Inept Emotions

Sometimes I am inept, very, very inept. Socially inept. A lot of social etiquette is not logical. Logical explanations of feelings and reasonings don't help others understand where you are coming from. It may be what I would want and deal with best when I am trying to work through confusing things but other people do not work quite like that.

The problem is, for most people, there is nothing logical about emotions, not really. Whereas for me, logic can govern my emotions, after the fact a lot of the time. In fact it has taken a lot of time for me to learn how to feel some emotions. For instance anger.

Anger was deemed bad. I used to lose my temper when i was young and see red. I hated it. I used to cry a lot afterwards. A few years later and my logic had my anger under control. It was a few years before I felt truly angry again and then only after some traumatic events and counselling.

But still, I struggle with some social cues, some subtelties of emotion. I am not autistic or anything but they say we all fall on the spectrums somewhere and have some traits, maybe these are them....

Sometimes the internet accentuates these things, in writing there is no facial expressions to help judge how words are meant. When in doubt I resort back to logic and sometimes that just makes things worse. Sometimes I should just leave things alone, because opening my logical gob makes things worse. An emotional happening needs an emotional response, logic seems to demean emotion somehow. It tends to make things worse.

This happened with my sister many, many years ago. At the time I was undergoing a nervous breakdown, she was suffering from a marital breakdown shortly after the birth of her second child. We couldn't deal with each other at the time, and resentments brewed. i sent a loooong letter detailing my mental state and my understanding of the situation. I expected this to be reassuring, to clarify, to clear.

Not what happened at all, instead, it gave much offense and made everything worse. I was very confused. I hade hoped for a letter back, explaining her point of view. I eventually got one a few years later and it was a horrifying letter of hate and anger and emotion. No explanation, no cause and effect, just plain emotion. It didn't help me either, that emotional out pouring did not make sense, there was no understanding or insight to be gained.

Except that looking back it kind of starts to make sense. It took time but after that letter, the emotions my sister had towards me slowly subsided. It took a lot of time but now, years later we are friends. Sometimes there is a slight fragility to it. But, my sister is a lady of emotion and I am one of logic, how could our methods of reconciling difficult situations be the same? We got there in the end, but our methods of reconciling these events were actually pretty damn painful to the other person.

Friend who I wrote about the other night is someone who would pride himself on being logical and intelligent but that with him is surface, he has an entirely emotional core and it colours his logic because he does feel so very strongly. I tried to deal with the emotion with explanatory emails, logical diatribes of my feelings and reasonings. They were largely ignored, except for snippets which lead to even greater offence and became the focus of new hurts and arguments. The overal sense of what I was writing was never examined, never grasped. This olive leaf of reasoning and insight I am moved to offer those I care about, never seems to be understood for what it is.

That isn't other peoples fault. We are all different. My way seems to be the more unusual. And I am learning. *sigh* I write thse blog posts and I learn as i write, therapy in action and I am learning as this post writes itself, as the logc follows through from initial impulse / problem to understanding and conclusion.

Friend has no interest in letting me off the hook and I am fed up of that. A six month break from him and still the old hurts linger with no desire to move on, to forgive. I can't keep groveling at his feet for forgiveness that never truly comes. My views were never considered, my hurt never understood. The anger and emotional outpourings I endured for our friendship hurt, and these were the things that started our downfall which my logical letters made worse, but the root cause has been clouded by all these and never faced, never dealt with, never exposed. There has to be a desire to get beyond all this and I don't feel that desire is truly there on the other side so I am backing away.

The reason I am writing about all this though, is recently I have had a written misunderstanding with a dear friend. I think I misunderstood things and my logical reply was then misunderstood too i think and possibly gave offense. And now I feel a distance. This may or may not all be in my head. It may be an emotional thing that is gone soon, I have no idea, i don't work like that. I wish I did sometimes, I think i would find people easier and possibly math a little harder..... because I just don't understand.

but the important thing is I am still a good and true friend and my heart is full of nothing but fondness for my dear friend. Everything I wrote in my long logical email is true and factual, not emotional and I think that lack of emotion can be taken as.... some less pleasant emotion maybe.

I see this at work - logical discussions to get to the truth, the solution at work and afterwards my Boss is all, did they offend you with that tone? The answer is always no, because those conversations come from logic, not emotion, which is why I am comfortable and my Boss is not. I am more at home there than with emotion, I am learning though. I also fool people quite well. I don't always come across as a socially inept geek, butoh, in my heart, I am....

So friend, I am probably doing it again. Too much explanation, too much logic, too much self examination offered on a plate as a glimpse of my soul, but I can not help myself and these words are inspired by the emotions I have been feeling. Sorrow that I hurt them. Confusion and guilt. But mostly sorrow.