Emotionally Unavailable: Choice or Condition? — Wonders Around Me part 19

 

Emotionally Unavailable: Choice or Condition?

— Wonders Around Me Series

“I’ve noticed a strange kind of people around me…”

Welcome to another part of the wonders around me.

“In a world learning to feel less, choosing to feel—and to be there—might just be the rarest form of humanity.”

Guys, I believe human beings are human because of two things: intelligence and emotions. Out of these, the first one is easy to transmit nowadays and propagate in any form. No harm.

But there’s a catch in the second one—emotions. Yup.

Intelligence couldn’t replicate, create, or imbibe emotions into machines. Now, call it a loss for intelligence or a win for emotions—because they are that special.

However, today’s generation does not consider them worthy of anything. Yet, they casualise random dating trends to let out emotions manipulatively and speak whatever they want to the other person, who pretends to listen, probably never to meet again.

Anyways, everyone feels tons of emotions with different intensities, yet it can make one feel inferior because the person validates emotions. Identifying emotions and reacting accordingly is the purpose of the evolved part of our brain… but that is another topic for discussion.

Let’s come to people now.

There are different kinds of people around us when it comes to emotional availability.

The first category can be called the conscious withholders. These people are very smart in identifying emotions and also in communicating emotions, but will not choose to be available emotionally. There can be two reasons for this—trauma or family environment, where the child was not emotionally validated while growing up, or the person simply chooses not to be emotionally available for whatsoever reasons.

This category will always choose not to be there for people. Or even worse, at a moment they will be there emotionally for namesake, but later will not, because they don’t want to. Or because simply now their mood is to be emotionally available for another person. I can’t explain in words how inhuman this is. In fact, people avoid opening up to such people. They might make you feel guilty because you feel. Yes, you aren’t good enough or brave enough because you felt anything literally. They’ll be like—“Why are you feeling bro?”

The second category can be called the learning listeners. Some people will not understand what you feel and how you feel in the first attempt, but they are genuinely open to you emotionally.

The third category—the emotional pretenders. Caution. These categories are the best actors on earth.

The fourth category can be called the silent supporters. These people will be genuinely emotionally available but won’t express or take the first step. They will listen to you wholeheartedly only when you start to tell.

The fifth category worries me when I think about human relationships—the artificial comfort seekers. The darling ChatGPT—you share, you get reciprocation accordingly, probably more than what you expect, minus the emotions and a warm hug. People who avoid human interactions, especially when it comes to sharing and listening, prefer ChatGPT.

Now, let’s talk about emotional availability.

Don’t do the stupidity of misunderstanding emotional availability with being emotionally dependent or vulnerable. These are completely different aspects of human interaction. Being emotionally available involves empathy and sympathy, which depend on the relationship.

As mentioned before, being emotionally unavailable can come as a byproduct of emotional damage. But again, it is a choice what you want to be.

Guys, a message through this blog is—there will be instances of emotional damage in your life. That doesn’t mean you lose your emotional quotient. That would be really cruel to you.

Be unapologetically emotional. Feel what you want to.

Being emotionally available is a premium, but at least be a person who listens. Make someone feel cared for—their emotions. And that doesn’t require much of your time.

If you choose to be available without conditioning your mood, your ‘phases’, that shall come effortlessly through you.

This is just another way of being human.

-Shrutika V. Patankar ©