Pity melts the mind to love.

Seeing someone’s weakness up close does something to how you feel about them. Sympathy softens the guard that ordinary judgment keeps up, and once you have felt for a person you tend to start feeling with them. This is why sharing a difficulty draws people together faster than sharing an enthusiasm does. It also explains why pity makes an unsteady foundation when it is all that is there.

Where you are stuck in resentment toward someone, look at what is hard in their life right now. And where affection has grown mostly out of sorrow for someone, ask what else would hold it up.