Dancing with Emotional Lability

emotional lability: a condition of excessive emotional reactions and frequent mood changes.

     Don’t you just love psychological terms that so aptly describe your day? Well this quaint colloquialism has pretty much summed up my week.

    Atira’s week began with a “Dear John” email from her intimate-phobic suitor whose subject line was, “We are just very, very different.” Though the demise of our brief affair was anticipated, not being of the techno-social age, I would have thought this man would have had the decency to have done this break-up face to face. A friend of mine joked, “Well, at least it wasn’t a text.” This was my first confrontation with how electronic communication replaces emotional civility and dignity with well-worded explanations.  

Rule #1: Never open suspicious email, especially ones with the subject line, “We are just very, very different.”

Lesson Learned: As a techno-neophyte in the age of emails and texts, I have learned one can peremptorily avoid any direct emotional consequences by succinctly zipping off a platitudinous email with feigned sincerity.

     Being from the old school of upper Midwestern social graces, one would never take this coward’s way out of a relationship. One would muster the courage to confront head on the messy emotions that go hand in hand with an ending. In this techno-social age, you never have to visually confront emotional upheaval. This produces a tremendous disconnect in how a person’s behavior impacts the feelings of another. Intellectualizing emails absolve the emotional callousness, injurious conduct, and unapologetic remorselessness created by technological invincibility. It all gets neatly swept under the carpet of an email. There is no mourning period with an instant email dismemberment. In the culture I am from, endings are seldom neat and immediate. Just as it took time to develop a relationship, it takes time to end one. That’s why they call it grieving. Circumventing this process is creating a culture of technological psychopaths.

Rule #2: No matter how raw or tumultuous an ending may be, confront these feelings directly in person to demonstrate emotional respect and worth for the person whose intimate connection you are about to sever. This shows compassion, emotional bravery, and the willingness to accept responsibility. Most of all it reinforces emotional sentience and personal integrity.

Lesson Learned: I can be summarily dismissed, wiped off the face of this planet, and replaced easily in techno-land. So much for technology improving our lives. The plus side of this is that I am becoming acclimated to being virtual. I may even consider joining Facebook to acquire more virtual friends.

     Back to where I started. Emotional lability has governed my week. More accurately, it is referred to as grieving but it feels like a procession of disconnected intense conflicting emotions. One-sided grieving without any response from my virtual suitor has left me holding the bag. There is no body to bury, no eulogy, and no sign of anything ever having existed between us.

Rule #3: No one has developed social etiquette for handling virtual grieving. However, since it is virtual, I could have just broken up with Benedict Cumberpatch, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Fassbender, or any man I have had fantasies about-wow, now I don't feel quite so bad.

Lesson Learned: I am a dos-based square peg in a turbo-charged iPad round pegged world.