When Someone Else's Feelings Become Your Compass

During a coaching session earlier this year, a client described one of the best first dates she’d had in years.

She smiled as she talked about it, sharing how they’d laughed and flirted for hours. Then she paused, and something in her expression shifted into a look of concern.

“I started getting really anxious on my drive home, rehearsing how I was going to tell my husband about it,” she admitted.

While she hadn’t broken any agreements, she knew that he struggled to hear about her dates. So on her drive, her attention quickly shifted from how lit up she felt, to trying to figure out how to tell him a more dampened version of her experience that would be a little bit easier for him to receive.

Hilma Af Klint, Altarpiece No. 1 Group X, 1915

I've heard versions of this story from clients and friends for years. I've caught myself doing it too, trying to stay connected to my own experience while also calculating what someone else might feel when they hear about it.

Sometimes that might look like editing excitement before talking about an experience, or even changing behavior, like leaving a date early because a partner sounded anxious over text. Others sometimes decide not to pursue a connection at all because they can already imagine the heaviness of the conversation waiting at home.

The circumstances are always different, but the similarity is the way our attention shifts from being immersed in our own experience to anticipating someone else’s response: How is this going to land for them?

For many of us, there seems to be a surprising amount of relational suffering in that tiny internal move as we lose focus with our inner experience in the anticipation of re-orienting to someone else’s feelings.

Non-monogamy doesn’t create this pattern, but it can make it much more pronounced, especially when we’re anticipating a partner’s big emotional reaction when we connect romantically or sexually with someone else.

Read more

Comments

Join the conversation — create a free account to comment.

Join the conversation

Loading comments…