RE: In Our Overly Rational But Not Unemotional House. . .
March 13, 2015 at 1:23 pm
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2015 at 1:29 pm by Jenny A.)
(March 13, 2015 at 9:21 am)JuliaL Wrote: The squishy bits don't fire in a qualitatively different way when expressing reason or emotion. I choose to think that reason is a sometimes effective method of constraining emotion.
Recognizing that leads to at least an internal conversation of the sort you describe.
I'd say verbalizing the same with your SO is very self aware and exceptionally insightful. You can exchange views and build a bonded structure more informed and resilient than two isolated constructions. Fewer ignorant misunderstandings.
I don't find it odd at all.
I am very emotional. I cry pretty easily and I laugh a lot. But my rational mind often gets there before the emotions and tends to provide a sort of running commentary on my emotional side. One of thing things that causes me to do is explain that my emotions are just that, emotions. It's a kind of disclaimer.
(March 13, 2015 at 9:21 am)JuliaL Wrote: In my marriage, to a Lutheran, we don't have arguments; we have vigorous discussions; not always as rational and sensible as your examples. I have noticed that these discussions cause mental distress to the offspring.
I'm over here giggling. I was raised Lutheran, and my husband's parents don't have arguments either. Actually, my parents pretty much didn't even have the vigorous discussions in our presence. My first husband came from a family of shouters. It wasn't very long before we had a little talk in which I explained I didn't discuss vigorously, let alone fight in public and that I would renige on any agreement reached with argument in public. So he might as well just plan on discussing it privately.
Our children don't like us to vigorously discuss either.
(March 13, 2015 at 10:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: That's different from my marriage. My wife and I are actually quite emotional people, and I'm never as calm and rational as I would like to be in our arguments. Life to me feels a lot at times like I'm just treading water and trying to stay afloat, and that often times causes me to lash out more than I should. Not that the arguments get really heated or anything. We both just get emotionally involved in them.
Sounds like my first marriage. Some of the change is just me getting older. Some of it is that my husband is very reasonable.
(March 13, 2015 at 10:42 am)Faith No More Wrote: Although, I will say that we've both made great strides in the past few years. We are also house looking, and that's caused some other issues between me and the mother-in-law. I'm quite proud of both the wife and myself at how we've been able to calmly and rationally discuss the situation.
Ish. Sorry about the mother-in-law. I'm a firm believer that parents ought to stay out of their children's marriages. I hope I live up to that when our kids marry.
Good luck with the house looking. We just made an offer on a vacant lot and are now biting our nails waiting to see if the offer is accepted.
(March 13, 2015 at 9:35 am)Nope Wrote: It sounds like you have a very lovely marriage, Jenny and have figured out how to communicate well. That is wonderful.
When I first married my husband, we had both come from dysfunctional families where a lot of communication involved anger or one person trying to dominate the other. It took us a long time to learn something as basic as how to argue with one another. Now, we rarely argue but I wish that we had been less emotionally driven when we were younger.
Younger is the key word. My first marriage was much closer to what you describe. He came from a very dysfunctional family and I wasn't nearly as restrained as I should have been. When shouted at, I tend to shout back.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
