Emotion is a Key Player in Love and Relationships
The message publicized by the media and some therapists has been that we’re supposed to be in total control of our emotions before we can turn to others. You’ve probably heard this: love yourself first, and then another will love you. I have new, radical knowledge that turns that message on its head. For human beings, maintaining emotional balance is a dyadic, collaborative process. In other words, we are designed to deal with emotion in concert with another person, not by ourselves. In fact, the reason distress in a relationship can quickly plunge us into chaos and dysfunction is because our hearts and brains are set up to utilize our partners to help us find our balance in the middle of distress and fear. What we need most when we are distressed is the loving, calm, compassionate eyes, and care of our partner to help calm our nervous system. But if our partners becomes a source of our distress, then we are especially lost and vulnerable. And this is why so many are shackled to dead and dying marriages and relationships. However, the other side of the coin is that loving connection is the natural antidote to fear and pain. Our need for connection with others has shaped our neural makeup and the structure of our emotional life.
Emotion stimulates our own behavior and delivers our deepest needs to others as well as delivers their deepest needs to us. Emotions are vital to our love relationships. Our partners are crucial to our sense of safety. So how can they shelter us, be our safe harbor, if they don’t know what we are afraid of and what we desire and hunger for?
Emotion is the music of the dance between lovers; it tells us where to put our feet, and tells our partners where we need them to put their feet. And being unaware of our emotions, we emotionally abandon ourselves, often saying things like, “I’m good, I’m fine, I got this” when we are not. “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand. If you can’t have empathy. If you aren’t able to manage distressing emotions … you are not going to get very far.” Dan Goleman
I get why emotion is so difficult. We are made crazy for feeling. We are diagnosed for feeling. We are medicated for feeling. We are shamed for feeling. (Shame can pull a relationship down into the abyss without partner ever realizin it). We are labeled needy for feeling. We are abandoned for feeling. We abandon our own selves for feeling. Still we have to work extremely hard to push down intense emotion. Our heart rate speeds up, and stress chemicals come pouring out. Think of putting a cap on a volcano that is ready to erupt. Forces that are bottled up eventually make the strongest explosions. This is why we see people suppress, suppress, suppress and then… blow up! No wonder so many of us feel emotionally abandoned, empty, disillusioned, lost, disappointed, despairing, hopeless in our relationships. We don’t even live emotionally within ourselves. How can we be with someone else on an emotional level? Click to continue to reading.
