ES 
The moments when love is blind
This year a new member was added to our pack: a Jack Russell Terrier whom we adopted and decided to name Yakisoba. The little we know about her history is that she comes from a hatchery where she was exploited and that she lost her sight as a result of the poor care of the people on whom she depended.
As Yakisoba has adjusted to her new home, I have watched her with great interest. I have learned that when she feels safe, she can walk around the house with more confidence and without bumping into things; that when she can feel that we are there, she is much more curious and that she explores, eats and socializes better.
However, Yakisoba can also enter a state of fear very easily. He is inhibited when he hears variations in the volume of sounds and he also becomes restless when there are too many stimuli around him and he cannot feel that we are close. Because of her visual limitation, there are many things that scare her and it is through physical contact or the warmth in our voice that we manage to make her feel that everything is fine. Yakisoba needs us in a very particular way because we are its security sensors - it is through our senses that it can find a certain light in the darkness in which it lives.
Human emotions have a lot in common with what happens to Yakisoba. When we know and feel that we have a secure base, that there is someone there for us, we are the best version of ourselves. On the contrary, when we experience some of our most vulnerable emotions, such as sadness or fear, we are disturbed and literally we are in the dark. This happens because our nervous system has limitations to regulate these emotions in solitude - in fact it interprets them as dangerous to life - and invariably there comes a point where we need the presence of another person who can be a safety sensor for us and that we help to feel that everything will be alright.
Just like a baby cries and screams until he finds emotional security in his mother's arms, adults also need someone to see us and react appropriately to what we are feeling, especially if we are not well. That need for emotional contact and to be comforted persists in us throughout life and we usually experience intense fear when we do not find it from certain people.
Initially, it was our parents who through their reactions were able to calm our fears. Later in life it is our partner who receives that post. The person whom we choose as a life partner or partner has an incalculable impact on our emotions. It has the ability to accompany us in the dark and to ease our pain ... but it can also have initiatives and reactions that throw us into a worse darkness.
Can you remember the last time you felt rejection from your partner? Perhaps you took an emotional or sexual initiative and found no response ... Try right now to feel what usually happens to your body when your partner gets angry with you and treats you with a certain hostility. Or maybe you can remember how it feels when days have passed without showing affection between you… but you find that your partner embraces and kisses your children or the pet of the house profusely.
What you feel in situations like these is a very peculiar pain that easily turns into rage. When that same person with whom I have found emotional security in the past stops responding to me at a time when I need him, my reaction is most likely very negative and from the gut. Perhaps I will claim him and make life impossible for him, or perhaps I will express my rejection by behaving with indifference.
What happens externally usually does not reflect what people are experiencing internally at the time. A wife may be "demon possessed" and display hostile behavior when in fact inside she feels deeply lonely and unappreciated. A man can react coldly and defensively to what he is perceiving of his partner (he hates me, he sees nothing good in me) while inside he is trying to contain emotions of sadness that threaten to break in front of her. The two begin to react to the most superficial manifestation of the other's emotions and in a very short time a vicious cycle is created in which both reject each other. I have never, never met someone who does not feel pain when they are in the middle of that situation.
The pain I feel in those moments when we lose each other; When we are so disconnected that you stop seeing me and I need to know that we will be fine is a feeling that we rarely get to show ourselves. On the contrary, most of the time we adopt tunnel vision towards the detonators: you spoke to me ugly, you do not see my eyes, I feel that again you are going to get angry with me ... and immediately it upset me; I just stop feeling like we're on the same team. On more than one occasion I have heard one person say to the other in the office: “When you get mad at me I scare myself. I need you to tell me that you still love me even if you feel angry towards me ”. It may seem like a stretch, but most of us need that reinsurance. We need to know that the emotional connection is still there even if we are going through a bad time.
When it comes to rejection and abandonment, we all have an extremely sensitive point. The possibility of losing the security that the presence and affection of our partner usually gives us affects us deeply.
In that sense, there are times when love is blind because when a situation leads us to feel emotionally disconnected from our partner, it is as if all the lights were suddenly turned off and we were submerged in total darkness. Our first impulse will be to call the other and ask "Where are you?" If we find his hand and feel his presence that will restore our calm because we will not be alone; no one wants to be alone in the dark. But if, as usually happens, we don't find an answer or get slapped, our reaction is usually like Yakisoba's: we protest, we make noise, we cry out for the dark. The other person is probably behaving erratically, standing still or perhaps moving very cautiously because they are also in the dark and do not understand what is happening; you just feel like it's not safe, there's too much noise, and you don't know what you're dealing with. They both long to find a source of light or to locate the other in the chaos, but as they begin to collide with each other and their attempts to find each other fail, they end up contributing to prolong the darkness and to feel even more distant.
The next time you see negative attitudes in your partner, try to remember where they came from. Anger, complaints, and distancing are usually reactions that we usually adopt to the fear of being in the dark. Remember that we all react very badly when we feel that we are not loved. If your partner is angry it means that this is like a fever during an infection: it is a reflection that something important is happening to him and that needs to be taken care of. If your partner distances himself and avoids confrontation, it usually means that something about the situation is overwhelming and even scaring him. Resist that voice within you that invites you to conclude that your partner is a bad person for behaving that way.
Breathe and avoid slapping in the dark. Instead try to locate where the short was, what turned out the lights. Pay more attention to the emotional disconnection and less to the manifestations of frustration of the other. Stay close and touch your partner if possible; speak to him in a soft tone and let him know that you are there, that you may realize that something important happened. Be open to understand what happened; don't be afraid to slow down and show interest by asking questions.
Please try it. These answers will not solve the problems, but they will light a candle in the dark and mitigate the fear that usually arises in those moments of disconnection ... They will realize that they are not really that far from each other; that they both want and yearn for exactly the same thing: security and emotional stability through thick and thin… in the light and especially in the dark.