Once again the Bachelor has provided some great fodder to think about. While the show is generally pretty comical if you listen closely, every now and again there will be nuggets of wisdom to think about and implement into different parts of your life. Last night was no different and this week’s wisdom comes from Carly, the 29 year old cruise ship singer.
Last night Prince Farming’s sisters paid the girls a visit to spend some time getting to know the girls who were vying after their younger brother’s heart. As an older sister I can certainly appreciate this and think there is definitely wisdom in bringing some outside resources into this process. In their time with Carly she became emotional when she was answering their questions about previous relationships and being treated unkindly. As she discussed the ‘interview’ with the rest of the girls in the house she made a simple and profound statement about her show of emotions with the sisters:
“The things you become emotional about are the things that are most important.”
Regardless of our backgrounds (ethnicities, parts of the country, religion, etc.) there seems to be a resounding theme of the expression of emotions being slightly dangerous. As I continue with my own therapeutic journey and sit in the presence of so many others as they share their stories, I hear over and over just how difficult it is to express emotion over anything—good, bad or even devastating. People seem to have ingrained messages stemming from years and decades ago that tell them to keep their emotions under wraps lest they be judged by others or their emotions would be seen as a weakness.
I’ve seen this to be especially true when it comes to the topic of dating and relationships. As much as I find myself getting annoyed at the girls on the Bachelor gushing all of their emotions and terms of endearment towards their suitor (which I am sure are at least, in part, scripted), I can’t help but feel a tug at my own heart knowing that it would be nearly impossible to get me to say things like that because of the emotional strings attached to my words. To display my thoughts and emotions to someone, let alone a national audience, would be, at the very least, vulnerable. To not display emotion about something or someone I care about feels far safer and more secure; it’s a layer of protection that I can offer myself in case something doesn’t worked out as I had hoped.
I see this all the time in relationships—we tell ourselves that we’re not that into someone or that it didn’t feel that terrible to be broken up with or disappeared on. We rationalize the situation, we informationalize (I think I just made that word up!) the situation, we think of 10,000 possibilities for what we might have done wrong in the relationship that we can now be working on…we do anything other than sitting in the emotional pain of feeling something towards another and it not being reciprocated. Becoming emotional about something, showing feelings, getting angry and crying are all signs that someone or something has had an impact on us. But showing emotion is vulnerable. It means that someone has the power to hurt you, to wound you; and in being vulnerable you are willingly exposing yourself to that potential without necessarily knowing the outcome.
But I wonder if that vulnerability of emotion can, like Miss Carly said, show us also the things that are the most important to us. Things like kindness and compassion; being treated with equality and respect. Maybe showing emotion over something shows us that we really do want a relationship rather than having to hide behind a mask of fierce independence. Maybe showing emotion shows us and others that we are not an impenetrable force but rather a living, breathing, soft human being. What if acknowledging our emotion and understanding what is motivating it can point us in the direction of what we are passionate about in life, in relationships and in the world?
What a gift we would miss if we shielded ourselves from emotion to keep away the hurt but also ended up keeping out the utter joy and bliss of finding out what is most important to us.
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