Never Call Your Girlfriend Overemotional (Unless You Want To Lose Her)

You don’t get to tell your partner they’re being overemotional, that they’re blowing things out of proportion, that they shouldn’t feel the way they feel. Their emotions are valid, even if you aren’t able to understand them, even if you would have handled the situation in a completely different way, even if you aren’t able to see what is making them so upset.

You and your partner don’t share the same heart. You aren’t going to be impacted by the same words and actions. But if your person trusts you enough to open up to you about the fact that they’re feeling hurt, then the least you can do is listen. Hear out what they’re saying. Try your best to understand where they’re coming from. Don’t automatically jump to the defensive and act like they’re being ridiculous. Don’t try to make yourself look better by making them feel worse. Even if you end up ‘winning’ the argument, you’ll still lose overall because you’re chipping away at the relationship. You’re making your person trust you less and less.

If you genuinely care about this person, then you will want to treat their heart gently. You will want to know exactly what upset them so you can shift your behaviors or talk things through so you come to an understanding about what happened. You shouldn’t brush off their fears or complaints. You shouldn’t assume they’ll get over it soon enough anyway. You should care about what they care about.

If you want a strong, healthy relationship, you don’t get to tell your partner that they’re being overemotional. All your accusations are going to do is push them further away. It’s going to make them feel uncomfortable coming to you with their feelings in the future. It will make them shut you out. It will make them wonder whether you’re really the person they’re meant to be with forever.

Telling your partner that they’re being overemotional isn’t going to magically change their feelings. Those feelings will linger. But there will be even more hurt because now they know you aren’t someone they can speak with openly. They know that they have to tiptoe around you in order to avoid causing conflict. And that’s only going to destroy the relationship.

Please, don’t tell your partner they’re being overemotional, just because you wouldn’t be hurt by the same behaviors, or because you don’t want to admit that you’ve done anything wrong, or because you want them to keep their problems to themselves. If you aren’t going to take their thoughts and opinions seriously, then why are you with them? They deserve someone who cares about their happiness, their comfort, their sense of belonging. They deserve a partner who leans in closer and listens when they have something to say, not someone who accuses them of overreacting so that they’ll stay quiet and pretend everything is perfectly fine moving forward.

Instead of accusing them of being overemotional, listen to those emotions. Accept them and grow from them.