#2. Do you cling to your partner for your emotional needs?

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One of my students told me this scene which describes someone who is not emotionally intelligent:

“He slammed his glass down so hard that it slopped over on our ivory cushion. He then swung his legs to the floor and stood up with his eyes sparking fire and his nostrils wide. His mouth was open and his bright teeth glared at me. His knuckles were white.”

Even though my student’s husband is a first-rate accountant and financial wizard, she has a hard time to be around him.

His anger is not the problem. We all get angry. The problem is he is not self-aware. When she asked him to calm down, “What the hell do you mean? I’m not angry.” His high pitched voice was absurd.

He literally didn’t know he was angry.

Most people roll their eyes when I talk about emotional intelligence (EQ). They think it’s rubbish.

I disagree.

EQ is an asset that builds your relationship.

Here are 7 questions worth asking:

1. Are you self-aware?

If you’re angry and sarcastic and belittling, and don’t even know it, you’re not self-aware.

My student’s husband blames his wife for his anger. He does not take a minute to ask why he is feeling this way or that way. He blames everything outside of him for the way he is feeling. This keeps him safe. This keeps him in a buffer. This buffer keeps him from confronting himself.

People who are not self-aware do not recognize what they are feeling and why they are feeling that way. They’re oblivious to the impact their behavior has on their partners.

In my relationship, I know I need to be self-aware when I don’t recognize when I feel out of sorts, irritable, or sad. Even though it is not easy, it is necessary. Because what you are unaware of, you cannot change.

When you’re self-aware, you’ve a degree of control over your potentially alienating behavior.

2. Do you cling to your partner for your emotional needs?

Your joy will be doubled when you meet your beloved – not out of quiet desperation – but out of the sheer delight of sharing your life with another. I learned this the hard way. In my 20s, a painful breakup taught me to never cling to my partner for my emotional needs.

Most of us see relationships as the only path to happiness and fulfillment. Being alone conjures up a sense of dread.

But here is something to think about:

If you are not comfortable being alone, you cling to your partner for your emotional needs. You’re saying to your partner, “You must make me happy and distract me enough from myself.”

That’s unfair.

Relationships are for walking with someone along sometimes rocky, sometimes rainbow lit roads. They are not about sitting and waiting for someone to hold your hand to make you feel special all the damn time.

When you take care of your own emotional needs, your relationship is more likely to be rich and rewarding. You build a strong relationship because you do not rely on your partner to save you.

3. Do you process your emotions?

Children hold the Olympic record for processing their emotions.

Have you ever seen children beating the crap out of each other over a silly thing like the right to play the new game first? I am talking shoving, flailing arms, and hammer fists. A few minutes later, the children are playing together, giggling, and telling each other they are best friends forever.

Children never interfere with their emotions – whatever they are. They cry if they need to.

In time, they get up and move on.

Unlike adults.

We bottle up our emotions. We hold grudges. Like my uncle who holds an old grudge on his wife over something that happened 15 years ago. We don’t give ourselves the opportunity to process our emotions, without judging ourselves. We fear the emotional intensity of seeing someone crying – especially an adult, not to mention men – losing control, appearing helpless.  

Emotionally intelligent people understand difficult emotions, when unprocessed, become dangerous.

If you don’t process your emotions, your feelings will bottle up and turn into frustration, anger, irritation – one day perhaps erupting with aggression. Your capacity to love and feel empathy, sympathy, and compassion for others will diminish. You will be unable to participate fully in the emotional grandeur and poignancy of life.

The solution is simple:

You need the only thing that is appropriate to give – and, ironically, the most difficult to give – your unwavering, unjudging, and fiercely loving presence.

4. Do you listen deeply?

People who listen deeply do not do these things:

. They are not thinking about what to say next.

. They’re not figuring out how to coax, convince or present their case.

. They’re not trying to fix it or thinking about a solution.

. They’re not mixing in their own feelings or providing opinions.

. They’re not judging.

Good listeners are open.

They listen as the other person talks. They ask questions, not to guide that person somewhere but to better understand. They grant someone they love the greatest gift of all: the gift of feeling understood.

5. Are you assertive?

Behave aggressively and the other person will react defensively and angrily.

That’s true even for someone you love.

Aggressive people force their views or desires to be accepted through bullying, intimidation, and manipulation. Aggression leaves no room for compromise.

Ask yourself:

Do you clearly express your thoughts and feelings to your partner – without being aggressive or abusive?

Assertiveness is to disagree with someone you love without resorting to emotional sabotage or subterfuge. It’s to walk a fine line, defending your wishes while, at the same time, respecting your partner’s point of view. It’s being sensitive to his needs.

When you are assertive, you’re not loud and pushy. Even in an unpleasant or uneasy situation, the other person feels respected and accepted, not put down.

6. Are you empathic?

Empathy means caring as much about your partner’s well-being as you care about your own. It means seeing the world from your partner’s point of view. It means to “emotionally read” your partner. It means even if you don’t agree with his opinions or feel the same way, you can acknowledge your partner has a right to his feelings.

7. Do you act impulsively?

Hot-headed people leap before they look. Their feelings are translated into action with the speed of light.

Look at this scene:

The moment your partner comes home, he speaks to you in a rude and disrespectful tone. Justifiable irritation swells into righteous anger. You respond in kind, snapping back at him.

After your outburst, your partner explodes in earnest.

This scene describes when someone reacts.

People who don’t act impulsively look before they leap. They take a minute before they act. They resist and delay the urge to react in a knee-jerk reaction.

Steven Stein and Howard Book, in their wonderful book, The EQ Edge, describe a metaphor that can help you to not act impulsively.

Imagine an impulse gate that swings open and closed between emotions and behaviors/action. If the gate is working properly, emotions get stacked up on one side for a while.

The impulse gate puts them on hold.

Now, you don’t explode when someone you love snaps at you. You take a minute or a micro second to imagine one of those swinging gates. You imagine putting your anger, irritation, outrage, and any emotion urging you to take lethal action in one side of the swinging gate.

By imagining this metaphor, I’m not asking you to deny the existence of your emotions.

You’re aware of them.

But you don’t do much about them right away.

Frustration, hostility, destructiveness and a host of other potentially wounding emotions are left to cool their heels. They’ve got nowhere to go; they can’t get through the gate and be acted upon.

I love this metaphor.

The next time your partner makes you want to act impulsively, imagine this swinging gate. It helps you to slow down. To stop and think for a second. To switch on the radar. Maybe something is bothering your partner. So hold back your emotions until you find out what’s going on.

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Takeaway:

Developing high emotional intelligence is important for a good relationship.

When you have high levels of emotional intelligence, you’re able to build a strong relationship. Because you start managing your own emotions and understand the feelings of someone you love. You’re keenly attuned to your own feelings. You’re capable of expressing emotions in an appropriate way, as well as empathetic and understanding of how the other person is feeling.

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