Whenever I feel I’m being reasonable, I tend to ignore other people’s emotional boundaries. I expect them to ignore their feelings and listen to their reason. For instance, when I observe other people putting up a defense mechanism to protect their feelings/egos, I become annoyed. I perceive that as being unfair because I feel I’m expected to ignore my own feelings also, and I do so to the best of my abilities.
I read somewhere Temple Grandin describing autistic people as having “allegiance” to reason. That is, feelings should be subservient to reason. In reality, if we were to ask random people, “Do you put reason above your feelings?” many of them would reply yes, but most people don’t actually follow through. Given realistic situations, they feel that it’s not right to put reason above feelings. Their allegiance ultimately lies with feelings.
