How Sharing Emotions Can Strengthen Your Marriage
Marriage counselors know the significance of sharing emotions with our spouse, opening up vulnerably, and providing our partners with insight into our inner worlds. But, sometimes partners are terrified of showing their emotions to others. Or, anger has become so prevalent that it obscures the hurt and pain under the surface. Because of this, we fight in our marriages about laundry, finances, how to parent children, sex, and any number of topics. What is actually happening is that we are feeling distant in our marriages, unloved, lonely, inadequate, stinging from past hurts, and terrified that we will be judged for any of these painful feelings. But sharing our emotions with our spouses can be a powerful experience that builds re-connection and actually gets us what we want out of a marriage, rather than the worst case scenarios that our brain plays out of sharing our emotions and then facing judgment and, worst of all, the dissolution of our marriages. Sharing your emotions in your marriage has a multitude of benefits that can bring you closer to your spouse.
Eases the Pain of Loneliness
There is nothing worse, both biologically and emotionally speaking, than feeling alone. The need for connection is hardwired into the human experience and feeling isolated in marriage is an overwhelmingly triggering crisis. We tend to respond to feeling lonely, in our individualistic culture, by retreating inwards and moving away from our partners. Or, we lash out with anger and do not show our partner our hurt because we are afraid of what they will do with it. In a marriage, you can create a relationship in which there is understand and compassion through the sharing of painful emotions. If your partner hears, for example, that you sometimes feel inadequate and terrified of screwing up in your marriage, that then gives them an incredible insight into why you do what you do. Even better, it helps them to see you as a human being with flaws and they can relate to you on that level. When they see your hurt instead of your anger or silence, they can feel less alone and can instead move closer to you, which helps you to feel less alone. When your partner knows that you are hurting too, that puts far less pressure on them to “fix” you or the marriage and it helps them to know that they are not the only ones to feel inadequate and self-conscious. No man is an island, especially in the most important adult relationship we have.
Helps You to Understand and Empathize
Since we are all flawed humans trying our best to figure out ourselves and our marriages, it stands to reason that sharing your humanity will help you and your spouse better understand each other. Empathy is one of the most powerful tools we have and it has a natural healing ability to soothe the wounds of our relationships. What tends to get in the way of our ability to empathize is the anger, criticism, defensiveness, and shutting down that happens in marriage. If your spouse is always angry, you will start to view them as an unreasonable person who becomes impossible to relate to, as you cannot see past their surface level presentation. If your partner is shut down, you will naturally assume that they are withdrawing from you because you are not good enough or because they are planning to leave the marriage, which casts them in a villainous light and makes them hard to empathize with. If you can get under the surface to connect together on a deeper level, you can find understanding and compassion for each other, which will become a vital part of healing your relationship together.
Understand the Hurt and Stop Hurting Each Other
Understanding your spouse’s emotions will help you to understand why they hurt and the ways in which you hurt them, likely without even knowing it. When you share your emotions, you become aware of the painful cycle that the two of you are stuck within. You can understand your spouse as a hurt person, which makes their actions much clearer and easier to understand. When you can understand the cycle of hurt, you can start viewing this cycle as the enemy instead of each other. You can then use that knowledge to tame the cycle and to try vulnerability instead. If you know your partner’s triggers and the stories behind them, you can have increased awareness of what pain points are especially hard for your spouse to hear. Almost no person who truly loves another will willingly choose to continue intentionally harming their spouse once they know how badly they are hurting.
Gives You a Chance to Support your Partner
When you stop hurting your spouse in your marriage, you can do what comes naturally to caring partners and support your spouse in expressing themselves and getting their needs met. Once we understand why we do what we do, we can understand the underlying emotional needs that we have been afraid to articulate. We can understand why we shut down and how we actually need connection and support. When we can offer that support, we begin to create safety in our marriages. If your spouse can test you to see if you will support them, and then you pass that test with flying colors, you will begin to plant the seeds of trust. Once you can trust your partner and recover from attachment wounds, the rest of your relationship can become significantly stronger and calmer on a daily basis. When your spouse can show you that they do not want to hurt you and they instead long to support you, then you can experience the joys of a calm nervous system and the secure attachment that comes with it.
Marriages are complicated, so it can be helpful to seek a marriage counselor to help you better understand yourself and your spouse. If you are looking for a marriage counselor in Colorado Springs, A Shared Heart Counseling can help! Learn to share your emotions and connect more effectively with your partner to recover from conflict, poor communication, infidelity, and any other relationship issue you might need help with.
