Ganb8te 4 - Putting on my giraffe ears

[Zelda09]

[quote=Zelda09]
Thinking partners are not as good with dealing with emotions and showing empathy. When Feeling partners share a problem with Thinking partners, the Thinking partners may react by offering a logical solution only as they are not comfortable dealing with the emotions of others. This reaction may result in the Feeling partners feeling that they have not been heard or understood. = So we *are* the emotional distancers, just like you said the other day. Which is quite eye opening for me as I always focussed on the fact that H (as a Feeler) didn't do well to share his feelings whereas I should have been focussing more on showing empathy. Doh!
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Ganb8te, all - I am trying something a little backwards with this in mind and I might be on to something. *disclaimer - I might not, either.

I've flirted with the LRT since we are separated physically, but in keeping with the idea that WAH left because his emotional needs aren't being met and he felt deeply alone in our home...and NC doesn't change anything...so I am including him in my journey and telling him what he means to me. I don't want to hijack your thread, so I'll go back to mine in a few to share this mornings' details...but he even told me this morning that we are more "connected" now than we've been in months...yet he's afraid that if he were to move back in and we have some altercation we still don't have the skills to handle, that's going to be it for us and he doesn't want to take that risk. It's a long way off of where we were when I was in LRT land last few weeks and he'd given up.

Empathy, unconditional love...maybe they don't want to be 'force fed' that stuff after walking away and giving up on us, but going equally detached as us thinkers are prone to do isn't so much a 180 to them? That bell went off for me when his friend told me that even described me as detached throughout our R. I mean, after some space, a cooling off period...If we don't share with them the depth of our feelings (and trust me, all us T folks have them, it's just not the way we're used to processing the world, or otherwise sticky coping methods in shutting our own feelings out), how are they to know we aren't just tooling away in our lives oblivious to them?

I think it is possible to emotionally pursue the person you love without pursuing the relationship and putting that pressure on things? I don't know, but it is definitely moving us closer (this week).