This blog is part of a series on being emotionally unavailable. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
The term ‘emotionally unavailable’ seems to have risen in visibility in the over the last 2-3 years. It certainly wasn’t familiar to me when I was in my mid-30s back in the mid-’00s.
What was familiar was a numbness that I experienced as a not-knowing, a fog, an absence of connection to myself.
I remember a friend asking me about my relationship, posing the question ‘what do you want?’ I couldn’t answer. I felt numb and confused, confronted by that simple question.
If you had asked me ‘How do you want to feel?’, I would have felt equally confused, uncomfortable and resentful at the question, far out of my depth.
‘How are you feeling?’ is a confronting question to someone who isn’t connected with their emotions or the sensations of those emotions in their body.
And the thing about not knowing how you feel, is that you also don’t really know what you want.
I’ll put that another way, if you’re not connected to how you feel, you’re not deeply connected to what you want.
You’re connected to the obvious survival things like food and shelter. The quiet reassurance of having those, the most basic needs. But beyond that?
Happiness seemed to be something other people did. Crying was something women and children did. Feeling sad? Nah. At that point I hadn’t cried for over 10 years.
How would I even know what would make me feel happy inside?
How would I know what would make me feel fulfilled?
How would I know if I needed to cry to release some sadness and grief?
How would I know to howl at the moon to release some fire? (also, nice boys don’t howl at the moon…this one ended up doing so after he stopped being so nice)
At one point I half-jokingly considered getting a tattoo on my arm What Do I Want? as a reminder I could want things, need things, ask for things, strive for things.
I think, but don’t know, that emotionally unavailable people are more drawn to addictive behaviour like porn and sex gambling because you get to feel something. You get that spike of adrenaline, that turn-on from having that something that connects you to yourself in an irrefutable way.
I felt like I was living my life behind glass. I had a bout of depression. My career wasn’t working out as I hoped, my marriage was out of the honeymoon stage and there were challenges I had little idea how to navigate effectively, and I had become a father.
I was doing all the things I know I was supposed to do. I was working, I was bringing in some money, creating a home, raising my son. Yet I felt stalled and directionless. I was dull inside, and yet could sense the stirrings of something deeper. I just didn’t know what.
I had a few sessions with a lovely student therapist who helped me to find some motivation but there was more than that.
There was something about becoming a dad.
My son filled me with a joy and love I could actually feel. I knew there was more, I just didn’t know what or how to get there. But I wanted to find out and share it with him.
What I know now is that I wasn’t fully present. Without feeling more deeply, without knowing my needs, I wasn’t present to myself. And if I wasn’t present to myself, I could only be present to others in a functional way. The biggest gift I could give my son was my presence.
I Hadn’t Cried for 10 years
There were years when I didn't cry, almost decades passed between tears. This is what it is to be emotionally unavailable.
I remember crying when I was when I was 15 and got punched in the face by a kids from school. Of course I didn't fucking cry in the moment because that could have got me another punch in the face, but I cried when I got home.
I cried again when I was seventeen and my girlfriend at the time thought she was pregnant.
I cried again for a few seconds when I was 23 and my parents told me they were divorcing.
I was 36 when I found the ManKind Project. I was on a coffee break in my corporate temp job and I opened the right magazine at the right time and read about this intense and weird men’s group thing I’d heard whispers about. I knew I had to find out more. I made a call and discovered there was a Toronto chapter.
WTF
I remember walking into that room full of men for the first time, nervous and excited. Up to that point in my life, a roomful of men meant work, the lads, a job or sport, coarse humour and physicality.
Some of that existed there. But there was also the smell of sage, men hugging greetings to one another, and a directness to the interactions between them.
There was banter about traffic, but also conversations about feelings and accountability. What the fuck was happening?
It was an induction into a strange new world.
At one point in the evening, a man sitting a few seats away from me in the circle, vibrating with intense angry energy, said to the group, ‘I need to let some of this out’. Ok I thought. He let rip an ear-splitting, pained roar, making me jump in my seat.
I’d never heard a man yell like that in anguish. He touched his anger, his pain, and expressed it as loudly and fully as he could.
In that moment he fucking terrified me, and he showed me what was possible. He showed me what being emotionally available could look, sound and feel like.
Since then I’ve seen men in tears and comforted them. I found myself on my knees, wracked with sobs, with the warm and strong hands of grown men on my shoulders and back comforting me.
I’ve physically restrained men in carefully structured experiences as they raged and fought against these bonds, tapping into their elemental rage, unleashing years of stuffed fury and grief at mothers, fathers, bullies, abusers. I’ve raged and fought against the same bonds and tapped deep into that forbidden fucking place of anger too.
This isn’t just about anger. When you’ve connected to one emotion, the other emotions become more available too. Sadness and happiness. Pleasure and gratitude.
I’ve sat in circle as we’ve shared fears of sexual and physical inadequacy, shame about our bodies, our cocks, our prowess. The things that we’re not supposed to talk about as men, because it’s weak, unmanly. Things we’ve carried silently for years.
I know women who’ve been hushed, or felt silently judged by their male partners for their uninhibited emotional expressions. I used to be that man.
Because the experience of having these emotions is now familiar to me, I’m no longer so confronted and uncomfortable when you’re expressing your sadness, joy or anger.
Men (and boys, and some women) taught me to keep these things to myself.
But men have also been the source of my healing. And what’s possible is that deep connection to myself, becoming available to myself, coming home to myself.
It continues to be a revelation and honour to sit in a circle with men tapping deep, deep into their bodies to feel and express anger at their mother, their father, the world.
Why Bother?
If you’re thinking what’s the point of all this? Isn’t this a bit weird, a bit girly, a bit indulgent?
I know that part of my being as a man is to be able to contain my emotions, to put things, messy emotional stuff, to one side so I can focus on the goal. I love that about me, about men, how we can set aside emotions to accomplish our roles as provider and protector, fixer and solver.
And I now have the option and the capacity to fully feel sadness, anger, and joy and passion too.
The bravest men I know are the one’s I’ve witnessed and supported in doing this work of connecting to feeling, and who’ve supported me. They include a firefighter, CEO, estate agent, student, builder, landscaper, accountant, entrepreneur, insurance broker and many others.
Doing this work made it possible for me to share with my dear uncle what he’d meant to me as a boy growing up, and honour him by fully holding his gaze as we said goodbye for what we both knew was the final time before he succumbed to cancer.
It was doing this work that made it possible for my dad to sob on my shoulder as I hugged him (yep, my big stoic dad who didn’t cry when his dad died, Mr. Anger Is Bad).
It’s made it possible for me to have deeper relationships with my kids, instead of shutting them down when they’re in their deeper emotions because it’s uncomfortable for me.
It’s made it possible to have an incredible, vibrant relationship with my partner. To laugh deeper and long. To cry. To love more fully.
I can tell you about the relief I experience after a good cry, or how a rage (safely expressed) clears the mind and reveals the next step.
What can you do if you're with an emotionally unavailable man?
Encourage him to find a good men's group. There are many out there, Evryman and ManKind Project are the ones I know. I’m co-founder of a Toronto men’s group based on the Evryman model.
Check out TETHR, an excellent online peer-to-peer support community connecting men for open and honest conversations about life.
When he does express feelings, encourage it:
Say something like ‘Thanks for telling me how you feel’, or ‘I feel more connected to you when you tell me how you feel’.
If you notice he’s experiencing an emotion but is not able to connect to it, try the following:
Ask him what sensations he’s feeling in his body
Invite him to put his hand on where he feels the sensation the most
Noticing the sensation helps connect to it more fully.
Tell him to contact me.
For some of you reading this, especially women, this might seem ridiculously simplistic. But this where many men are. We literally do not know how we are feeling.
Connecting and describing the sensations in our bodies is the beginning of emotional literacy.
This is some of the most confusing, difficult, scary, and humbling work a man will do.
Be patient. Be encouraging. The more he’s connected to himself, the more he can connect to you.
You can catch up on Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
If you’re with an emotionally unavailable partner,
or you’ve been told you’re emotionally unavailable,
and are curious about having more intimacy,
hit the big red button to book a free call with me.