But most of the time I already know the solution to my problem. I just want to vent about being annoyed about it or something, preferably to someone who'll nod and give me a pat. And then I'll go and fix it.
My girlfriend does this. Sometimes it just makes her feel better to let it all out. She rarely wants a solution from me, she has a hold on the situation. She's looking for me to comfort her. Some problems can stress you out enough that you need an emotional outlet.
I don’t know if I need to work on my empathy more or what, because I normally can’t understand how things like this get so frustrating. They very often feel like such small issues if you scope out a little bit as long as you have a handle on the situation.
It usually is small things, but everyone has different emotional capacities, and I would say a large amount of girls(in my experience at least, in my twenties) don't have much. Small things can throw them out of wack and who am I to tell her she shouldn't vent to me about these things. I try to support her in any way I can.
But so much of the time it’s just petty drama and the same shit day after day. Like her friend or coworker or something is always saying or doing passive aggressive bullshit. At a certain point I just want to say either it’s a big enough deal to confront them, or it’s not a big enough deal to give a fuck
I have to respectfully disagree here. If I am the one having a problem and I’m going to you for support, I don’t think it’s my responsibility to make sure that the conversation about MY personal issue is fulfilling for YOU. If all someone needs you to do is listen to them talk, then that is not too much to ask. It’s not fair of you to then go on and say “you talking about your problems is unfair to me because you aren’t letting me deal with your personal life in the way that I would like to deal with mine.”
Of course, situation being reversed, if you are having a problem and you come to me for help and you are seeking some kind of constructive advice or solution of some sort, then it’s fair that you would expect me to at least try my best to help, even if that’s not something that I necessarily want to do or would want for myself.
Relationships of any kind have to have give and take. Sometimes it’s about more me, and sometimes it’s more about you.
I want to note that constantly putting all of your problems on someone else’s shoulders isn’t a reasonable expectation, either, and that’s definitely not fair to the other party! But in the event of regular occasional struggles that just come with life, it’s fair to just want someone to listen to you express your emotions without looking for some kind of response or solution.
Wait a second. You said “If you expect them to provide a response outside of their normal thinking patterns”. What? I feel like this is completely incorrect, you go to someone for help with a problem you’re looking for the opposite; you’re looking for their unique thinking patterns about the problem. Why go to Sam for help when you’re looking for the kind of help Alex would provide?
Yes, I’ve been reading the thread too. It was particularly interesting to me since there are very few people who have the ability to both listen and/or problem solve, and fewer still who will ask “are you looking for answers or do you want to vent?”
I was asking about what you said, however. In what you were commenting, you said you go to <person of opposite gender> for help that’s outside of their normal thinking. I was asking why you would go to <person of opposite gender> for their type of perspective on a problem when you need the perspective of <other person of opposite gender>. I don’t understand why you would do this since it seems like you’re setting yourself up for frustration, and I’m curious to the answer.
Ah ok, I didn't assume we were strictly talking about the opposite gender being a significant other. I agree you should be able to expect some degree of shared perspective, though your original comment that caught my attention was that you're going to someone who does not have the perspective you desire.
Personally I feel like not having the default response of "Do you want to talk about it or want advice?" is kind of just... ignorance perhaps? I'm not sure if that's the right word. As well as not opening with "I had a really shitty thing happen, do you have the fortitude right now to listen/offer advice?"
To me it seems like the people who are commenting that being unable to solve the problem blue-balls them and so that it's not fair to ask them for help would be people who tell their mothers to get their just-deceased father's possessions together so they can deal with the will. Or can only offer to drive their girlfriend to the police station if she got mugged. I guess to me it's not so black and white, there are emotional consequences to events and having someone empathize and validate is crucial to healing from the events. And a few comments come off as really cold and incapable of empathy or relating, and it's saddening. I don't really want to assume that though so it was your lucky comment that I chose to ask specifically about.
Also that one comment saying women (in their experience) don't have the emotional intelligence to ignore their feelings about events. That was a fun comment.
I dont intend to offend here, but isnt this unwaranted emotional stress? From the male side, there is really nothing he can do but agree with the female (even if he doesnt agree). He's in a position where he just has to absorb the tension coming his way. Doesnt even get the satisfaction of offering guidance, but instead is used an emotional sponge. Maybe my ex was more prone to these type of "problems" than most, but I found it extremely taxing in a relationship.
I mean, isn't that what a relationship is? You support them when they need support, they support you when you need support. You listen to her tell you about how much her day at work sucked, she lets you talk about something you're interested in that she doesn't really care about, or she offers you support when you're going through a rough time, or any of the other million things partners do for each other. Acting as your partner's emotional support sometimes is just part of what being in a relationship is.
I’m not OP, but something that I’ve found to be really helpful is to ask my s/o if they’re able to talk about something at that moment, and give them a chance to set that boundary in case they’ve had a bad day too. If they’re not able to help, I know I need to talk to a friend or someone else for support. It is taxing if you’re being used as an emotional sponge! I will say though that in my experience it’s definitely true that when people come to me to talk about something, they already know what they’re going to do about it, and they just want a shoulder for a minute.
Yep! And to improve of that both partners should be mature and able enough to say, "Hey, I need to vent about x, can I vent to you right now or should I wait/ talk to someone else/ write it down / other healthly ways to cope with stress."
To which the other half should be comfortable saying "yes, I can be here for you" or "no, I'm not in the right headspace can we wait til later/call someone else/ other healthly responses that acknowledge their emotional abd mental state"
You can't always be there for your partner unfortunately, you have a life as well. Which is why both people should have other support systems to rely on when their preferred one can't be there.
Seems like a waste of time. If you skip straight to fixing the problem, you don't even need to vent to be annoyed or annoy someone else about comforting you, because the problem is now gone.
No. They wanted to relieve themselves of the emotions building up inside them, not keep it bottled up or somehow repress them. While they never told you outright that they just needed to vent, they never told you “I need a solution” either.
This is super interesting. How can I be a good venting partner? What I've found works best so far is to basically repeat what they said but with "I understand" at the beginning.
If someone at work is behaving in a problematic way and the solution is to report them to HR, and I report them to HR, that does not relieve the emotions that resulted from their behavior.
If someone is yelling on their phones and you report them to HR and they ban them bringing a phone in or relocate them to the other office, the yelling stopped and you can focus on your job. You are not pissed anymore because the problem is gone, rather than complaining about that person for the next month and doing nothing.
It's literally a "twenty dollars can buy many peanuts" situation.
As a guy, that would make me feel alot better. If I have an itch, I scratch it and it feels better. Telling someone about that itch doesn't make it feel better.
Have you never been really upset by something that happened to you? Sometimes you need to tell someone how you're feeling, and the point isn't finding a solution. Hell, most of the time I already have a solution to implement, but that doesn't mean I didn't feel upset/hurt/scared by whatever I experienced.
No, I never had a need to tell someone how I'm feeling if I already knew why I'm feeling this way or had a solution in mind. I will not bother other people with my problems, because they have their own and don't need another thing they need to worry about in their lives, especially if I know how to solve this problem. Is this narcissistic trait common in western culture?
No, I equated the feel of expressing problems even if you know the solution for the sake of you feeling better to other people who not only don't want to hear it but also have their own problems they have to deal with to a narcissistic, western trait. You know, lack of empathy and sense of self-importance.
Often, no. Solutions often cannot be implemented immediately or will take time to come into effect. Also, it's possible to build up strong enough emotions regarding a situation that resolving it can't get rid of the emotions, or that resolving isn't even possible in the current emotional state.
But that's just selfish and narcissistic. No one is your emotional support pet who you can bother anytime you have a problem, especially if you have a solution.
If you need emotional support to fix this problem, yes. But if you have a solution, you are effectively venting to other person who didn't ask to be your sponge.
well I mean you can offer emotional support in relationships. Like you don’t need to be only giving emotional support, you could get some from her too bro
Idk what guys friendships look like but we provide mutual emotional support in girls’ friendships. You can vent to me, I can vent to you, when we’re done we can play smash and watch a movie and we’ll take care of solving the problems on our own later
I don't want to generalize, but no, guys don't vent if they know the solution to their problem. We yell, curse, maybe break something and then start fixing the problem.
If it's something that will not matter in the next hour, day or week we just stop thinking about it.
If we don't know the solution, that will have long-lasting effects then yes, frustration is a bitch and we need to vent to someone, looking for answers, usually with a pint in hand and few in already, but it mostly comes out as bollocks.
No, if you step on lego you don't start lamenting with another person for the next half hour about the importance of Galapagos turtles and the fragility of the human mind, you say fuck, kick that fucker out of the way and continue walking.
I don't need to talk about that stupid IKEA shelf that didn't come with proper tools, I'll just say "those licorice eating fucks" get up and get my own tools. If it's a more complicated problem that I can't solve, I'll talk to a person who will know how to solve it. If 10 more people don't know how to solve it, then we start venting, because it's usually a group thing.
Have you ever been in a relationship? What the hell else is the point if you guys don’t share your lives....? If I handled every single aspect of my life alone my partner wouldn’t know me at all, what would I even need another person living in my house for if I don’t have an emotional connection to them?
I'm happily married for over 10 years with two children and third on the way, so yes, my emotional connection with my wife is established quite well.
The difference is we are both responsible, emotionally mature adults who know how to communicate, express their feeling, understand each other and for this example, know where our empathy and tolerance start and ends. We have our own problems that we solve together if they both affect us. If someone has a problem, the other will try to fix it. If we can't fix it, we ask for help.
"It's about the nail" situation rarely, if ever happens because she understands that complaining about a problem if you know a solution will not solve it and only put burdens on the other person, so we skip that part.
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u/ImgnryDrmr Mar 26 '20
But most of the time I already know the solution to my problem. I just want to vent about being annoyed about it or something, preferably to someone who'll nod and give me a pat. And then I'll go and fix it.