He's 17. On Friday I dropped him off at university for his first year.

We spent most of the week prepping - creating lists, packing, shopping, packing, checking lists. It was stressful at times.

He's not the most organized person, I'm better than I was.

He's prone to procrastination and forgetting, and my dance was to maintain a gentle forward pressure without losing my temper. I shared my impatience and worry with him that he wouldn't be ready in time, in the way I know how that minimizes the other person experiencing blame.

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.

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).

I hear a lot about emotional unavailability 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.

Learning to listen.

Yep. But don’t we all already know how to listen, I hear you say.

To some extent yes of course. We listen in different ways in different context.

You listen to your boss differently than you listen to your mum. You listen to your colleague differently than your closest friend.

And you probably listen to your partner differently when you’re two years into a relationship than two weeks in.

This is a quote by either the therapist and relationship provocateur Terry Real or Esther Perel.

On the face of it, it's quippy and provocative. And it seems to suggest you need to eat shit to be happy. That you have to give up your beliefs or your values and just take the easy option of agreeing.

It might look like that old chestnut ‘happy wife happy life’.

here’s a complaint I often hear from men in relationships, and it sounds something like:

‘I come home from work, take out the trash, help in the kitchen, fix the car, help with the kids. I’m doing all these things and she still complains I’m not doing enough. I tell her I love her all the time and she's still unhappy’.

In the words of Robert Glover, author of the transformational book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, I am a recovering nice guy.

Being a nice guy is a strategy. It's a strategy that nice guys have developed in childhood. And it's a very effective strategy in many ways. It's helped me be successful in many areas of my life in many ways. And it’s also caused a shit-ton of problems.

What image comes to mind when you think of ‘the perfect relationship’?

Mine involves a tropical beach house, tanned and fit bodies (one of them is mine, one is my partner’s) and I’m dressed in white linen trousers and shirt.

And in this vision I’m calm, successful (this is a top-notch beach house I’ll have you know). The vibe is both easy and, frankly, sterile. Basically I’m in a stock photo from a travel brochure.

Whenever two people come together there’s always an opportunity for confusion. Two different realities co-exist, so confusion is inevitable.

If you find yourself confused or doubting something about your partner or your relationship, seeking the support and wise counsel of friends can be helpful. Talking through possibilities, exploring our feelings, hearing other perspectives can be vital.

Relationships take some awareness and take some skill to get right. The truth is that many of us were not brought up with models of great relationships. We weren't taught, consciously or unconsciously, helpful pragmatic tools and skills about how to be in a relationship successfully. So we bumble our way along trying to figure it out as we go.

There are a few reasons why relationships can be so difficult. Here are two of them.

“Why is my relationship like this?”

“Why isn’t my relationship better?”

“Why is she/he/they like THAT?”

“If only they would _____ (fill in the blank)”

I get it. I’ve spent time in past relationships hoping it would change, or my partner would change, or I would somehow wake up one day feeling different and not be bothered by THAT thing anymore. Or if this One Little Thing would just change already to make everything different.