Our emotions are some of our most important assets when it comes to our relationships.

They’re our inner guides -- offering up vital clues about how to navigate our lives.

But all too often we don’t allow ourselves our authentic emotional experience. Maybe we don’t think our feelings are valid, or their intensity overwhelms us. Maybe we’ve been taught that expressing our emotions is weak, or unbecoming.

Whatever the case, suppressing our emotions can become a reflex.

This may work out okay for us in the moment, but if we let our emotions go unattended for too long they’ll impact our lives in ways we may not like.

They’ll always be there, contributing to our baseline mental state -- our mood, attitudes, energy, and outlook.

Over the long-term, suppressing our emotions can affect us in ways that are more unpleasant. They have a tendency to demand our attention before too long -- as the burden of their accumulated weight begins to cause its own problems.

Mixed signals can be confusing.

They can be downright perplexing.

When someone sends us mixed signals not only do we have to sort out what they really mean, but they are contradictory enough that they seem to cancel one another out.

This sets up a dynamic where we never really know if we’re making progress towards achieving any real clarity -- it’s always fleeting.

Sometimes someone’s actions don’t line up with their words. Sometimes their words don’t even line up with their words -- they’ll tell us something one day and something else the next.

All too often when we prepare for an interaction with someone we’re at odds with, we prepare for war.

We go over and over in our heads all the ways in which we’re right in our understanding of what’s really going on and how the other person just doesn’t get it. We’re crystal clear on how our actions are justified and how theirs are reprehensible, how we are beyond reproach and the other person is guilty beyond belief. Guilty! How they’re the ones who are largely responsible for the trouble we’re having and we’re just along for the terrible, tumultuous ride.

And we’re going to make sure they know just how wrong they are.

Does this sound familiar?

Here’s the thing. When we approach our relationships looking for conflict, we'll find conflict. When we approach someone with attack thoughts, more often than not they will reflexively defend themselves (and vice versa).

Manipulation can be a funny, subtle thing.

Sometimes it’s so subtle we don’t even realize it’s happening. We just feel a little disjointed, or notice a slight separation between our face-value impression of the interactions at hand and how we really feel about them. Maybe we feel a murmur in our gut that signals there’s more going on here than meets the eye -- that undeniable visceral feedback about our experience of the relationship. It might simply register as a heightened awareness, though for what purpose we’re not quite sure.

Other times manipulation can be much more distressing. It can feel like our ability to determine our own destiny within the context of the relationship is being undermined. Maybe it’s difficult for us to experience someone in the usual easeful way that we relate to people. Maybe we question ourselves about things we’ve never doubted before. Or maybe we feel hooked by someone or a set of circumstances that we know is uncomfortable but that is also strangely alluring, magnetic. One that we simply can’t seem to say no to.