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.