Affective responsibility is the ability to express needs/emotions with respect for those of others, being aware that what we say/do has an impact on others.
Today it is confused with saying everything and clarifying everything, bordering on cruelty, disguised as transparency.
Our emotions/psychology necessarily change, through exposure to the emotions/psychology of another. Even more so if it is a stranger.
We can explain through chat that we want a “touch and go”, but that does not prevent something from happening and the “contract” from changing. We can agree to a relationship without commitments and the mere fact of “sharing” can awaken new feelings and expectations, even if both or one of the parties try to stay within what is established.
Emotional responsibility, we should talk if something happens. But whoever feels something more will enter, commit sincericide or enter the regime of hope, postponing “the confession!” for fear of rejection. The other will realize it and we will have a broken heart or someone in a position of power.
Even if no one “gets hooked”, it is possible that a third party who takes away the “friend with benefits” hurts our ego and we wonder “what does he have that I don’t have?” From here to obsession, toxicity or complaint there is a step.
Others, after having suffered situations like those described above, firmly believe that they want commitment, “scaring away” those who want to go slowly and responsibly.
Let’s talk about “affective availability.”
Some will want stable relationships, others friends with benefits, others occasional sex, but in all cases, what commands us is the psychological availability to let the relationships do their thing, the unpredictable, without playing at the omnipotence of being able to control everything. Because be careful! The phrase “let it flow” often hides “let it flow at my times and in my ways.”
Surrendering to the unpredictability of our psychological reaction when meeting another human being is the opposite of forcing them to “fall” into some box. That’s manipulation.
Who attracts us by photo, may not attract us in person. Someone can also seem incredible to us to start a great friendship, even if we like them physically. Entering the “friend zone” should not be a negative thing.
If we asked ourselves if we are emotionally available to discover what affections awaken in us and in another human being, respecting them as such, everything would be different.
The claim, the pressure, the demand to guide the end of a date towards an individual ideal, implies manipulation.
Every encounter produces something new, and it is only the emotional availability and respect for accepting the place that we can occupy in the emotions, mind and psychology of the other, which will serve as a compass so that emotional responsibility has its place. .
Dr. Pía M. Roldán Viesti
Lawyer T°92 F°959 CPACF (UBA)
Psychologist MN. 57,457 (UCES)
Specialist in Gender Violence Prevention (Miguel de Cervantes European University)
President and Founder of EUTI
https://www.instagram.com/piamartina.ok/
[email protected]
by CEDOC