I'm driven by creative expression and emotional authenticity to myself, my partner is driven by finding the truth in any given situation, nailing down concrete facts, and amassing as much knowledge as humanly possible. We’re both extremely climate-aware and distressed about it, but my partner gets comfort from reading and consuming a lot of difficult and terrifying information – almost like if he knows everything there is to know, he'll be okay. I used to find that really hard to take, because I cope by offering creativity and genuine vulnerability in service of the climate movement. Articulating this difference in how we’re each naturally oriented in the world has made it much easier for me to interpret his climate-related behaviour as simply true to himself, rather than baffling”.

So what do we do about this?

Once you feel any sort of climate chasm in your relationship, what can you do about it? There’s a new study by Robert Körner, Nancy Tandler, Lars-Eric Petersen, and Astrid Schütz that looks at the reciprocal effects of self-compassion in couples. While we know self-compassion is a vital gift to give yourself, this study found it’s also a vital gift to give your partner because it actually makes them feel a greater sense of satisfaction about your relationship. 

What does it look like to have self-compassion in the climate crisis? The study explains:

“Apparently, when people are accepting of their own shortcomings and failures in a relationship, it benefits not only themselves, but also the relationship and their partner's relationship satisfaction.”

This could mean:

1. Sportscasting your inner life without the judgment and manufactured meaning we often attach to our feelings. Instead of telling yourself “wow, I’m mad and tired and I’m useless in this movement and I can’t do anything right”, this could sound like “oh, there’s some anger showing up. Maybe I’ll take a walk. Huh, it’s easing up a bit now. Oh, now I’m feeling exhausted. Interesting. Okay, now I have a little more energy again”. When we treat our emotions as helpful data, rather than indictments, it becomes easier to hold compassion for wherever we’re at.

2. Cultivating acceptance around your limitations as an individual in a massive systemic crisis that demands cooperation; the idea that we’re all climate hypocrites now can be very liberating in its simple truth without gesturing at surrendering the importance of committed climate action.

3. Keeping a log of your dedicated climate actions – marches you organized, letters you sent to representatives, books you read. Over time, you’ll be able to see how much you are doing – and how much you have done. This might help you approach yourself with greater kindness on your lower days.

Of course, these are all crucial things for all of us to do, partnered, polyamorous, or otherwise. But it’s encouraging to learn that these practices might have a side benefit of helping our partners’ mental health too. 

We’d love to hear from you in the comments: how is the climate crisis showing up in your relationship? What practices have you found are helpful in creating connection rather than disconnection?

If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏🏼

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Valentine’s Day bonus: free lecture with Britt on coping with climate anxiet

Image credit: The University of Western Ontario Faculty of Arts & Humanities

Britt will be giving the 2024 Duncanson Lecture at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada on Feb 29. The Duncanson Lecture series is open to the community and exists to stimulate both thought and discussion about the importance of humanities scholarship for solving complex global problems and challenges. There are still some in person tickets available to Britt’s lecture on coping with climate anxiety, and virtual registration is free.

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Making Waves

• Looking at the climate crisis through the lens of the Internal Family Systems school of therapy yields new pathways for action in this interview with climate psychologist Steffi Bednarek by global investigations editor at DeSmog, Matthew Green. Read it here.

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As always, you can share your thoughts and reach the Gen Dread community by commenting on this article or replying to this email. You can also follow along on Instagram or support or work with a one-time donation through our partner, Small Change Fund.

‘Till next time!

- The Gen Dread Team

Britt Wray (Founder + Chair)

Jainee Dial (Executive Director)

Blessing Owamah (Administrator)

Sophie Kohn (Lead Writer)

Anis Annisa Maryam (Designer)