What Does Emotionally Unavailable Really Mean?
This is Part One in a series of blogs (at least two blogs, is two a series?) on emotional unavailability and being emotionally unavailable.
I read the term ‘emotionally unavailable’ a lot on the socials and the blogs.
It's most often the term used to describe men in relationship.
My understanding is that it describes a man who is not emotionally expressive. Detached from his emotions. A man with a limited emotional vocabulary. A man with a lack of emotional literacy. Emotionally unavailable.
When I think of my own journey with emotions, I know that for many years - from my teens through to my 30s - I wasn’t deeply connected to my own emotions (or my emotions weren’t fully available to me), and as a result I was often uncomfortable around other people’s.
This is the experience of many, many men. Other than anger and moderated joy, we’re taught that our emotions are a weakness.
Show too much sadness, joy, shame or (for some of us) anger, and you’re opening yourself up to threat, bullying, attack.
So we learn to stuff our emotions, and detach from them quickly. As a result we limit our emotional awareness and our emotional expression.
It’s just too dangerous.
The experiencing of our emotions becomes a threat, and the very fact of having emotions is therefore a liability. Becoming emotionally unavailable is a way to fit in, a strategy to be accepted, and to survive.
And because of the unfamiliarity we then have with our emotions, the very sensation of experiencing them is SO unfamiliar that it becomes desperately weird and uncomfortable to feel them.
So we push our emotions down. And around and around we go. Been there, done it, still do it sometimes.
Why does it matter?
When a person has a narrow bandwidth of expression, a limited connection to their own emotional landscape, and if they are uncomfortable with the idea and experience of having emotions, they are going to be uncomfortable and even judgemental of other people’s emotions, i.e. yours.
I’m emotionally unavailable to myself, and I’m emotionally unavailable to you.
What Does emotional unavailability Look Like In a Relationship?
So if you and I are in a relationship and I'm an emotionally unavailable man, then I probably get intensely uncomfortable when you are emotional. For instance, when you’re crying (because heaven forbid a teenage boy or young man who cries), but also anger and even extreme happiness.
I may even say things like ‘why are you making such a big deal out of this?’, ‘can you just get over it?’, ‘why are you so emotional?’
Those questions are evidence of my discomfort and my disconnection from my emotions. It’s hard for me to admit this, but I used to struggle with an ex-partner’s gleeful excitement. I would feel tense when it occurred. The judgements in my head were that these expressions were ‘unnecessary’, ‘too much’, ‘embarrassing’. No doubt she sensed my awkwardness.
When you’re expressing your emotions and your man gets glassy-eyed, mumbly or silent, awkwardly standing there like a bumbling zombie not knowing what to do or say, or dismissive, you know when you’re with a man who has limited emotional literacy.
And that results in you feeling unseen, unheard, not understood, alone, disconnected. Resentful.
A New Expectation of Men
What I'm noticing in this discourse around emotional unavailability is an expectation from women (I’m generalizing here) that their male partners should be emotionally available.
This is where it gets interesting, and challenging.
Where does that expectation come from? Because I’m pretty certain it wasn’t an expectation my mum had of my dad, and certainly not an expectation my grandma had of my grandad.
They might have preferred it if there man was more emotionally available, more able to connect with her emotionally, but I don’t know that they expected it.
And it signifies a shift in the culture of relationship has been occurring over over a number of years now, the idea that our partner is Everything to us.
Esther Perel articulates this wonderfully, identifying that unlike our parents’ and grandparents generations, we’ve added requirements to the job of partner: best friend, counsellor, coach, shrink, nurse, drinking buddy, brunch partner, daycare manager and on and on. Where we used to rely on a village, we now expect our partners to be the village.
It's a beautiful idea and it's also a shit ton of pressure for men. Why?
For men, being emotional unavailable isn’t something we do, it’s something we are.
It’s something we’ve evolved to be during your formative years in order to survive.
We don’t do it to be dicks, we don’t consciously choose it, we just are it.
I love men’s capacity to compartmentalize, to focus intently, to strategize and analyze and catalogue and obsess, to structure and build, to pick up a weapon and fight, to protect and provide.
And I love that we're shifting away from the only definition of masculine only being strong, silent, capable. This definition has been a fucking straitjacket that’s part of the cause of male aggression, and depression and suicide.
I see a growing awareness that being emotionally unavailable is a cause of disconnection. It’s a cause of stress in relationships, and a road to mental and physical health issues.
I see men choosing to take the journey to connect with their emotions. To deprogramming of our childhood and adolesence.
It’s a journey that can take months or, in my case, years.
I love that I’m on this journey. It swells my heart to work with men who are also on this journey. I love that we’re living in a time where the definition of masculinity is broadening to include a deeper connection to their emotions, and therefore yours.
We’re out of sync
It’s like that phase of early adolescence when girls are developing at a different rate than boys. Remember that? Often girls are more physically developed, taller and shifting into womanly shapes, and cognitively more capable than the boys at the same age who are still more connected to their childhood forms.
On the one hand we have the cry of the women ‘I want a more emotionally available man, why can’t I find him?’
On the other hand we have men hearing that cry saying ‘I don’t understand what you want from me, it’s like you’re suddenly expecting me to be able to speak Icelandic, you’re asking me to be different than who I am’.
We experience confusion, defensiveness, even shame at not meeting your needs.
It can feel like the goalposts have been moved. Because for men, we’ve done all the things that society has told us that make us men. And now you want the one thing from us that we don’t know how to do.
And a quick way to make a man feel shame is to ask him to do something he doesn’t know how to do. And if we’re desperately uncomfortable with our emotions, then that shame is going to contort us even more.
so wtf happens now?
We have men, and I count myself among them, who have chosen to explore and expand their emotional capacity. We no longer want to be emotionally unavailable. We’re ready to feel.
We sit in the discomfort of experiencing these deeper, stronger emotions, these “unmasculine” emotions.
We do the work of feeling more connected to ourselves, and in doing so become more connected to our partners, sons, daughters, friends. To our lives.
What To Do If you’re a partner to an emotionally unavailable man
If you recognise that your partner as emotionally unavailable, encourage his emotional expression, however minimal that expression is. Share how it feels for you when he expresses his emotions. More connected? Reassured? Seen? Supported?
Women haven’t escaped the lessons from the patriarchy that men expressing emotions means they are weak. So, if you notice that you have this judgement, be curious about where this belief comes from. Where did you learn it, and do you know it to be true?
The truth here is that you can only be as emotionally connected as the least able partner in the relationship. If you want to feel more connected to your guy but you judge and shame him for sharing his vulnerability with you, he’s going to clam up and you’re not going to get what you want.
What to do if you’re an emotionally unavailable man
If you want to become more emotionally literate, I salute you. You have a journey ahead, and there’s support for you.
Look for a local men’s group. Evryman is a great organisation, as is the ManKind Project which has chapters worldwide. You can also check-out my online men’s group AWAKE, it’s a powerful space of friendly men changing their lives.
In an upcoming blog I’ll be writing about my own journey with my emotions.
Read PART 2 of the blog series here
If you’re with an emotionally unavailable partner,
or you’ve been told you’re emotionally unavailable,
and want more intimacy,
hit the button below to book a free call with me.