Is Your Man Emotionally Unavailable?
Have you found yourself in a relationship with a man who seems distant, unresponsive, or emotionally closed off? You’re not alone. Many women experience the frustration of loving an emotionally unavailable man. Understanding the reasons behind this behavior can help you navigate your relationship more effectively and decide whether to stay or move on. Let’s explore eight common reasons why your man might be emotionally unavailable.
1. Self-preservation.
Opening up to someone and expressing your emotions can make you feel incredibly vulnerable. Admitting to your feelings gives you nowhere to hide, and it takes a huge amount of trust in a partner that they won’t judge you or betray your honesty in some way.
If you’ve reached the point in your relationship where you’ve been this open and trusting with each other, if something goes wrong and it ends, it can be harder to take. The emotional attachment you’ve formed together can be more difficult to move on from, and it takes time to build up your trust and confidence in anyone else.
For some, the possibility of being hurt, judged, or laughed at for their feelings makes them want to avoid opening up to a partner all together – this is where you find your emotionally unavailable man.
Self-preservation motivates them to keep a distance between you and them so that there is no risk of them being hurt by you.
By not connecting with you on an emotional level, everything stays within their control and they avoid passing any influence over their emotions to you. In their eyes, it’s self-preservation in case something goes wrong, but they could be missing out on a relationship that is everything they’re looking for.
2. He’s been through a painful breakup.
Self-preservation in the form of your partner being emotionally shut off can stem from a number of reasons, but one of the most obvious is from being hurt in a past relationship.
Your man may not have always been so adverse to opening up and sharing his emotions, but it only takes one person to break that trust for this to change.
Breakups, especially messy breakups, can be incredibly hard to get over. You go from being the closest you are to anyone and giving them your absolute trust, to becoming strangers overnight. Sometimes, the hurt this causes can be too difficult to fully recover from and go on to affect future relationships.
Out of fear of going through the same hurt again, your man might think that the best thing to do is to not get emotionally involved at all, and to deflect any effort you make at closeness.
Just because he isn’t ready to be emotionally vulnerable with anyone else just yet, doesn’t mean that he’s never going to be, so give it time.
3. Childhood trauma.
We are products of the homes we grow up in, whether we’ve been heavily influenced to become like those who raised us, or style ourselves in a purposefully opposite way.
If a man has grown up in a disruptive household, witnessing heightened emotions as a child, it could be that he now associates any outward display of emotion with negativity. By suppressing his memories, he is also repressing his ability to emotionally engage at all.
It may be that he doesn’t yet realize the effect that these childhood memories have had on him, and as a first step, counseling could be a good option for him to work through some of this past trauma and benefit his current emotional capacity.
4. He sees emotion as a ‘weakness.’
Although we may try to promote a better and more realistic expectation for men to feel free to show and share their emotions, there is still the stereotype that girls are the emotional ones and boys are not.
A boy who shows emotion might be told to ‘stop acting like a girl’ as if this was a negative thing. We throw around terms such as ‘man up’ or ‘be a man about it’ when it comes to emotional situations, all reinforcing the idea that showing your emotions or engaging with them is somehow weak and ‘un-manly.’
Your man may have grown up in a place where terms like this were used often, or maybe there was a time in his childhood when he was embarrassed or bullied that has stuck in his mind. Without intentionally doing so, he has associated a show of emotion with weakness and an ‘anti-maleness’ that would diminish his status as a man.
He might know better than to be caught up in this way of thinking, but as a learned behavior, this view can be hard to shake. For the moment, it might be causing him to be emotionally unavailable around you.
5. He’s lost someone close to him.
Big life events such as losing someone close can have long-lasting effects on our state of mind.
Losing a friend or family member is difficult for anyone to process and gives rise to a whole range of emotions. If this has happened to your man, it could be that the emotions at the time were too raw and hard to face, causing him to shut himself off from them completely and become emotionally unavailable.
At the risk of opening the gates to a whole lot of repressed emotion he’s been keeping locked away, he might find it easier to avoid thinking or speaking about any emotional situation at all.
Until he’s ready to come to terms with his loss and move forward by facing all the emotions it’s left him with, he’ll struggle to be emotionally available with you or anyone else.
6. He’s a control freak.
Some people just need to be in control, and when they’re not, it can make them feel anxious or lost. They might seem highly strung to some or a perfectionist in all they do, but these are all signs of an inner need to control the situation around them.
This isn’t necessarily something negative, but people with this personality trait might find it harder to be emotionally available. If a man has this need for control over his image and life, he is much less likely to willingly be vulnerable with his emotions around another person.
Emotions are messy, they can get out of control and you don’t always know the perfect way to express yourself. By allowing other people to see your emotions, you’re allowing them to see the imperfect, unedited side to you that can’t always be perfectly portrayed.
Engaging emotionally with a partner and putting all of your cards on the table is a way of completely handing over control to someone else. His feelings are in your hands and the moment he opens up to you, it gives you the power to lift him up or tear him down – a terrifying concept for someone who feels safer when they are in control.
7. He’s gotten used to being single.
Emotionally unavailable men can come across as self-centered, seeming to always put themselves first and to not think about the feelings of anyone else.
If this is the case with your man, consider how long he’s been out of a relationship for. If you are with someone who has either never been in a serious relationship or has been single for a long period of time, it might be that he’s forgotten how to properly interact with a partner.
After so long of only having to put his own needs first, it might not come naturally to involve you in what he’s thinking or show an interest in what you like and how you feel in the way you’d expect him to.
Relationships aren’t easy and there’s a lot to be learned in order to have a successful one – most importantly how to effectively communicate your feelings with each other.
If a man hasn’t had to think about or share his emotions up to this point, you might start to think he’s emotionally unavailable just because of how out of practice he is at being with a partner.
It will take an adjustment to go from a self-centered bachelor to a caring boyfriend. Getting back in touch with your emotions, and more importantly, thinking about how someone else feels first, will be a learning process for him if this is a new or forgotten concept.
He might never have been in a relationship where he has felt connected enough to a person to see the need to get to know each other on a deeper emotional level. Time, communication, and patience are what will see this type of man turn into the boyfriend of your dreams. Just be prepared to put in the work.
8. He’s afraid of commitment.
Some men struggle with the idea of commitment, fearing that it will limit their freedom or force them to change who they are. This fear can manifest as emotional unavailability, as they subconsciously create distance to avoid getting too close. They may enjoy the companionship and physical aspects of a relationship but hesitate to fully invest emotionally.
This behavior often stems from a fear of losing their identity or being trapped in a situation they can’t control, leading them to keep their emotions tightly guarded.
Finally…
Recognizing the reasons behind your man’s emotional unavailability is the first step towards addressing the issue. While some causes may require professional help, others can be overcome with patience, communication, and understanding. Remember, a healthy relationship requires emotional availability from both partners, so don’t be afraid to prioritize your own needs and seek emotional support from friends and family.
