Dear Paradoxy,

here are my thoughts on suppressing emotions…

We’ve already talked about your father and how he believes that emotions are bad and should be suppressed. Since women aren’t able to disregard their emotions so easily, and are more prone to be lead by emotions, I think he believes it makes them less rational, less smart, and therefore, more stupid. He believes that “succumbing” to emotions causes them trouble.

As we have established, your father doesn’t want to get in touch with his emotions, and so he accepts a worldview where emotions are bad and inferior, and where he, with his “pure logic”, is superior. Consequently, women too (as more prone to be governed by emotions) are inferior to men, who are (or should be) governed by “pure logic”.

Unfortunately, you have experienced on your own skin how logic can be twisted. Because B was twisting logic: she was claiming that sleeping around isn’t cheating, as long as on the day of cheating she is officially not in a relationship with you. Even if she was with you a week before and a week after having “gone astray.”

This logic was unfair to you, it was hurtful, but you couldn’t find a way to dispute it (“I don’t know how to argue with the technicality”), because indeed, she wasn’t with you on the days she slept with another man.

You couldn’t dispute this “logic”, which is focused on “technicalities”, without taking into account the emotions: your emotions, to be more precise, and your pain. You were being treated unfairly, you were emotionally abused, but the logic said: “she hasn’t cheated”. But your heart knew the truth: that she hurt you. And that you were in pain, because of her.

Your father used logic too, without considering your emotions. He could shut you down, using pure logic:
<p style=”margin-left: .5in;”>my father is a pro at psychology, and he is so rigid that everyone, whether it be his own boss, his friends, or our own relatives, knows that he should not be messed with because he always speaks the truth and can put anyone in their place by using pure logic.</p>
And it seems B too could shut you down too, with her twisted logic. She could disable you and you didn’t know how to fight against it.

Because your father taught you not to fight against it – he taught you that emotions are not important. So you couldn’t just say “she is hurting me, I am leaving.” Because that’s not an “argument” for your father. Emotions are simply not an argument.

So this is my take on how suppressing emotions can lead to a twisted, heartless logic. It’s not even logic, but a kind of reasoning that excludes the heart and emotions. It’s a false reasoning… technical reasoning, perhaps, which disregards the heart of the problem (pun intended).