Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I was home with my family. Upon the request of my mom, we all went to see the Mister Rogers movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. About halfway through the movie, I realized an underlying but central theme to the film was emotional intelligence, a topic I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading about in the last year.
In the movie, Mr. Rogers says that he created the T.V. show to teach children how to deal with their emotions in a healthy and positive way. Throughout the story, we see the co-main character Lloyd beginning to look at his emotions for seemingly the first time in his life. We then watch him go from pissing everyone off all the time to finally caring about being a great husband and father. His emotional intelligence literally increases from absolutely zero to a more normal level right before our eyes.
As I thought more about the movie, I also had the the not-so-shocking revelation that Mr. Rogers was indeed right. We are failing to teach children how to work through their emotions. This leads to teenagers and adults who struggle to communicate about their feelings and understand how they are affected by them.
I also realized that I too, like Lloyd, had gone through a period of rapid emotional development that prepared me to develop a deeper emotional connection with my future girlfriend Haley.
I avoid learning about my feelings for 20 years only to discover their importance
The summer before my senior year of college, I began spending a lot of time with my friend Ann, who went to a different university but was in town for the break. Before long, we started hanging out a few nights a week. We would spend hours together watching TV and talking about life.
As we became more comfortable talking honestly with each other, we started really opening up about our interests, our childhoods, our friendships, her relationship with her boyfriend, our fears, and more, much of which was relatively new for me. Of course I had discussed many of these things before with a variety of people, but never before had I reached a depth and frequency with which I dove into these topics.
In the past, I would deflect or run from questions about me and my feelings. Ann didn’t take any of my bullshit. She pushed me to share honestly and really dig deep within myself. Most importantly, she never threw it back in my face or made fun of me. We built up trust between us, and we were able to tease each other about our somewhat sensitive yet funny life stories without feeling attacked or put down.
This all lead me to recognize how much more powerful a connection is when it is emotionally based. I vastly grew my emotional intelligence and learned about creating connections through depth of interaction, which involved looking inwardly at my feelings and emotions to see how I really felt about things.
Some emotional intelligence definitions and generalizations
Having emotional intelligence is having the ability to look at and understand your feelings and being able to process them effectively. This means that not only do the emotions not control you, but also that you don’t just shove them aside or ignore them.
In my experience, the stereotypes that men struggle most with recognizing their feelings, while women are more prone to being controlled by them aren’t that far from the truth. Men rarely, if ever, ask each other how they feel over what they are thinking. of us have no male role models who teach us to express our feelings openly. Women tend to be sabotaged by their more volatile hormone levels and value discussing an emotional experience at length over a quick solution or resolution.
These are just starting points for examining the weaknesses in our own emotional intelligence. Having a high intelligence emotionally requires lots of learning about yourself — and practicing sharing and having agency over your feelings.
I learned more about feelings from one friend than two decades of schooling, and it plays a pivotal role in my romantic relationship
In school, I learned to develop and master the thinking portions of my brain, but the feeling parts were completely ignored. I never had the opportunity to learn how the chemicals and biological processes in our bodies affect our moods until much later in life. And it was a very special occurrence for someone to show me how they handle difficult emotions in a truly productive way, let alone explain the process with words.
Gaining emotional intelligence was a huge step towards independence and feeling like my life was really under my control. It is also a giant part of deeper communication that allows Haley and me to share our entire selves with each other.
My emotional connection with Haley started much the same way as it did with my friend Ann, with vulnerability and sharing our deepest interests and fears. Since then, we have grown our emotional connection in a variety of ways, from sharing joy and sadness to having conversations about our future together to enjoying sex. We have also expanded our idea of emotional intelligence to include understanding how others people’s emotional states impact them and how to best — and most constructively — respond to the state that they are in. A wise woman or man is wary of how they behave towards someone in an emotionally fragile state.
I have been working on my own emotional intelligence for a year and a half now. It is still one of the main things that I am practicing and trying to improve.
I started with very low emotional intelligence and am proud of how far I have come in my relationship with my feelings. Undoubtedly, this emotional growth has been the most pivotal contribution to growing my relationship with Haley. It has helped me to be so much more comfortable diving into difficult topics and vulnerable conversations (link). Being competent at talking about my feelings is also one of the major reasons Haley is attracted to me. It certainly has kept her from losing her mind with me when I am being too much of a “stereotypical guy”.
We continue to put large amounts of effort into our emotional connection because honestly sharing our thoughts and feelings on a consistent basis keeps us from having to guess at the status of our relationship.
Do it yourself emotional intelligence or your money back
As part of emotional independence, emotional intelligence starts with the self. You have to be comfortable finding your feelings before you can discuss them with someone.
So I challenge you to spend some time, preferably on a consistent basis, reflecting on yourself. Your past experiences. Your desires. Your feelings on the things in your life that are important to you. And most importantly, on the emotional depth of your romantic relationship.
Then, start having the conversations that you need to have with the people you care about.
For me, it was a lot of work to get over some mental barriers and actually get the ideas out once I had them in my head. I have literally spent over 5 minutes sitting or lying next to Haley silently while I know what I want to say but can’t seem to get the words out (and I felt like a total idiot the whole time). But by finally doing it the first few times, the next times became easier and easier.
Once you build trust with someone and know that they will respect you as you share the things closest to your heart, the depth of your emotional connection can really take off.