I am struggling to understand how other people make decisions based on emotions - and it’s driving me nuts.

I have this thing about me where I like to make decisions solely based on logic. A small example: if I want chocolate and I know I’ve already had chocolate today, I decide that I don’t need the chocolate. Some other people will look at the situation and think that even though they have had chocolate today, they want chocolate and will eat chocolate.

While that is a small example, I pretty much use this mentality for everything. I don’t like to make decisions because they just feel right. I prefer to make decisions based on what makes the most sense. That’s how I make all my decisions. I am struggling to understand how people make decisions strictly based on emotions with no logic involved.

I’m not saying I don’t understand emotions. I understand them as well as I’m ever going to. What I’m saying is this - I recognize that my heart doesn’t always follow my head, but I try to always choose my head. It’s difficult for me to understand why people would choose their heart in these situations.

For example, I don't understand why people go back into a relationship with someone who cheated on them. I understand that they may still care for the person and love them or whatever. I get that part. I don’t get how they can’t look at the situation with the mindset that the person cheated and could easily cheat again.

Normally, thinking logically wouldn’t be a problem for me because all of my decisions make sense. I am struggling for two reasons though. My emotions do still exist, and it seems like all my friends like to follow their hearts.

When I say that my emotions existing is a problem, I mean that my heart likes to scream at my head. When I look at my history, every time I decided to listen to my heart instead of my head, I got hurt. Dealing with that hurt multiple times doesn’t make sense to me.

There are times when my heart is yelling and my head is trying to rationalize. It drives me nuts. There are times when I do something because of my heart, and my head is just saying 'I told you so' on repeat because it was so blatantly obvious that what I was doing wasn’t going to end well. There never seems to be a situation where both my heart and head agree.

When I say that my friends follow their hearts, it is definitely not meant to come out as an insult; however, it’s not meant to be a compliment either. These friends are still able to think logically, and I’m sure they have struggles between their heads and hearts as well. It just seems like their heart always wins.

The problem is that I see my friends repeatedly getting hurt because they follow their hearts. Some of them don’t think I’m really living because I follow my head. We all seem to understand that people think a different way, but we all struggle to understand why we think the way we do. In some situations, I just get so frustrated because I can’t believe my friends made decisions based on their hearts. In some situations, my friends get so frustrated because I cannot be empathetic when they are emotional.

Not everything the head says what is right makes people happy. Not everything the heart wants makes sense. I am struggling to understand what a healthy balance is.