We all want to feel cared about. We want someone to feel empathy for us when we are in pain. That pain may take the form of hurt, sadness, or anger (see discussion of why anger is a secondary feeling), but in all cases we want someone to care how we feel. This is an evolutionary survival need. It was critical to our survival that when we were injured, we were able to express ourselves, to get someones attention who cared enough to go out of their way to help us. Before we had words, our emotions expressed themselves in moans, cries, tones, facial expressions, body language, etc. The better we were at communicating our pain, and the more empathy we were able to get, the more likely we were to survive. Also, the more important we are to someone the more likely they will care about how we feel. Thus we all want and need to feel important. If we meant nothing to the tribe that we were in, they might just decide to leave us behind at some point. But if we were important to the tribe for some reason or another, they would make an extra effort to help us. When we are in pain though, it is a bad time to start trying to become important to someone and to get them to care about us. This is better done before we are in pain. Once we are in pain, we may quickly become bitter if we need their help or empathy and for some reason they are not giving it or showing it. If we then start to attack them, they will become defensive. Again, this is strictly an evolutionary survival response. The more we attack them, verbally, psychologically or otherwise, the more defensive they become. And, importantly, the less empathic they become. This was something I discovered by chance one day when I was being attacked for not caring, for not showing empathy. A girl I was dating started crying and said ..and you dont even care how I feel! Do you!? I paused a moment and said Well, actually right now I really dont because I am just thinking about how to defend myself. I realized later that day that feeling empathy and feeling defensive seem to be mutually exclusive. You simply cannot feel empathy when under attack. This apparently is due to the hierarchy of survival responses: we have evolved to protect and take care of ourselves first. When you most need someones empathy and caring then, it is probably counterproductive to attack them for not caring about you. It is probably not helpful to say things like, If I were important to you, you would..... or You dont care about me! You might be able to get the immediate behavior you want from the person, but you are unlikely to be generating sincere feelings of empathy. More likely you are generating feelings of guilt, which is not a healthy motivation for behavior. It is a common one, but not a healthy one. Those who learned to get their short term needs met this way are in effect using guilt to manipulate the other person. That person will feel resentful over time. And their self-esteem will suffer because they are not acting out of their own free will. They experience a loss of power, so there will be future power struggles in an attempt to reclaim it. Feelings of competition, superiority, inferiority, victory, defeat, punishment, judgement and general mutual resentment may be the result, all of which are toxic to a romantic relationship.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 03:14:39 +0000
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