How to navigate relationships as a sensitive person

Highly sensitive people experience life on an amplified level, and their relationships usually follow suit

For 28-year-old Ahmedabad-based Manish Dobaria, who works in IT, navigating the world as a highly sensitive person (HSP) has been tough. His attempts at fostering romantic relationships haven’t been fruitful, given that he’s been told he’s “not easy to date because I’m too sensitive,” he says. “I hate it when people tell me to toughen up. Very few people have taken the time to consider how I feel, and then maybe if they were a little more understanding, it could have helped me embrace relationships more positively. But I also have an uneasy feeling, like what if they’re right; what if people who use high sensitivity or introversion as excuses to not push themselves or to grow?”

Sensitivity is a distinction to be understood and leveraged rather than a weakness to be fixed. It can be hard for the people themselves and those who support HSPs because we live in a world that isn’t made for sensitive people, whether it concerns suspicions about their competency or frustration with their atypical needs. And while everyone has a sensitive side, nearly 15-20 per cent of the global population have the genes to be more sensitive than others—both physically and emotionally. These are the people who pause before speaking and think before acting; they tune into subtle details and make connections that others miss. They tend to be intelligent, big-hearted, and wonderfully creative, yet society tells them to hide the sensitivity that makes them this way. 

All in the genes

One’s genes, on the other hand, have a strong influence on sensitivity. Dr. Michael Pluess, a developmental psychologist at the Queen Mary University of London, claims that your genes account for 47 per cent of your sensitivity—nearly half. The remaining 53 per cent is influenced by your surroundings and life experiences, most of which occur during childhood. Pluess and colleagues discovered this by studying twins who shared the same genes but scored differently on sensitivity tests.

At least three distinct sets of genes play a role in high sensitivity—and different highly sensitive people may have some or all of them. Surprisingly, each of these genes affects your brain or nervous system: The ‘Sensitive’ Gene (Serotonin Transporter), which was originally believed to cause depression but doesn’t cause any mood disorder at all on its own. Still, it does make an individual sensitive to their surroundings—and more likely to learn lessons from them. That matters a lot in childhood development. If you combine this gene with an unhealthy childhood environment, you have a higher risk of depression and other disorders throughout life. But combine it with a safe, supportive environment, and you get better-than-normal outcomes as an adult.

The Dopamine Genes, where the gene variants with the biggest effect on sensitivity, all have to do with dopamine receptors, which affect how sensitive you are to dopamine in the first place. And then there’s the ‘Emotional Vividness’ Gene, which is associated with norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter that helps the body respond to stress, and there’s one variant, which may be common in HSPs, that amplifies emotional vividness. An individual will perceive the emotional aspects of the world more vividly if they have it. They also notice a significant increase in activity in the parts of their brain that generate internal emotional responses to their experiences.

Finding a place

Dobaria rewinds to his childhood and tells The Established he was perfectly social and good at making friends in kindergarten. “But when recess would roll around, it was just too much—all the screaming, the laughing, everyone running everywhere. A million different games would go on at once. It became overstimulating, so I would just run off at recess. And disappear. I found the perfect hiding spot near the playground, like a little sewer. And that was great because I could go there totally silent and come back after recess until someone figured out where I was hiding, which was a big problem,” he says. 

Viraj Mehta, a counselling psychologist, believes it’s different for sensitive people who are men versus women. “Depending on your gender identity, a person views their sensitivity differently. And one part of that is that men are just told not to be sensitive, right? You kind of want to hide it. In comparison, the problem for women is that they’re told not to be too sensitive. But no matter who you are, if you’re a sensitive person in a relationship, the biggest factor that drives you is a close, deep sense of connection with your partner. That’s important to everyone, of course, but I think for sensitive people, that’s a non-negotiable or should be a non-negotiable. It’s probably the number one thing that will determine your happiness in a relationship: whether your partner is connecting with you deeply. By that, I mean having deep conversations where you’re really exploring topics together, you’re talking about your views on things, and they’re willing to gently and kindly disagree with each other and talk about philosophical questions,” he says. 

Facing conflict

But an important question that crops up in any discourse on the subject is how do we draw that line between respecting our sensitivities, or someone who’s a partner with someone highly sensitive? How do we respect them but also make sure that we handle our feelings to an extent because it’s controversial to say every time an HSP is upset, to not take that out on their partner?

For journalist Takshi Mehta, navigating conflict in a relationship is rooted in perception and confrontation (the healthy kind). “This may be contrary to people’s idea of sensitive people, but I am not scared of confrontation; I don’t run away from it. I wouldn’t say I like it when my partner tries to avoid it, so the first and most important thing to remember is don’t avoid confrontation with me. When someone does that, I feel claustrophobic, exhausted from storing all those thoughts, and generally irritated. So let’s have that uncomfortable discussion or fight. Another thing to remember when confronting a highly sensitive person is not to invalidate their feelings. If I am telling you that I feel a certain way, don’t disregard it by giving me excuses or explanations.” 

While Mehta embraces conflict head-on, for most sensitive people, conflict is an area they struggle with. However, they’re perfectly capable of disagreeing with someone, standing up for their boundaries, and speaking up for their needs, but when tensions escalate, highly sensitive people tend to close up.

HSPs must prioritise what is most important to them and set strict limits on their limited capacity for connection, feels Viraj Mehta. “Set aside an evening or a day of the week for your partner. Use this time to do something enjoyable, followed by some uninterrupted communication, such as over dinner or a long walk. Simply listen to each other with interest and without interruption. Learn about your partner's inner life (their worries, hopes, goals, and joys) and what has happened in their world in the last week. Couples who create shared experiences establish a strong foundation of connection.”

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