Why It’s Important to Speak Your Feelings in Relationships

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PHIL: I’ve been feeling adrift for about a couple of weeks with a kind of “What do I do with my life?” feeling that might stem from having finished FourFit, the phone game, and having finished moving the websites to a new server. I also recently posted my writings after having procrastinated for a long time about their incompleteness; that gave me a feeling of being able to let go of those ideas in some way, rather than their continually pulling me in and saying, fix me, fix me.

I think a combination of putting the writing out and not having any current project has left me feeling somewhat aimless, and I haven’t yet got to grips with how to wrestle with it, move past it, dissipate it, absorb it, whatever needs to happen with it. I thought on a walk how this is not something I can think my way through.

It has made for a rather self-focused couple of weeks, and I feel that during that time, I may not have given Maude the attention that our relationship deserves.

This has been such a tenuous thing even to get a grasp on, to be able to put words on it, let alone grapple with it, that I didn’t say anything to Maude for some time. It felt like it wasn’t a good idea to say anything until I had reached a certain point in it.

There’s something about speaking your position that has two benefits. The fact of putting it into words makes it much clearer, and the more specific the words are the clearer you can be. The English language has a very rich vocabulary for describing things precisely. It brings it into focus for you and makes its outlines clearer.

But the other thing is that having spoken it, you can start to move past it. Because how can you move past something that is at the moment unspoken, just felt? The less you can describe your feelings, the more they are going to come out as actions, probably negative ones.

In contrast, when you can describe your feelings better, they are still being expressed, but as language. That description also has a releasing quality similar to what you get from acting on them, a release from the tension of the emotion.

When uncomfortable emotions start arising, it’s like there’s something wrong. Things don’t feel good, you don’t even notice it, but something is off like you’re grumpy or busy. And when you do notice, you don’t know which way to go with them. The more you look at them, there’s one side and the other and you don’t know which choice to make, but at some point, you reach a sense of what is true for you, and that is the point at which you should speak. It may not be the last word, but it is the truth of the hour.It is important to put your feelings into words #quote #relationships Share on X

MAUDE: The other night Phil and I were talking, and he shared with me that he had been feeling adrift for a while because he had just finished several all-consuming projects, and wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. He didn’t have any current projects and was trying to come to grips with how he was feeling. He also recognized that he couldn’t think his way through this and would need to formulate it by speaking it.

At the same time, he also shared that he had been very self-focused for a bunch of weeks and that as a result, he felt he was not giving me, or the relationship, the attention we deserved. This pronouncement had a strong effect on me. I had indeed been feeling his lack of availability and presence. I knew what he was involved in, so I was comfortable to a degree with what was happening, although it was not a way of being together that I would want to go on for any length of time.

As Phil put his experience into words, I felt any distance that was there disappear. It made me aware of how important it is to speak feelings in relationships. Yet, it is also important to wait and not speak hastily. If you say something too soon, before it has coalesced, it may be too full of ambiguity and confusion, and a general lack of clarity. If you wait too long, the other person might start to make things up about your behavior.

This applies to both people in a relationship. I noticed Phil’s lack of availability, but also assumed several things. First and foremost, I knew it had nothing to do with me or us. Second, I wasn’t feeling uneasy or distressed by his preoccupation.

I did start to feel that it needed to change, so I brought up a trip that we had planned to make for a two-night getaway. We had been detoured due to our internet being out for the better part of a week and hadn’t gotten back to it. So I suggested we proceed with our plan and we booked a lovely little adventure.

This could have gone differently, and often does in relationships. I could have taken Phil’s behavior personally and spoken out too early with concerns and feelings of something not being right. It’s a tricky balance to speak your feelings and to realize when they will communicate the essence of what needs to be spoken. It takes trust and honesty to find this balance.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes

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