GGG, I love reading your posts. May God just bless you and yours every moment and always walk before you in all things.
I had an odd moment today during one of the crying periods — the ow in our family story has the name of a common house pet, and I deliberately started playing a game app some time ago to offset the upset that name caused me. It’s silly but it has been a means of coping and processing and also taking my upset out on something specific. So I was playing this afternoon
while also grieving and crying, and then also noticing as I have for the past few days that while I feel that ow has “won”, I also feel far removed from any of it. That’s the benefit of h living far away and my staunch blocking of phones and denying any and all random contact right now.
D came into my room after her afternoon class meeting and I laughed through my sniffles, because I am always happy to see her. Even if I just saw her an hour before. She asked what was wrong.
It was the dumbest thing. And like I said, I know that I am sometimes very much emotionally unavailable. I risked telling her.
H moved to home state without me, too early and with someone else. Right before D walked in, I had just realized how upsetting it was that h lives there ahead of and without me. So that if I ever would move there, which has been the expectation of family for over two decades and which D does not want me to do, ever or for anyone, h has made it so that even if I do, for a time or for always I would just seem to him to be a tourist or at least at first just a guest.
I said it: “I can’t even go grocery shopping there with him and enjoy it.”
D understood. I like grocery shopping anywhere. It’s part of how I learn local culture and how I live in it.
I said it further: “He judges how I choose things, and why.”
She knows this too; she knows grocery shopping is just fun, as much as it is also necessity.
She hugged me and I just cried.
And afterward I saw very clearly again — there’s something so healing in just saying it *out loud*, maybe to anyone but especially to someone of the same gender, who has experienced and survived the same lack of understanding, and who wants and needs for certain things to be understood. And who understands it all, or at least understands some key facet of it.
Part of the reason I had not been communicative with h before MLC was that I understood that he did not understand. It’s a paltry excuse. The truth is that my FOO had almost willfully not understood and I was used to that. I felt it was better to withhold from h, at least certain truths, both large and small. Major or minor.
The problem with withholding is that yes, when it is released, it is like a volcano. Somewhere in my writings from years ago I equated it with something like backdraft, the firefighting term, and tonight I wish I could find that, because there was more to it and it was smart. And I know it applies to both men and women, and it’s just a natural and universal thing.
We’ve done men and boys a disservice, for ages, and we’ve done women and girls a disservice too. There’s a popular music group these days who has entreated all of us to “Speak Yourself”, and they do; they are a fine living example. The music is great and I’m grateful my D has learned her voice here at home and that whatever I was trying to impart to her by example has been further exemplified by those music artists. I know that at least millions of listeners are stationing to bring forward a kinder and more emotionally skilled generation of young people.
What I understood instantly this afternoon was that it does no good to hold it in. Not saying it, doesn’t make it go away. Saying it, somehow does. Speaking the heart and hearing or feeling that it is understood and not judged — that’s the key.
I think when we are new to our own self-expression, it’s so important to exercise or test it first among those who are most likely to “get it”. That can be here online in a community like this, but also maybe better among physical bodies and faces who are in somewhat the same boat. Sometimes when I am not active here it’s because I’m offline in real world same-gender groups who are seeing me in person and hearing my voice and responding to my body cues, and to my remembered or very present pain. And they “get it”. When I hear their stories, and see their physical cues, I know they do and I know exactly why.
This isn’t to say that a place like that is better than here. Online communing has a safety and calm that sometimes an in-person group or share does not. But really, sometimes nothing beats an in-person hug, with words or without.
People tell me so much more than I need or want to know. That’s how I know for certain that often the third-party confidante is well and truly discarded after dark content or history has been processed all the way through. I hold more stories than I feel I should, and that’s one of the reasons that I started clinical training, so that maybe at one point in my life I would just be paid to hear all of it and to help. My thought was that money might offset some of the pain of handholding someone through a dark time and then finding myself alone with the whole story. Instead
I offer that minor share to qualify what I’ve said: the third party to whom your wayward spouse has disclosed certain things or seemed to share some kind of intimacy that he or she denied to you, is very likely a safe crutch for now, and likely will not stick.
A marital counselor or individual therapist can also serve as a third party, and one of the things to watch for is that the emotionally unavailable spouse is learning to be more open with you outside of sessions. The key goal is that the two of you who are married should be able at some point to manage and navigate and enjoy your marriage, just the two of you, and that your enjoyment of it and each other will hopefully filter down so that your children also will enjoy it.
If that goal is not shared, it’s a tricky path. The therapist itself has to be on board and in agreement. If not — if therapy is going longer than you would like — it’s possible that the two of you have either outgrown the counseling room, or that therapist, or that the two of you honestly have what it takes to manage and navigate and enjoy your marriage, and each other, just the two of you. If that seems so, be a team together and let the therapist know when and why you will be, as a couple, discontinuing the therapy services.
For any man who is reading, or any woman who recognizes herself as a bit emotionally unavailable, just know that there are fine living examples of how to be available and how to be open. Not just to a spouse but to yourself and really, to everyone. Some emotionality needs to be calibrated per the safety or wholesomeness (or opposites) of any audience. I think safe boundaries and safe people both imperative and also the trickiest things to learn. And that could be a reason for the affairs, and why those are often persons who are “affair down”. Because those are maybe just throwaways, sandboxes, practice arenas.
Having been witness for so many random people over the years, I have to say, I think the affair partners and other more random witnesses don’t deserve it either, the using and misleading, mistreatments and discard. But it’s up to them individually to develop their own sense of self worth and to refuse maltreatment. And that part isn’t our problem or concern.
I’ll risk saying here that it can’t hurt to pray on their behalf.
My hope is that if men are emotionally unavailable, that they find themselves among brethren or other male figures who recognize their unspoken or newly spoken truths and can speak to it all sensibly and with sincerity and openness and deep care. I hope that for women, too, and for all our kids.
I don’t find the necessary support in real life offline except in focused Christian groups whose goal is support and recovery. Interested to hear if anyone here has found a support that is not faith-based, as I know plenty of people from all walks who may benefit from a less God-focused approach.
The Emotionally Unavailable MLC Male
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