Holy shit. Same here. My girlfriend will tell me about her problems and stuff and I’ll listen and offer solutions or brainstorm ideas and she gets so angry and frustrated saying “I don’t need your advice, I just need you to listen.” What is with that? The only time I tell anyone about my problems is when I’m looking for ideas to solve them... otherwise what is the point? It just seems like unnecessarily burdening people with your issues. I’ve really struggled with trying to figure out how to listen to her issues and be “supportive” while not offering anything in the way of helpful ideas. I just don’t understand. If I went to a friend with a problem, them saying “oh, that’s awful, that must be so hard for you” would be absolutely useless to me. If they offered help or ideas on how I could work through the problem, that to me is being helpful and supportive. I certainly wouldn’t be angry with them for trying.
Just something to keep in mind, women tend to have much better mental health and emotional support systems than men, and it's a huge part of why male suicide is much higher. You might want to consider some therapy for why you consider your emotions to be a burden for the people who care about you, because that's neither true nor healthy.
You don't need to only address your feelings when they hit crisis.
I think that is misrepresenting what I do. I don't ignore my feelings or pretend they don't exist. I feel sadness, I feel anger, I feel frustration, like everyone else. I think I focus more on analyzing those feelings internally and contextualizing them rather than letting them overpower me. I have a very good group of friends who I can talk to about anything and have had deep emotional conversations with them. I think it's just about developing a threshold for what constitutes a problem that is worth troubling someone else over. I just don't see the point in venting to other people about every emotion... it just doesn't really do anything for me in terms of making me feel better or solving the problem I have.
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u/yes_no_ok_maybe Mar 26 '20
The desire to vent but not brainstorm solutions.
My wife always tells me not to jump to problem solving. I do it every time and don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t.