On the importance of gracefully sharing our feelings
My parents divorced when I was nine. Countless reasons lie behind the break-up of my family, and the relative importance of each is probably impossible to determine.
Among the many reasons that led to their separation, I wish to talk about a specific one. It seems to me that my father bottled up his negative feelings and rarely shared them with my mother.
As further evidence of this, my mum experienced my dad’s request as an unexpected wake-up call. She had little to no idea about the negative feelings my father harboured.
I can only speculate what led my father to accumulate a big pile of small unresolved resentments. It seems that he did not see the importance of resolving them. He did not anticipate that he would become unable to manage the pile once it grew too tall.
While I personally experienced the consequences of not sharing one’s emotions, I still found myself guilty of this many times.
In a dynamic that I imagine similar to my father’s, I built a masculine identity based on discipline, hard work, perseverance and grit. This led me to believe and comfort myself with the idea that I could take on just a little more. That if something was off, I could manage it. That if my feelings were wild, I could silence them and move on.
I built up piles of tiny little undressed negative emotions towards many other people. Each time I felt one, it was always too small to justify bringing it up. It was always too small to justify discomforting others for my own sake. It was always too small to challenge my unperturbable man identity.
Hiding my own feelings has been a dominant theme in my interactions with the world. However, mindful of my parents’ story, I adopted the opposite approach in my romantic relationships. Whenever I would get sentimentally involved, I would over-communicate my emotions. While this led to many uncomfortable moments and challenging emotions, I don’t regret it.
After several relationships, I am about to get married to a wonderful girl with whom I feel deeply connected. In my journey with her, I learn that on one side, sharing too much can be challenging and damaging. On the other side, sincerely and gracefully communicating my feelings at the right moment made our relationships more resilient.
This has allowed me to feel freer to be myself and allowed her to understand better what I was experiencing and thinking. It has allowed us to empathise more with each other and find more suitable compromises. It has allowed me to develop the trust to embrace the commitment of marriage, despite the trauma of my parents’ divorce.
So I’d like to invite us to find more ways to gracefully share our feelings with the world. We can start with our partners, but there is no reason to stop there. If we can find the strength to be more open and vulnerable, we can forge deep connections. This can strengthen our relationships with our friends, colleagues and anyone we may share experiences with.
Many grow up thinking that men must be strong, reliable and confident. This is how an attractive and breadwinning reproduction partner shall behave. We believe that we shall not be vulnerable. We shall show no glimpse of the feeble and transient nature of our emotions.
But the world has long changed, and society is undergoing fast transformations globally. Making sense of what happens is becoming more complex. In some parts of the world, meaningful connections are becoming scarcer than secure food sources. In this context, understanding each other is crucial to move together through the confusing and ever-changing landscape.
In a strange plot twist, the transformation of society is changing the value of being open and vulnerable. What used to be a threat to our survival is becoming a necessary skill to build resilient social networks which can uplift us in evolutionary terms.
I feel is time to show and share our feelings. Not carelessly and blatantly. Not in a self-centred and attention-seeking way. Not as a complaint. As an act of responsibility towards ourselves and others. As a way to manage the garden of our tolerance and engagement. As a way to care and protect for our bonds and connections. As a way to truthfully show up to others as what we really are and trust us to be able to take care of it.
