One of the common problems that women complain about men in a relationship is one of the versions of:
He’s too emotionally unavailable. He doesn’t talk about his feelings. He doesn’t open up. He doesn’t express his feelings.
So I sit down and use my tool – 4 relationship questions to end the suffering and examine them.
they learn to use different ways.
What I discovered when digging deeper into following ‘truths’
He’s too emotionally unavailable.
He doesn’t talk about his feelings.
He doesn’t open up.
He doesn’t express his feelings.
Is this true, that he doesn’t express his feelings?
It certainly looks like that is the case. Most of the time I have no idea how he feels.
Am I 100% sure that he doesn’t express his feelings
I’m not 100% present all the time with him, it is possible that I am so focused on the words, that I could miss some others ways, that he could be expressing his feelings.
How do I react when I want him to express his feelings but he doesn’t?
I feel disconnected from him, I feel the distance between us. I feel rejected and alone.
I feel like he put up the wall between us. He is on the other side of the mountain, that is between us.
I feel lost and uncertain about us. Feelings of closeness are missing. Actually not the feelings but the idea how closeness suppose to feel like.
The flow of love between us is missing. There are all these signs of love that I have in my relationship list and I am constantly questioning myself
and checking that list, comparing his behavior with that list. That list when everything is checked to give me safety. When nothing is checked
from that list, I feel that he is unavailable, he doesn’t open up.
How do I treat him, when I see him as someone who doesn’t express his feelings?
I try to change him. I need signs from him, that we are still close to each other. I manipulate him to get this signs from him.
I see him as there is something wrong with him, with his absence of sharing his feelings.
I don’t really see him. I see the image that I have about him. The men who don’t share his feelings. I’m completely blind. Not able to see beyond this imaginary image in my head.
With that, I distance myself from him. I am so focused on him in his feelings, that I could not see, that I forget to be me, to feel my feelings.
Such an irony, I am completely out of touch with my feelings at that moment.
How would I see him, if I would see him for the first time and I would have no idea that he doesn’t express his feeling?
(I will play a game and pretend for a minute that this is true)
I would pay attention to his facial expression, I would not be so blindsided by what he doesn’t express and more focused on what he does.
I could notice all the ways besides the words that he uses to express his feelings. How he expressed his feelings with actions, with the body gestures…
What if the opposite is also true?
He does express his feelings.
Could that also be true? It seems odd at first. What he is expressing his feelings, just not with the words? What if he is expressing it thru his actions, things that he does for me,
things that he does in the house, outside our house. When I start to see his expression without words, he is expressing his feelings in so many ways, that I don’t notice.
How he makes the coffee for me (I don’t mean, that he press the button on the coffee machine. We don’t have one. We are still making coffee on old traditional ways, without coffee machines), isn’t that wonderful way of expressing a feeling of love?
How he talks about what he is interested about, that is when he really opens up.
When he gets upset about politic and government, that is when men are always emotionally available, showing how they deeply care about justice and compassion for all.
I don’t express my feelings.
I notice that I avoid so many conversational topics like politics and sports and all kind of shocking news about disasters, violence, accidents, world hunger, poverty.
Because I just don’t want to get in touch with all that feeling that these topics evoke in me.
I prefer to avoid them. Isn’t that also the way how women don’t express feelings. (or at least that is my way).
My DISCOVERY:
Just because men don’t express the feelings in the same way as women, that does not mean, that they don’t express them.
They just use different language for expressing them. I don’t see teaching them woman’s way of expressing emotions as solutions.
The problem is also that women believe men should feel things the way they do.
Who could even say what is the right way and what isn’t?
Society rules are still teaching men to hide their feelings.
So men find the perfect solution and adapt, they express their feelings outside those rules, without talking and sharing.
3 ways that he expresses his feelings without words:
- fixing things for you
- body language
- talking about things that he care about, is passionate about
