The Importance Of Expressing Feelings

Posted on 10/20/2009

Disagreements occur in the most loving relationships. If the partners do not resolve their negative feelings completely, the love between them gradually erodes. Even if they promise to be better, their hidden feelings will not let them keep the peace. Saying 'I'm sorry" means nothing unless the injury is understood as well as admitted. Unresolved hurt and anger only lie in wait for trivial incidents to trigger them into awareness again. This produces emotional brittleness, foster distrust, and shatters the vulnerability on which the innocence of love depends.

If you don not understand how and why you hurt each other, you are not free to love. But really happens when people hurt each other? What are the dynamics of emotions? How do feelings work? What do they mean? A greater understanding of your feelings will go a long way toward making your relationship flow more smoothly.

Although people find it difficult to identify their emotions in the heat of the moment, the feelings felt are easy to understand. A feelings is the direct response to something that is said or happens to you. You do not think about this response, it just happens. And it is always your most truthful reaction.

When feelings are not expressed the moment they first occur, they must be concealed and so they immediately become more complex and difficult to understand. Withholding both positive and negative feelings distorts our view of the world and isolates us from others. When our feelings are not shared, we feel lonely and restful.

When we are open with our feelings we are willing to share ourselves with the world as we find it. When we withhold our feelings because we are angry, in pain, or fearful or expressing them, we begin to search for evidence that justifies our reaction. Our with held feelings lead us to become prejudicial, to believe that the world is against us, and to back up our case with slanted reasoning. When we hold in feelings, they become blown out of proportion and lose their relationship to the events that caused them.

Each time we do this it becomes more difficult for us to let go and express out true feelings. We want to be right and the other person wrong. So we continue to react to the negative past rather than be open to the present.

When we hold in feelings, we distort the world around us. We really do not believe what we profess to be true and so we doubt our judgment. We make villains out of th people we love and begin to lose belief in ourselves as well. We become more interested in being right than in making peace. Although we hold feelings back to stay in control, doing so makes us feel fragile and at risk of going out of control. Our anger builds. We struggle to keep from exploding. We take it out on innocent people. We are easily triggered by minor frustrations.

Expressing both positive and negative feelings openly is the most important business of a relationship. How receptive your relationship is to sharing emotions determines its strength and worth. Everything else is a distant second.

Without the expression of feelings, relationships crumble, sex becomes mechanical, giving becomes manipulation, hurts become grudges, and love becomes loathing.

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