So I’ve been in a relationship for a while where it feels like I am much better at navigating my partner’s feelings and supporting them in hard times than they are for me. I’ll give a recent example of what I mean, and here I should put a content warning for a deceased pet.
My partner’s last childhood dog recently passed away, she was getting pretty old and was in failing health for a bit. When she died it wasn’t a terrible shock but it was very sad. My partner got some remembrances from the cremation and upon receiving them was very upset. They didn’t want to just hide the remembrances away somewhere because it felt disrespectful but also couldn’t deal with it at that time. So I stepped in, said, OK, I’ll take them, they’re going to be kept out in the open, not hidden, but I will hold them for you until you’re ready to reach a more permanent solution. Pretty good response if you ask me.
Now flip the script, say I’m the one in need. My partner doesn’t have anything other than cliches or proposed solutions to my problems that clearly aren’t well thought out and are effectively useless. I feel very unsupported emotionally a lot of the time.
But it isn’t just this relationship. I feel this throughout my life. I’ve wondered at times if this is a performed gender roles sort of thing. I’m a man and nobody has said to me directly “you’re a man just don’t have problems lmao” but it does at times feel like we are dancing around that implication. I don’t know. Just curious if other people have experienced this because I’m sick of needing to be the mature party in my relationships. If I cut off everyone that made me feel this way I’d be alone.
That’s one part of dealing with the “human” factor of relationships. Perhaps your partner isn’t as developed emotionally or doesn’t have the intuition or even the right things to say. You’d think they would know - they should know you by now - but a lot of times they just don’t and don’t know how to respond as they aren’t equipped with a solutions book. Looking for a hero and it just isn’t there and it feels quite alienating and depressing. They are human and they have everything on a spectrum of every IQ / EQ IntroExtrovert whatever and it doesn’t match yours like a mirror.
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depreives people of empathy and empatheic skill. Empathy is the profit killer after all. My partner is the result of the IRL Jakarta method. He’s a nice person but dealing with empathy or communicating in such a way is…difficult to think out of his own narcissitic shell. He would pick up on my emotions but not act on those clues so much. Then he has these moments when he will write little notes and be a sweetie.
So what I do, and try this - hug her. Take a moment to breathe in the embrace and tell her what’s going on and how you feel. She might not respond right away to it or in the way you want in your head or what you heart really needs right now. Maybe it takes a bit for her to soak it in. But over time this builds that skill for her to pick up on and should improve the communications or at least her response to you. Everyone has their own yadda yadda wrapped up and sometimes others can come like a shock to their system like “Where’d this come from?!”.
Thanks for the suggestion and commentary. I definitely need new strategies to get through to her in the moment, so anything that kind of shatters the distance that’s clearly between us would help. Maybe something as simple as hugging helps as a way to indicate that I need her to take what I’m saying seriously.