Being emotionally capable for a relationship

It's been said that being a partner means being responsible for somebody else's feelings. And all the nice things of a relationship includes being able to open up to one person, making it a very fulfilling experience. At the same time, this is exactly the part of relationships that require the most work in order to maintain happiness.

At the risk of making sweeping generalizations, women usually understand the lay of the land a lot better than men when it comes to emotions. To men, emotions are a minefield. Women can see the traps a mile away. Chances are, as a woman you've been encouraged to share and talk about your feelings, whereas as a man you've been taught to repress them. In other words, she's had plenty of practice and would pretty much have an excellent understanding of emotions. Or so she'd like to believe.

Can you imagine expecting a 10-year-old girl to be emotionally capable of a relationship? capable of life? Inexperience plagues every newcomer to the world of romantic relationships, and it's safe to say that inexperience is the reason fights become screaming matches, how molehills become mountains, and how nearly every negative relationship encounter is exaggerated in difficulty. Man or woman, anybody can be guilty of not being able to control their emotions in a relationship.

To bring it back, my point is just because one is a woman doesn't mean she's got the emotional capability to handle herself in a relationship. Yes she may be more aware and more adept at identifying emotions, and probably able to get her emotions across, but can she do that well enough to teach it? After all, being able to teach something implies mastery of the topic, and when it comes to relationships, being able to be emotionally capable means being able to teach their partner how to see conflicts in the relationship for what they really are, how to talk things through, and how to give emotions (one's or the other's) the attention they crave without hurting the other person.

Being able to successfully take responsibility for another's feelings means being able to do more than be responsible for your own feelings.