Dear Tee,

Oh :(( Please take extra care of yourself. I hope each day brings more comfort and strength. Praying for a good recovery.

 

showing no understanding and a strong judgmental attitude. So you’re right, it’s probably for the best that you don’t have them as your client.

Yes I think in Management and leadership this kind of things are important too. For professional relationships to grow, There should be good amount of mutual understanding, Not just a business POV.

Yes, sensitivity is the same as vulnerability. You may think it’s your weakness, but at the end of the day, it’s your strength, specially in a romantic relationship. (Just as a side note, we’re not meant to be vulnerable in every relationship, of course, e.g. we don’t want to be sensitive/vulnerable with ill-meaning, toxic people!). However, in a romantic relationship, the goal is to be open and honest with each other, to be able to talk about our fears and weaknesses, and yet be understood and supported by the other – rather than blamed and judged.

Yes you’re right and I’m understanding that now that how much energy and guts needs be sensitive and vulnerable. Yet it’s really important. The person we share sad times we bond with them are much stronger than when we’re just smiling around people even though spending more time with them.

You did say a while ago that you feared sharing too much of your “imperfections” or problems, even if your girlfriend showed compassion, because you thought it would make you “weaker” than her. As if she would use the knowledge of your weaknesses to hurt you, rather than to help you and encourage you…

So you might have a false belief, saying something like “if I show my weakness, I will be attacked”. Perhaps you’ve picked it up in your family of origin – because your father did indeed attack you and chastise you for showing even the slightest weakness? So you’ve learned to hide your weaknesses – not to be attacked?

Yes you guessed it right. I do think it’s maybe because of that

Alright, so you didn’t dare to say that something was bothering you openly, but you used passive aggressive means, such as sarcasm. You were afraid to openly admit that something is hurting you. In other words, you were afraid to openly admit that you are vulnerable and that the person has the power to hurt you. And so instead, you put a shield around your heart… and the language of a shielded heart is sarcasm.

For example, instead of saying “it hurts me when you don’t reply to my texts for an entire day”, you say “I guess you’re so extremely busy that you don’t have time to reply to my texts”. It’s like sending a little poisonous arrow instead of being honest (and vulnerable) and saying “this hurts me”…

Haha again I’m surprised how accurate you are… but yeah you’re on point!

Right… you felt that they didn’t care, even though you’ve never openly expressed what was bothering you. Instead of being honest and vulnerable, you rather blamed it on them and called it quits…. So perhaps your shield started to go up as soon as the person was doing something that was hurting you, but you didn’t have the courage to admit it, and so you switched to sarcasm and started feeling resentment?

Yes exactly! And the thing is whenever I needed something, and it wasn’t there. Like if we scheduled something and I’m giving it importance, but she isn’t, it would just make me furious even though I knew it’s not right to be angry on small matters like that and yet I was doing the silent treatment.