Weinik

I'm very much an emotional person and I tend to live life on the compass of my feelings. Which is not a good idea, I'm realizing. While emotions are valuable in helping us to understand or express what we may not have words for, they can also be tricky little triggers.

For example, if I'm walking home late at night and it's a quiet street and I feel afraid, that emotion will prompt me to walk quickly, be alert to my surroundings, and probably not repeat my action again in the near future. On the other hand, if I see my best friend laughing with a mutual friend just minutes after I told them something confidential and I assume they passed it on and are now enjoying some gossip at my expense, the anger and betrayal I feel may not necessarily be based in reality. They could simply be laughing at a joke or something completely unrelated to me.

I think as women, we tend to be very much aware of our emotions. This hypersensitivity, when not tempered with logic, can lead to difficult scenarios. A woman who's being bullied at work may start to cry, her feelings of despair and fear of being fired and low self-worth expressed in tears. The men who see those tears, though, label her as being too emotional without taking the time to find out why she is crying.

Perhaps a woman is enjoying the attention of a guy when she sees him paying similar attention, though of a lesser amount, to another woman. This leads to distrust and jealousy which may or may not be based in reality. Her interpretation of an amiable interaction could turn it into something more meaningful or it could be that the man is interested in the other woman and is trying to see how much he can get away with.

On the other hand, I've read too many books and seen too many real-life stories where women didn't listen to their emotions and they suffered for it. They saw their significant other online, chatting up other women, indulging in evil habits, and they excused those behaviours as trivial. It is not trivial, however, when a woman's self-worth is disrespected. As men deserve to be treated with honour and dignity and respect, so too do women.