What’s It Like To Be Emotionally Unavailable?

May 30, 2021 Matt Hilliard-Forde

This blog is part of a series on being emotionally unavailable. Read Part 1 here.

I wasn't actively taught to be emotionally unavailable.

My dad has a big laugh. He would unleash it watching something funny on TV. I remember lying in bed as a kid when my parents would have guests over, hearing it burst out in response to a joke or a quip (often one of his own).

Sadness Is Bad

When his dad died, my Grandad, I think I was six, and my brother and I weren’t allowed to attend the funeral. Funerals weren’t for kids. Kids don’t know how to behave at funerals. Maybe they ask too many questions. Maybe it’s because they haven’t yet learned to stuff down those untidy emotions. I don’t think I ever got to say goodbye to my Grandad.

I wonder now if the possibility of the expression of my sadness (or confusion, which is also a component of grief) would have been too uncomfortable for him, because he didn’t know how to connect to his.

That’s how being emotionally unavailable works. If I’m not familiar with my emotions - how they feel in my body, how they feel to move through my body - whether it’s sadness, joy, anger, shame, fear then I’m going to be desperately uncomfortable with yours.

And my discomfort may lead me to shut down, distance myself, belittle you, ‘fix’ the problem, move you out of the emotion as quickly as possible.

I didn’t see my dad cry until I was in my 30s and he in was his 60s when his mother died. You see, for many men and boys, sadness is a vulnerability, and vulnerability is weakness.

My dad is typical of a man of his time where the idea of expressing sadness, dwelling in sadness was a weakness. And why on earth would you want to show your weakness?

Pull yourself together. No need to cry about it. Don’t be a cissy. Don’t cry, don’t be a pussy. Tough it out. Pull yourself together.

Crying is feminine, and being a man is the absence of female qualities.

So, no crying.

Anger Is Bad

My dad told me outright that anger was a ‘negative emotion’, that it wasn’t helpful or necessary.

There was a correlation being made in 70s and 80s at that time that male anger = violence. The feminist movement was in full swing and many aspects and assumptions of our society were being questioned. And they needed to be.

Of course anger propels violence, and active opposition to violence against women was and is vital. But it was as if any anger in a man was contributing to the bedrock of the patriarchy. Many mums were encouraging their boy’s more gentle nature.

My mum raised me to be nice. Polite, well-behaved, well-spoken. Helpful qualities for success in our society for sure. One of the most meaningful complements she could receive was being told that my brother and I were ‘such nice boys’. She would pass that complement on to us with such satisfaction, like she was doing motherhood right.

And I want to say here that we were given space for our wildness - wrestling and fighting, making mud, tree-climbing, tunnel digging. But the boundaries were clear - that happens over there, not here.

On top of what was happening in my home, what was admired and celebrated in the heroes in the movies of that era, the cultural male touchstones of my generations, was the capacity to endure pain without rage, to endure upset without tears. The more limited your emotional expression, the masculine you are.

I'm thinking of Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, you know, his most iconic role is a fucking robot. The ultimate masculine cannot feel. The jokes in the Terminator movies are when he displays the minutest sign of human emotion.

You can see how we get shaped into being emotionally unavailable.

Thanks goodness I was also raised in the era of Boy George, Duran Duran, The Cure and The Smiths - at least there was a different version of masculinity to consider and explore.

Suppress for Success

So in my house anger wasn’t welcome. Anger was bad and expressing anger was bad.

While there wasn't much overt conflict, I was aware of conflicts rumbling below the surface.

Although my dad didn’t rage or shout, the dark storm clouds of his bad moods were oppressive. He might not be ‘angry’, but we could certainly feel when he wasn’t happy.

I started to repress the sensations of the unwelcome sadness and anger. Detach from them as best I could. They became incredibly unfamiliar and uncomfortable to feel.

This is my story, and I’m sure other men experienced versions of this. This is why so many of us are emotionally unavailable. It’s survival, it’s the water we swam, and swim, in.

We know our hunger for food and sex, because that’s allowed and expected. We know how to laugh at something funny. Some of us were given permission to express our anger, some of us were not. Joy and tears are often reserved for the uncomplicated, unthreatening realms of sport and, sometimes, music.

We know how to react, but we don’t know how to be-with.

What isn’t emotional unavailability?

Most of us have an experience of biting our lip, controlling our anger or our sadness. Maybe we intuited that unleashing our rage on kids wasn’t our best move, or bursting into tears in front of our boss wasn’t going to get us what we really wanted.

This is emotional management. We’re aware of what we’re feeling, we’re connected to the emotion, and we’re making informed choices.

Emotional unavailability is not knowing what you’re feeling. Literally not knowing how to answer the question ‘how are you feeling?’ That question can create confusion, even shame (which you can’t recognise or process either, so in this moment shame is now part of the logjam in your body), because it sounds so simple, and for many people it is. But not if you’re emotionally unavailable.

It’s literally not being able to notice or name the sensations that are happening in your body that other people know as joy, sadness, shame, confusion, anger.