Do You Keep Your Heart Open?

One of the first lessons we learn as humans is about protecting our hearts. We probably learn this when we are very little people. Something hurt us and we close up and we can’t come out until the pain stops.

If this sounds like something you do as an adult, then you are doing what every human on the planet does. Everyone who gets hurt has some sort of mechanism to shield the vulnerable parts from more pain. This is just the way humans are designed.

And even though you learned this skill as a child you are probably still using the same techniques now as an adult. You may have some different words and you may even get mad at your mate when you get your feelings hurt, but all these behaviors do one thing. They close down your heart.

Sometimes in life we are faced with difficult situations. This is the life all of us will encounter at some point. Many of us know hard experiences already.

Maybe a family member has died. Maybe you have had some cut offs in your life that you regret. These are big experiences that many of us will face.

But what do we do when we get seriously mad at our mate? Do you hold a grudge? Do you blame them and make them pay? Do you internalize your pain and think it is your fault?

Many of us got hurt during our childhood. And some of us were not able to talk about our pain to our parents or the people who cared for us. So when a young person gets hurt and there isn’t another person to help them, some of us turn toward our anger to get attention.

This is how I grew up. I got hurt, but didn’t have the skills to talk about what was bothering me, so I resorted to yelling at the person who hurt me. This is common when some of our needs are not met.

All of us start out in great love with our partner. It’s so wonderful to fall in love that we might even forget every other aspect of our lives. But as the relationship grows sometimes feelings get hurt and that usually prevents us from being loving to our mates.

All humans get their feelings hurt. Especially if we are in a relationship with another person. Even though they love us dearly there is no guarantee that they will never hurt us emotionally. In fact, because they don’t live in our bodies and minds and how we organized and receive life, they may step on our feelings regularly.

I believe these issues are meant to help us grow and figure out what is bugging us so we can get back to loving our mates again. So, if you have a moment, see if you can identify what gets in the way of your love.

When we are in relationship with someone we love, we often get our feelings hurt. This is very common with couples. We start out by believing that we are the same, that we just get each other and feel a sense of home with each other.

But the longer we stay in the relationship, the more we realize that there are differences between us and sometimes those differences lead to misunderstandings and hurts.

We all use labels to categorize things. This is very human. When we learn our language we start by putting words to name things so we remember how to describe what we see.

This also applies to how we treat the people we are in relationship with. If we love our partner then we probably see them in favorable terms like: sweetheart, dear, baby, etc.. The same type of labeling occurs however when we are upset with them.

Many of us in relationships get our feelings hurt. This is pretty normal and happens even when we love our partners. But some of us when we get our feelings hurt get really, really upset. I know I used to do that too.

When we get really upset, well we can’t think straight. Our minds narrow with maybe one thought. We got hurt and someone has to pay. This is common if we didn’t learn how to understand our hurt feelings.

I didn’t while growing up. There was a lot of yelling in my family and I grew up thinking that yelling was the way to solve things when upset. It works in a family of yellers, but most people don’t grow up this way.

Humans are very complex. We can be in two feelings at once. We can love our mates, and be extremely mad at them and we can feel both of these things together. That is how the mind works. All of our minds work this way.

It is very common to get our feelings hurt when we are in a relationship with someone we love. Loving a person requires us to move away from barriers we place around our heart. We push them aside and love deeply another person.

And because these barriers are not there to protect us, when we get our feelings hurt, we really, really hurt! There is no protection around the heart to keep the heart safe and that’s why it stings so deeply.

All of us grew up thinking about how we were treated by our parents and the world. All of us at some point made some decisions about the best way to survive our upbringing. Some of us grew tough so no one could hurt us. Some of us grew self-critical, as if we were the cause if things didn’t turn out well.

All of us bring something of our youth with us as we age. Usually we develop strategies to help us overcome what was happening to us. In my case my mother was raising three little ones: 5, 3 and 1 all by herself and working full time as a teacher.

I couldn’t understand any of this when I was the 3-year-old. I just knew that my mother was often tired and unavailable and when she got overwhelmed, she yelled at us.

When we argue with our mate we do so from our own point of view. This is how we are as individuals, trying to get people to see our side. When we get our feelings hurt some of us think about what was done to us, and then we lash out to the person that hurt us.

This reaction is common in relationships, but it hurts people. I have worked with many couples who are pretty much wired similarly. They both want to get the other person to hear how they were hurt. They are really good at being mad at the other person and trying to get their attention. Only when they are both doing this, they create a war between them.

I'm retired.

Author Archives: Linda Nusbaum

Do You Keep Your Heart Open?

How Do We Handle The Hard Stuff?

When Our Anger Covers Our Pain

What Gets in the Way of Your Love?

How Our Pain Makes Things Worse

When We Label Our Mates

When We Can’t Think Straight

When We Love and Are Mad at the Same Time

Using Our Protection Against Our Mate

How We Stay in our Own Lane