Why do humans have the tendency to hide their feelings from someone they really care about?

Question

Why do we always feel strange inside when we're trying to show our love to someone?

Answer 1

Fear of rejection.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 2

In a word: Ego.

In more than a word: Social rejection. The feeling of being disappointed; which could cause you a great deal of stress, even depression.

Ego is the best, most basic, and probably the only defence mechanism we have, everything else comes from there. It's all we have, life itself, and when one hurts it, stuff happens!0!

I want it all and I want it now!

Answer 3

I think sometimes we feel that its for the best to hide our true feelings to the ones we love just to protect them from being or feeling hurt. If you arent happy or are struggling with something, sometimes you put off as you are perfectly fine on the exterior, just so they done have to worry about you, or question if its something THEY did. While inside you may be going crazy.

Answer 4

Becuase when it comes right down to it, we really don't trust anyone but ourselves. We fear what the person we care about would do with that information. We also fear the stripping away of
a fantasy that we've built in a relationship, and always wonder if the other party would accept such truths about us, or about themselves, for that matter.

Answer 5

I think for me, it is the fear of being rejected; Of the other not feeling the same way. I'm putting my feelings and emotions out there and if they aren't returned or are mocked it opens me up for some very real hurt.

Answer 6

Well, frankly speaking I also have the same tendency. We're actually loving and caring, but I guess we're just hate to be sappy... It's sort of embarrassing thing ~

Answer 7

Because when we care about someone, we became vulnerable. We feel exposed and weak where that person is concern. We fear rejection more from that person as we know it is really gonna hurt us cause we care.

Answer 8

Showing your feelings opens you up to get hurt.

Deep down, people apparently do not trust others 100% - and to be honest, i do not think anyone is 100% trustworthy.

So, while we may show much, we will most likely never show ALL.

Answer 9

Fear of rejection by that person is probably the biggest reason we tend to do this.

Answer 10

As many of the other posters have said, one principle reason is fear of rejection.

But in many ways, that is just answering the question by stating the question over again. Because, your question essentially is, "why do we fear rejection?" so to answer simply that we fear rejection because we fear rejection doesn't quite get at the heart of the matter.

Though I can't pretend to have the perfect answer, the problem does seem to be in one sense or another fundamentally rooted in the issue of power. Another poster wisely pointed out that the root of the problem lies in the human ego. And ego could be defined, among other ways, as the mechanism within us that seeks power. That could be power at a global level, like becoming a politician, but also power at very simple levels as well, like the power we seek in our jobs, the power we seek by having respect or good reputations or even fame, the power that being a parent grants us, the power that money grants us, the power that being right gives us, the power that believing in the "correct" religion grants us, the power that physical beauty grants us, the power that being healthy grants us, and the list is endless . . . but one very important source of power lies in love.

When someone is in love with you, you possess power over them. This is why someone falling in love with you will necessarily provide a bit of an ego boost. The more powerful that individual is the more of an ego boost, very much like how a more expensive car will give you a greater ego boost than a less expensive car. If someone very famous, for example, fell madly in love with you, imagine the ego boost that would give you! Or, if you are a man, imagine the ego boost that having a super model fall in love with you would provide.

However, the great tragedy of human experience is that just as power can be gained, power can be lost. One day you can have million dollars, the next be bankrupt. Likewise in love, one day someone may be in love with you, providing you a great deal of power, the next, they can reject you, removing that power.

The reason one loses power when they are rejected is precisely because in that moment of exposing yourself to someone else, showing them your true feelings, you have granted them power over you. You have admitted to them that they are more powerful than you. In otherwords, you are, for that moment, powerless. And this is the ultimate fear of the human ego, which is designed always to seek power, not to become powerless. If the person rejects you at that moment, you are left powerless.

The human ego, as I have argued, can be defined as the drive for power. To the degree it gains power, in any circumstance, it feels happy. Thus, if you gain a promotion at a job, you become happy, if you are complemented for your appearance or your ideas, you become happy, if you get good grades, you become happy, etc. But just as it becomes happy when it gains power, it also becomes unhappy when it loses power. If you get demoted at your job, or kicked out of school, or sent to prison, or lose someone's respect, etc, you become less happy. And, since rejection causes us to lose power, it also causes us to become unhappy, or to suffer.

What is worst, is that even if one exposes their true feelings and is not rejected, they have STILL made themselves less powerful (in the eyes of the ego) than someone who never shows their true feelings at all, for having exposed how they feel they have granted a degree of power over to the other person. As far as the ego is concerned, the ideal way to gain love is to get it without ever exposing your weakness for the other person. Then you gain their power, without losing any of your own. It should be clear now, then, why it is so difficult for us to expose our true feelings. Because doing so is always an effront to our egos.

So, exposing one's feelings of passion and love for another person is essentially a form of ego death, I suppose, for if left to the ego's own devices, one would never show their true feelings at all (they might show feelings, feelings that they think might manipulate the other person into granting them more power, but never feelings that could grant the other person power over them). So when we choose to expose ourselves, essentially we are acting from something either higher, or lower, in ourselves than the ego. This is precisely why couples who are "spiritual" in nature, in the sense of consciously wanting to go beyond ego in mutuality, are capable of much greater intimacy and trust than those who are more ego bound. But most people don't consciously aspire to transcend ego, and therefore find their relationships to be essentially power struggles to one degree or another, making it difficult to truly become intimate or exposed.

I hope this helped some. :)