Why would anyone want to be disconnected from their emotions?
Because they believe they won’t experience pain. Of course, that also means they won’t experience pleasure (for the most part) either. The resistance of some emotions typically means the prevention of both the good and bad. But then what? What kind of life are you living where you feel very little at all?
When I was in my first long-term relationship, during the last couple years I found out it was a lot easier to be analytical and calculating than it was to show my anger or fear. That’s because as my girlfriend was falling out of love with me and I had thoughts and feelings about her that I chose not to share. If I shared them, “she might get mad and leave me.” But in reality, she was on the way out anyway.
So… what would have happened if I shared them earlier? Could I have saved the relationship? Would it have ended even sooner?
The truth is, if I chose to express myself much sooner she would likely have chosen to express herself too and that would have opened up a dialogue between us. Perhaps that dialogue would have led to honest communication about where we both were in the relationship. Perhaps that would have opened the door to expressing what we liked and didn’t like about each other’s behavior. And perhaps some of those repressed emotions would have come out and we would have had something to work with before things got worse.
But I never tried to express how I really felt because I was afraid that showing her the true me would turn her off. I was afraid that if she knew how I really felt, she’d get mad at me and not want to be with me anymore. What I never realized however is that my choice not to express my truth was the very thing that caused her to fall out of love with me in the first place. After all, it’s hard to express love (emotions) to someone who doesn’t express their emotions (love) back. It’s a vicious downward spiral.
I believed disconnecting from my emotions would make it a lot easier for me to deal with the world around me. Turns out that what I was trying to protect (wanting people to love me, or at least like me) was the one thing that was in danger by not showing them my true self.
Since then, I’ve learned to give people a chance to make their own decisions about me instead of trying to paint a picture of what I want them to think of me (by acting in a way I believed they wanted me to act).
Life is too short to be anyone but you.
And relationships are way too precious to show anyone anything other than the truest expression of yourself. What you think will be bad (telling someone your truth) almost always turns out to be freeing for you. They will either love you more or leave you, but you will be free. And that’s the healthiest “you” you can bring to the table.
And that makes you a great catch.
