You let it go a hundred times, for the sake of peace.
And then it blows up over something completely trivial.
You know it from the inside. Something hurts, but you swallow it, because it isn’t worth ruining the evening. Then again. And again. Until one day it blows up, maybe over an unwashed glass, and the other person is standing there and has no idea what’s going on. It’s only about a glass, isn’t it? It isn’t. It’s about the hundred things before it that he never saw.
Two heads, two measures
In our heads we have two ways of deciding and of weighing what matters. Everyone can do both, but one is innately stronger, like a right and a left hand.
Thinking steps back from the thing, cuts off the emotions and pulls out an imaginary spreadsheet: pros, cons, what comes out better. He treats emotions in decisions more as noise that spoils the data. Feeling steps into the thing instead and treats emotions as a full metric: how will I feel about it and how will the others feel. It isn’t weakness or oversensitivity. It’s a different column in a different spreadsheet.
Neither is better. Thinking without feeling can be cruel, feeling without thinking can be defenceless. The trouble starts when these two live or work together and neither knows the other is measuring with a different ruler.
More feeling
Decides with emotions as an important metric.
- Before saying something, weighs how the other will feel
- Harmony is a value for them, conflict is worth it only rarely
- Effort and context count, not just the result
- A wrong stays in them a long time, even if they say nothing
- Reads the mood of the room before anyone speaks
More thinking
Decides at a distance, by logic and the result.
- A thing is a thing and a person is a person, criticism isn’t an attack
- Fairness = the same ruler for everyone
- Cares about the result, effort is a bonus
- Takes conflict as an exchange of arguments, not drama
- Sees other people’s emotions only when they get really loud
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Anatomy of that explosion
I’ll come back to that glass, because it’s a scene I hear about in sessions all the time. The feeling suppresses what annoys them. Once, ten times, a hundred times. Each time they tell themselves it isn’t worth the conflict, that peace and calm at home matter more. Except it doesn’t go anywhere. It gets stored.
And then one day, often over a complete triviality and quite possibly with a completely different person, the whole thing spills out at once. The feeling fires all hundred suppressed things at the other person at once. And the thinking stands there like a spare part at a wedding, because he didn’t see a single one of those hundred situations. He experienced no suppressing at all. For him it’s an explosion out of a clear sky and proof that the other one is “hysterical”.
Do you see the trap? The feeling suppresses for the sake of harmony. And it’s exactly that suppressing that ends up wrecking harmony most. If they’d said thing number three out loud at the moment it happened, it would have been a small, calm conversation. At the hundredth it’s an explosion.
What it looks like from the other side
So it isn’t one-sided. The thinking isn’t a heartless machine, he has feeling too, he just has it like a stunted left hand. He uses it rarely, and when he does use it, he handles it a bit like a child. Instead of “I miss you” he says reproachfully “why didn’t you call”. He means it tenderly, it comes out as an attack. What the feeling would need to hear at that moment is that behind the reproach is longing, but he can’t see it in there.
And one more typical collision, this time from work. The feeling says: “I put a lot of time into it and I really tried.” The thinking replies: “But the result is rubbish and your effort doesn’t interest me.” For the thinking that’s simply a description of reality, there’s no malice in it. He doesn’t care that you spent two days without sleep on the task if the result doesn’t work. And equally he doesn’t care that it took you two minutes if the result is great. The “result” column counts, the “effort” column simply isn’t in his spreadsheet.
Even fairness is measured differently by each. For the thinking, justice is the same ruler for everyone: a rule is a rule. For the feeling, justice counts with context: if Tommy did it for the first time and by accident, he deserves leniency, and if Johnny did it on purpose and for the umpteenth time, he deserves strictness. And both sincerely believe the other one is being unfair.
A special chapter: the bloke who’s a feeling
This topic comes up in my sessions more often than anyone would expect. Society still somehow assumes that a “proper bloke” is a thinking: rational, solid, above it all. So when a bloke is born a feeling, he often feels somehow less his whole life. He tries to play the thinking, hardens on the outside and hides the softness in himself like a defect.
But that’s the same as a left-hander forcing himself to write with his right hand all his life. It won’t make a right-hander out of him, he’ll just get tired and his handwriting will shake. The way doesn’t lead through remaking yourself. It leads through liking yourself as a left-hander, and on top of that learning to use the right hand where it’s needed. Sensitivity in a bloke isn’t a disorder. In my experience it’s the opposite, it’s equipment thanks to which these men make the best partners, dads and bosses, once they stop hiding it.
How to build a bridge, concretely
The feeling × thinking difference can’t be abolished, but it can be translated. Here’s what I build with clients in sessions most often. Don’t take it as a to-do list, pick what fits your situation.
Name it together
The most changes just from both of you knowing this exists. That the other isn’t measuring wrong, just differently. But it can’t be one-sided: you admit the result wasn’t ideal, and the other admits your effort. When only one of you knows the typology, they carry the bridge alone.
For feelings: say it the third time, not the hundredth
Set yourself your own rule: when the same thing hurts me a third time, I’ll say it out loud. Calmly, without blame, just “this does this to me”. You’re training a muscle you’ve suppressed your whole life, so at first it’ll be unpleasant. But it’s exactly the small conversation that prevents the big explosion.
For feelings: speak to the thinking in his language
When you need the thinking to hear you, translate the feeling into impact: not “it makes me sad”, but “when this happens, I stop telling you important things and we both pay for it”. That isn’t pretence. It’s a translation into a language he understands.
For thinkings: acknowledge effort out loud
It seems pointless to you, the result speaks for itself. But the feeling next to you half lives off the fact that someone sees his effort. One sentence like “I know how much time you gave it” costs you nothing and in his spreadsheet it carries enormous weight. It isn’t a lie, it’s a different column.
Don’t take the demandingness to heart
When you live or work with a strong thinking, his directness and demandingness are a feature of the type, not a verdict on you. You won’t change it. What you can change: stop taking it personally and start taking it almost as a charming quirk. “Yeah, that’s his general talking.” At that moment it stops hurting you.
Strengthen the left hand, in small doses
Thinking: try one emotional sentence a day. Not a report on feelings, one sentence. Feeling: try making a pros and cons table once for a big decision, even if it feels cold to you. It isn’t about remaking yourself. It’s about your weaker hand being able to carry at least a mug.
When it blows up, deal with the film, not the photo
The explosion over a glass isn’t about the glass, you know that now. So when it happens, with you or with the other person, don’t deal with that one scene. Ask what all piled up before it. That question turns a row into a conversation.
Does this sound familiar?
Tick what fits you:
If most of the top ones fit, you’re probably a feeling type among thinkers. If it’s more the bottom ones, it may be the other way round. In both cases the same thing holds: it’s not about who of you is right. It’s about learning to translate.
If you have a particular person in mind right now
A partner, a boss, a colleague, a parent. This is one of the things I help with most often: we go through your specific situation, we look at where exactly you two miss each other, and we build a bridge to measure. The intro session is free and commits you to nothing.
Talk through my situation →