Hey, cool! I'm officially sitting at a coffee shop to blog because I like doing it and my mother in law is sleeping in our living room and it's 6 am. I've never been good at getting anything done in a coffee shop, so if this blog post is literally nothing - that will have to be why.
I talked to my dad last night, which was nice. Our conversations are usually quite shallow and awkward with lots of dead air. I always felt like I had a good relationship with my dad, but now I'm realizing that liking my dad and enjoying being around him, and him liking me and enjoying being around me... well, actually now that I type that, it does sound like a good relationship. It's just not a deep one, I guess. I haven't talked to my dad about my relationships with friends or anything going on in my life for a long time. And now there really is no "my life" because "my life" is the kids and there's only so many bullet points about them that I can pull together in a 15 minute conversation that happens roughly once every 3 weeks.
But, something cool happened last night. My dad told me a bunch of stuff about a relationship he has with one of his old friends and how he got a phone call out of the blue and all about the conversation and that his (male) friend said "I love you" at the end of the conversation, and that my dad had said "I love you" back to him. And he said it was nice to hear that and he's never heard it from a friend before. It really touched me that he would share that with me. I like to know how my dad thinks and how he would react to things and how things are meaningful to him even though I for some reason thought that nothing is meaningful to my dad. (I don't know why I thought that. I've never said it. and it sounds bad to think it. But, I guess I have.) Maybe I thought that because he never wants anything for Christmas. But, I guess caring about relationships and caring about things is a lot different.
My dad doesn't often talk about his feelings, even to my mom. I don't know if it's a guy thing, a generation thing, or a my dad thing. I'm guessing it's a combo. I don't think it's unique. And I think often times, it takes a man a lot to feel anything in particular about... anything, really. I used to find this to be a frustrating thing about men, but now that I'm really thinking about it, I think it's something special about men. When I'm feeling overwhelmed and upset over a mutual situation Stuart and I are sharing, he can always talk to me logically about it and help me take a less emotional position. I'm not at all saying he doesn't validate my emotions. Stuart is the master of caring about me. Thinking about how much he cares for me and loves me is making me tear up right now at Peet's at 6:15 in the morning. That's how well he treats me.
So, when a man has those rare moments of opening up about his feelings, it feels so important and so meaningful, whereas a female is talking about her emotions all of the time and (and I'm purely guessing) it would seem less meaningful after a while to a man and he would (and I'm guessing again) become less reactive to outbursts of emotions or declarations of emotions. That's probably why women feel like men don't care about their emotions - not because they don't care, just because they're so used to it.
If something happens a million times, you become complacent to it. Think about it - if on your route to work one day someone ran out in front of your car, it would startle you. It would freak you out. But if that same person ran out in front of your car every day in the same spot on the way to work, you would get used to it. You'd get used to anything after a while. If your boss yelled at you, you'd be sad. If he did it again, you'd be sad/mad, and if he did it all of the time, you'd say probably say, "Oh, that's just Bill. He's a bit of a hothead."
I'm not saying to not talk about our emotions, but maybe it is important not to be flippant with expressing disdain, frustration, and hurt with our male counterparts when it's something that's not important and something you know you might be overreacting to. Maybe. So, maybe when you do express those 'run in front of the car' emotions, it will be the shock and 'are you okay?' instead of the waving of the hand to let your emotion pass by, so to speak.
When Stuart tells me his feelings about something, it's never when I've said, "Tell me how you feel! What are you thinking about? What are you feeling?" Ever. It's always been in quiet moments. And I hang on every word because those moments are so important to me and I value them so much. I feel like he trusts me. I feel closer to him. I can understand him better.
Or, maybe the whole thing is a big crap shoot and men and women just are wired differently and care about different things, and while the sharing of emotions from men is so meaningful to women, it's just because women are emotional creatures, and if the reverse were to happen, it wouldn't be nearly as meaningful to men. But, I think my complacency theory isn't a bad one.
Anyway - that was not at all what I expected this post to be about, but it made me think about things I haven't thought about. So... cool!
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