Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Emotional Defence

Through a series of events and encounters that I went through in the last few months I realised that there is a certain trait present in some of us that I like to call 'Emotional Defence'. It is not a very creative name so I assume you can already guess what it means. In most people, a seed of caution has been planted at some point in their life when they were emotionally scarred one way or another. In most cases these wounds originated from some emotional disaster that some people call love. Why do I call love an emotional disaster? Because it seems that these days people can only fall in love if there is some risk, pain or uncertainty accompanying the relationship with their partner. If none of this is present, people tend to call it boring and too easy. Hence, this leads to a deduction that to keep someone you care about interested in you, you have to go out of your way to make their life difficult, not much, but just enough so they have something to worry about. So people that are not like this by nature, have to come up with some way to make the relationship risky so they can prevent the other person from losing interest. The usual action people take when a situation like this arises is to hide or dampen their feelings so that their partner does not realise the level of their emotions, which by some magic will re-establish the partner's interest. So basically you are pretending not to care about someone, while caring immensely, so you can get the other person that doesn't care about you normally to fall in love with you because they think that you don't care about them and this will all be like some Sunday night chick flick that they can later boast (or mourn) about to their even more emotionally immature friends. That ladies and gentlemen is emotional defence, it sounds really complicated but we all did it at some point; some still do.
I don't consider myself a relationship expert, far from it. I had some ridiculous relationships in my lifetime and their degeneration was induced solely by my inability to recognise that a) I was afraid that I will go back to my pathetic single life that involves meaningless flings, bad hangovers and even worse self-esteem issues; and b) that I was so afraid to get hurt that I would rather develop a personality suiting more to my partner than to myself and eventually forget who I really was.
But then I went through a metamorphosis, realising that things are going to happen the way they are meant to irrespectively of what I did. All those relationships would have ended anyway, because these people didn't accept who I am nor what I do. This is no 3 hour tissue wasting romantic movie. Relationships are about respect, about accepting the other persons flaws and doing what's best for both. I found the best measure of compatibility with someone is whether or not you can behave around them as you would if you were around your closest friends. If they don't like it, the best thing to do is to just walk away.
I felt these things need to be said, not because I am some bitter, relationship deprived male (on the contrary) but because I have seen too many good people around me suffer because they were afraid to let go, or they had the bad luck of encountering people that told them 'I'm sorry you are too nice for me' and then they ended up blaming their wonderful souls for the end instead of realising they were with someone whose mindset is still at the nappy-wearing age.
But the whole 'You're too nice for me' quote is a topic for a completely different story.

8 comments:

  1. Wtf is this? who are you? who am i? You blog? Ill read it then... But i dont know there is no drawings.

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  2. Yes my friendly Mexican. Only started, hopefully I can keep it going

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  3. Careful with that axe Eugene.
    I'm serious, very interesthing topics with good insight from you. So be careful, 'cause I'm supposed to be thinker around here :D
    Anyway, I'm glad to see the impact some of our conversations made on your ideas and views on life, universe and everything :D
    I don't think much of a comment on text itself is needed by me, since I agree on most thoughts, and on those I don't, you already know my oppinion.

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  4. "Hence, this leads to a deduction that to keep someone you care about interested in you, you have to go out of your way to make their life difficult ... so they have something to worry about."

    I agree that this is something that is seen a lot in relationships. Taking a broader view you can see this phenomenon creep into the other aspects of people's lives.

    You will know these kind of people - they are the types that always have some drama or another going on in their lives. I used to wonder why it was that some people always had everything going there way, whilst others always had crisis after crisis. It took me a long time to realise that the crises in these peoples lives were, in most situations, created in their own minds.

    Nice post mano - I want the "You're too nice for me" story now!

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  5. Thanks for all the positive comments guys! It really motivates me to write some more.

    Stefan, don't worry, you will forever remain the analytical master of social interactions,that title is safe in your hands ;)

    Chris, I wholeheartedly agree that that train of thought has infiltrated all aspects of life.I think it's partially due to people's expectations of life becoming so unrealistically high that if there's no drama or problems present, they simply don't know how to relax and enjoy what is at hand.

    The 'you're too nice for me' story will also be there soon because that's something that has been bothering me for a long time now.

    Thanks again guys

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  6. hehe well Vedi as long as all parties involved have agreed upon it then yeah why not

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  7. Im with Ganbanger there (maybe you missed a 'g'?)

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  8. Like communism, polygamy is good in theory; never works.

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