What to do when emotionally triggered around my SO?

[Pure Imagination]

tl;dr - My boyfriend is very emotionally stable and I’m not so much. How can I sustainability be more emotionally stable around my boyfriend?

 

Hello everyone! So I’m a man in a relationship with another man. We have a great dynamic; we’ve been dating for about six months now and we’re overall very happy together. He loves me a lot and never hesitates to share that with me (which I like a lot actually). He definitely fulfills the more masculine role in our relationship. So fittingly, he is usually the more emotionally stable of the two of us.

I tend to be a highly sensitive person who feels so many different emotions in a day. I like this about myself, but at the same time there will be little things that trigger me (from him or just various life things). When this happens and I’m around him, sometimes I’ll get stuck in an emotional downward spiral, causing me to become quiet and distant with him and others.

He can always tell when I’m upset, but his general tactic is to try to change the subject to distract me from how I’m feeling. This literally NEVER works for me. I’m one of those people who needs to talk about how I’m feeling when I’m with others to resolve my emotions. Or I have to be alone for a little while to resolve it on my own. But I feel bad having to constantly resolve how I’m feeling when I’m with him. I would rather just get to the root of why I feel this way sometimes.

So I guess my main question is what is some advice y’all would recommend for me to be sustainably more emotionally stable when I’m with him? This isn’t just a problem I have when I’m with him; most social interactions are tricky for me when I’m triggered. I get that this is something everyone deals with, but it feels like an excessive problem for me. He is always so happy around me and I wish I could be that for him.

[mandyjw]

Mindfulness work, consciousness work and meditation. The key is making space between you and the emotions. You can still feel things fully and intensely after doing that work, but you'll get more control over them and not have to be so sidelined by the things you don't want to get wrapped up in. 

Your SO is good motivation for doing this, because often we want to do things for others more than ourselves and that's honorable, but know that you're really doing this for you, in all areas of life. 

[ajasatya]

@Pure Imagination write down every small detail about life that makes you impatient. choose 1~2 of them every day and be ready when it happens. this kind of work takes TIME.

[flowboy]

1 hour ago, Pure Imagination said:

So I guess my main question is what is some advice y’all would recommend for me to be sustainably more emotionally stable when I’m with him?

DON'T.

This is a mistake. If you take responsibility for handling your moods within the relationship, the sexual tension will be gone and you will just be friends.

Do you want that?

Instead, teach him how to properly support you when you are emotional. Probably he needs to listen for awhile and then do something to make you smile.

This way you can keep the nice polarity going. 

It should be your boyfriend posting this question. Outside the relationship, sure, take the advice others suggested and improve your relations with others. But, since your boyfriend has the more masculine role within the relationship, it is vital that you can continue to trust HIM to handle your every mood.

Make your boyfriend read David Deida - The Way Of The Superior Man. If he does this, this problem will go away and you will not regret it.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2019 by flowboy

[Pure Imagination]

@mandyjw  Yes, those are all very useful. I do an hour of The Work of Byron Katie every day, along with other shadow work techniques. I’ve definitely gotten better with seeing and healing my triggers, but I still feel like there’s this underlying trauma that I keep coming back to when I’m with my SO. So I guess continue to feel and inquire?

@ajasatya  Thank you. I’ll try to be more proactive with implimenting those.

 

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

If you take responsibility for handling your moods within the relationship, the sexual tension will be gone and you will just be friends.

I don’t completely agree with that. At the end of the day we are all responsible for our own emotions. That doesn’t mean our partners can’t help us, but at the same time they’re not our dedicated therapists.

 

1 hour ago, flowboy said:

Instead, teach him how to properly support you when you are emotional. Probably he needs to listen for awhile and then do something to make you smile.

Lately we have been doing this more. But I don’t want to keep rehashing my same problems with him over and over.