What are the most confusing, baffling, paradoxical, weird, or novel emotions you have experienced?

In My Humble Opinion
21

A lot of the confusing feelings I’ve felt have already been listed.

Getting pissed about being told to do something I was already going to do: This usually happens when my wife is trying to coordinate the household chores. I love her so much but I find myself being way too annoyed over little things she says and does sometimes. I guess it is the same with most any roommate, though. At least it is only the little things, and they’re easy to just ignore and get over.

Survivor’s guilt: This is a biggie because I was in Iraq for two years. The first year (03-04) we took some indirect fire and pulled plenty of guard duty and drove in a lot of dangerous convoys. But I was lucky. Nobody I was close to was so much as injured and I never had to fire my weapon at a person. My second tour (07-08) I spent entirely inside the wire on the fancy, huge air base in Balad. It was like a long, involuntary business trip; they had a movie theater, a gym, two PXs, fast food, etc. I worked 8-5, lived in a trailer with real bed and only one roommate. It was a cake walk.

I don’t know. As thankful as I am that I had such an easy time in Iraq, I get this irrational feeling sometimes that I missed something important or that I didn’t fulfill all my duties. Not to mention feeling very guilty about all the guys who did have a horrible time there. The guys who died, lost limbs, watched their friends get blown up, had to kill people.

Here’s another one: My best friend is a girl. We’ve been friends since high school, when, I’ll admit, I had a huge crush on her. But those feelings subsided and we have maintained a great friendship for over a decade now. She was my best man at my wedding. Anyway, it is a fountain of confusing emotions.

For one, both my mom, her dad, and my mother-in-law are convinced that we are having, or at least have had, sex. But it just isn’t true; she is hardly even a girl to me anymore. Anyway, sometimes family members can make me feel guilty for things I haven’t even done.

But there is also plenty of other weird feelings from that relationship. Like, I love her so much, but that’s not something I would ever feel towards a male friend, I don’t think. It isn’t romantic love, more like Damon and Pythias or something. But still, it makes me feel guilty that I feel different things for her than I would for a man. But part of what makes her my best friend is that she is female. I am much more comfortable talking about my feelings with her than I would be with any man, for example.

22

Here’s one: intense fury when I see a cute guy.

Low self-esteem has resulted in ‘oh, a cute guy’ -> ‘he’s way out of my league’ -> ‘i’ll die alone’ -> ‘who does he think he is?’ Subsequently, I become so efficient at this particular emotion that I can leap directly from ‘oh, a cute guy’ to ‘who does he think he is?’

You will notice that the actual cute guy himself doesn’t even get involved.

It’s annoying, because it removes my enjoyment at looking at cute guys, a substantial loss.

23

Yeah, the first thing my daughter did was pee, too. :smiley:

24

Sometimes a woman will walk by and she’s so beautiful and attractive and prefect that it’s like being kicked hard in the stomach. It’s not even pleasant, it’s just so overwhelming you can’t handle it.

25

My relationship with my best friend has been confusing along similar lines, except throw in the added monkey wrench of I’m a lesbian and he’s a, well, a he. Which one might think would make things less confusing and more clearly platonic, but instead the intensity of our “bromance” is such that early on it caused me to question my sexuality, which was something I’d never had occasion to do before, then feel guilty for even wondering along those lines because he’s very much taken, then feel really really I-don’t-know-what over “what if this is just a casual friendship to him.”

After about a week of stirring that emotional stew, I got a late night phonecall from him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, you’re very attractive, but uh-- I have no desire to sleep with you, I have to remind myself you’re not just one of the guys half the time, and yet I think I’m falling in love with you except not like THAT oh god what am I saying.” Apparently there’s such a thing as platonic limerence, or we independently invented it at the same time. Thank goodness we were on the same page!

26

That’s very interesting to me. I’d guess it’s some kind of biological, genetic, lower-brain reaction, in the same way that most things having to do with mating are. Much of male-female attraction is based on a subconscious need to reproduce, so when you heard your husband was in dire straits, at a sub-sentient genetic level, you hoped that it wasn’t too late to reproduce one more time.

I wouldn’t blame myself for that. I think it’s a great piece of evolutionary trivia.