Partners can become frustrated or angry when their significant other responds to emotional distress with excessive logic and reason, as this often feels dismissive and fails to provide the sought-after comfort and understanding.
Mind Map
Click to expand
Click to explore the full interactive mind map • Zoom, pan, and navigate
it seems odd at first to imagine that we
might get angry even maddened by a
partner because they were in the course
of a discussion proving to be too
reasonable and too
logical we are used to thinking highly
of reason and logic we're not normally
enemies of evidence and rationality
how then could these ingredients become
problematic in the course of love
but from close up considered with
sufficient imagination our suspicion can
make a lot of sense
when we're in difficulties what we may
primarily be seeking from our partners
is a sense that they understand what
we're going through we're not looking
for answers the problems may be too
large for there to be any obvious ones
so much as comfort reassurance and
fellow feeling
in the circumstances the deployment of
an overly logical stance may come across
not as an act of kindness but as a
species of disguised impatience
let's imagine someone who comes to their
partner complaining of vertigo
the fear of heights is usually
manifestly unreasonable the balcony
obviously isn't about to collapse
there's a strong iron balustrade between
us and the abyss the building has been
repeatedly tested by experts
we may know all this intellectually but
it does nothing to reduce our sickening
anxiety in practice
if a partner were to patiently begin to
explain the laws of physics to us
we wouldn't be grateful we would simply
feel that they were misunderstanding us
much that troubles us has a structure
akin to vertigo our worry isn't exactly
reasonable but we're unsettled all the
same we can for example continue to feel
guilty about letting down our parents no
matter how nice to them we've actually been
been
or we can feel very worried about money
even if we're objectively economically
quite safe
we can feel horrified by our own
appearance even though no one else
judges our face or body harshly or we
can be certain that we're failures we've
messed up everything we've ever done
even if in objective terms we seem to be
doing pretty well
we can obsess that we've forgotten to
pack something even though we've taken a
lot of care and can in any case by
almost everything at the other end or we
may feel that our life will fall apart
if we have to make a short speech even
the thousands of people make quite bad
speeches every day and their lives
continue as normal
when we recount our worries to our
partner we may receive a set of
precisely delivered unimpassioned
logical answers we have been good to our
parents we have packed enough toothpaste etc
etc
answers that are both entirely true and
yet unhelpful as well and so in their
own way enraging
it feels as if the excessive logic of
the other person has led them to look
down on our concerns
because reasonably speaking we shouldn't
have our fears or worries the
implication is that no sane person would
have them our partners make us feel a
bit mad
the one putting forward the so-called
logical point of view shouldn't be
surprised by the angry response they receive
receive
they are forgetting how weird and beyond
the ordinary rules of reason all human
minds can be their own included the
logic they are applying is really a
species of brute common sense that
refuses the deeper insights of
psychology of course our minds are prey
to phantasms illusions projections and
neurotic terrors of course we're afraid
of many things that don't exist in the
so-called real world but such phenomena
are not so much illogical as deserving
of the application of a deeper logic
based on a sympathy for the complexities
of emotional life
our sense of whether we're attractive or
not isn't about what we actually look
like it follows a so-called logic that
goes back to childhood and how loved we
were made to feel by those we depended
on the fear of public speaking can be
bound up with long buried and tortuous
emotions of shame and a fear around
competing and dealing with others envy
an excessively logical approach to fears
discounts their origins and concentrates
instead on why we shouldn't have them
which is maddening when we're in pain
it's not that we actually want our
partner to stop being reasonable we want
them to apply their intelligence to the
task of reassurance we want them to
enter into the weirder bits of our own
experience by remembering their own we
want to be understood for being the mad
animals we all are and then comforted
and consoled that it will probably all
be okay anyway
then again it could be that the
application of excessive logic isn't an
accident or form of stupidity it may
just be an act of revenge
perhaps the partner is giving brief
logical answers to our worries because
their efforts to be more sympathetic
towards us in the past have gone nowhere
perhaps we've neglected their needs if
two people were being properly logical
in the deepest sense of the word that is
truly alive to all the complexities of
emotional functioning rather than
squabbling around the question of why
are you being so rational when i'm in pain
pain
the person on the receiving end of
superficial logic should gently change
the subject and ask
is it possible i've hurt or been
neglecting you
now that would be real logic
if you liked this film download our app
where you can view all our videos read
articles from the book of life and chat
with other students of the school of life
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
