Using The Word ‘Feeling’ Doesn’t Mean You’re Talking About It.

Lots of people nowadays go to communication trainings, which is great; learning how to express your feelings and thoughts… But in a relationship this can get pretty exhausting.

In their book ‘Making Your Second Marriage a First Class Success’, Doug and Naomi Mosely write about how people deal with feelings and about the common reproach “he/she doesn’t care about my feelings”.

The word ‘feeling’ doesn’t always mean that you’re about to express any feelings. If you say “I feel like you’re behaving stupidly”, that’s not a feeling but an opinion. But if you say “I get scared when you throw plates at me”, you’re expressing feeling, even though you didn’t actually use the word. The word ‘feeling’ often raises a red flag in people’s minds and scares them off.

Another disturbing phenomenon is interpreting someone else’s thoughts or feelings. Some people feel like they have a great talent for noticing and understanding other people’s signals. They think that they’re great at reading body language, picking up hidden meanings… They’ll say things like “You might say that, but what you actually mean is…”.

But hey, if you’d wanted to say that, you would have…