We talk about emotional availability as if it is a single dimension of a willingness or capacity to emotionally attach. To connect. And we approach that emotional connection as if it is all or nothing.
It seems to me that I, like others, too often address this and related topics without being sufficiently specific.
This is one of the problems with labels, lists, and a cultural propensity for the quick fix. And so we toss around terms that more or less seem to fit, we apply them to the people in our lives and to our relationships, and we forget that what we seek is neither formulaic nor static.
In this case, we deem “emotional availability” a must-have in order to be happy with our partners.
But the ability to recognize and trust our feelings occurs on a spectrum. Connection to others is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
A recent conversation around the complexity of emotional connections has reminded me how delicate our personal interactions can be. Perhaps more importantly, we shouldn’t measure their quality by someone else’s standards, or an idealized version of intimacy.
What Does Emotional Availability Mean… Really?
What does emotional availability really mean? If we assume it is about openness and trust (for example), then what if we find ourselves open and trusting to the people in our lives in some respects and less so in others? Is every aspect of connection as important as the next? Shouldn’t we be considering the circumstances?
In trying to dig deeper into what emotional availability entails, in particular with regard to romantic relationships, I found words like “reachable” and “being there” – by and for other people. That makes sense: When someone is reachable and there for you, you feel more secure in the relationship.
But what exactly does that involve? That we listen to a spouse’s concerns? That we empathize? That we appear to empathize? Is it about respecting a confidence? Serving the role of safe haven that guarantees trust for any and all disclosures?
Doesn’t this require that we be capable of sharing our own concerns, confidences, and trust?
If the emotionally unavailable person puts up roadblocks to intimacy, then is emotional availability as simple as clearing away those obstacles and enabling deep attachment?
And so I come to the ability to care deeply versus the ability to show it, and the ability to feel deeply versus capacity to communicate in the emotional realm. Moreover, as I go through page after page in searches on the subject, “feelings” are often left to a generalized level, without noting that we may pick and choose to share some, while keeping others to ourselves.
Emotional Availability and Intimacy
Some may say that avoiding disclosure of select feelings equates to avoiding the most profound degree of intimacy. I would counter that this is precisely where many of us operate, nonetheless with a significant degree of intimacy that is more than satisfying.
Emotional availability as excerpted in the following text seems a more pragmatic and tangible explanation, acknowledging the existence of degrees of openness to attachment. And this may be a choice, as “sporadic” emotional availability is defined:
… sporadic emotional availability… both partners are capable of being emotionally present with their own feelings, as well as with the feelings of their partner. The capacity to communicate to your partner what you are feeling is also present… However… the willingness to choose to do so on a consistent basis is limited… each person engages in some forms of withholding of parts of themselves which results in inconsistent availability.
That withholding is described as a sort of avoidance or withdrawing in certain situations, or with respect to certain topics. To me, this seems logical – natural, even. Aren’t we all willing and able to be open in some areas of our emotional lives more than others? Or is that my own emotional unavailability speaking?
Trust Is an Evolution
For many of us, we trust too easily when we’re young, and experience teaches us to be more careful in the future.
Trust generally grows as a relationship deepens, and it can be shattered if we are betrayed, for example by an affair. That can easily be an emotional affair; no physical infidelity need take place to suffer from the aftermath of secrets, the sense of rejection, the proof – or so we may interpret it – that our partner is a louse and simultaneously, that we deserve better.
This last sentiment often coexists with feeling undeserving (or the incident wouldn’t have happened).
It is a comment from a reader that leads me to explore a more detailed path, with a desire to “get real” when it comes to such a complicated topic, much less any attempts (including my own) to summarize it in a dozen pithy paragraphs.
This reader writes:
After 10 years of marriage and three children (2 of which are special needs), I’ve only just realized that my husband is emotionally unavailable… How do you get the marriage to work when your spouse is still having a difficult time opening up?
She goes on to provide additional circumstances, clearly painful, and reasons that must have exacerbated what she later identifies as his being somewhat “guarded” even years before. However, as she explains:
I also didn’t need him to be as open as much prior to us getting married.
That certainly rings a bell for me. Perhaps for many of us. We need more when life throws its toughest curve balls our way. We need more when we are vulnerable.
As I was thinking and responding, the clearer it became to me that emotional connection doesn’t operate in binary fashion, and we approach marriage (especially) as an all-or-nothing proposition. Wouldn’t it be wiser to come to grips with the ways we need that special closeness and trust, and distinguish them from areas where the privacy of our thoughts (and our partner’s) poses no problem?
Can’t we expand our network of intimate connections – people we trust – to spread some of our emotional investment and likewise, emotional risk?
“Tell All” as a Requirement for Intimacy?
Many believe that you need to share “everything” in a relationship for it to be good, healthy, intimate. I don’t think so. Personally, I consider this a 20th century outgrowth of our idealized (and impractical) view of relationships – most particularly, marriage.
I do not believe that intimacy requires that my spouse or life partner be aware of my every story and experience, much less hear a blow-by-blow of my emotional travels throughout the day. However, he does need to be the caring and respectful recipient of the stories and experiences that are most precious to me – and to us, as a couple. I would hope to be the same for him. I would hope that our intimacy is reciprocal.
Incidentally, intimacy is a state of rapport, closeness, attachment, belonging. Clearly, we are not intimate with everyone, but it is reasonable to expect intimacy with a husband or wife. Intimacy also involves degrees and context. For example, sexual intimacy is not the same as emotional intimacy.
To me, emotional intimacy is all about vulnerability and, again, trust. If we feel we will be dismissed or judged or misunderstood by a loved one, we’re unlikely to make ourselves vulnerable on those topics or in those circumstances that will result in negative responses.
That said, if your partner is sharing disclosures of a personal and private nature with someone else, and these are the sort of communications you believe should be shared with you and only you, that’s hardly a good sign. But it may be an indication that your relationship needs work, that something is changing in one or both of you, and that you need to reconnect – in specific ways.
I will use my current relationship as an example. It is a relationship in which I am more “myself” than I ever was with the man I married. I chalk that up to a better fit in terms of character and values, to greater maturity some 20 years later, and to the variety of experiences of intimacy that I have known in the years since divorce.
The All-or-Nothing Approach
In trying to research the issues around emotional availability, and our expectations that seem so grand and idealized (in my view), I came across this New York Times article on “The All-or-Nothing Marriage.”
The writer, a psychological researcher, makes his case that contemporary marriage is both weaker and stronger than it once was – weaker in key ways, stronger in others. The dimensions he notes reflect the manner in which our working lives and gender roles have shifted, along with our 21st century notions of personal fulfillment.
But there is more. Marriage has shifted from “institutional” to “companionate,” and we are told:
Americans today have elevated their expectations of marriage and can in fact achieve an unprecedentedly high level of marital quality — but only if they are able to invest a great deal of time and energy in their partnership. If they are not able to do so, their marriage will likely fall short of these new expectations…
Marriage, then, has increasingly become an “all or nothing” proposition.
It occurs to me that I never viewed my marriage as “all or nothing.” If anything, my expectations were both too low and too imprecise. I also recognize that while I am more emotionally available now than I was in marriage, I am not fully “reachable” in certain ways. I operate with greater comfort by virtue of lifelong walls that are about emotional and financial survival. (Don’t we all have little corners that say “keep out?”)
I do not see these walls as an impediment to my relationship. And if the man in my life did, surely he would say something. In the meantime, those boundaries serve me, and I have no need to “tell all” much less share every emotion, no doubt a tendency toward privacy picked up in childhood in order to manage an intrusive mother.
Spreading the Love – and the Burden
Some topics of conversation are appropriate for my best friend. She “gets it,” no explanation required. Others may be just right for my oldest family friend for exactly the same reason. Some are between myself and my journal, because that works for me.
If my partner wanted something more from me, or some different version of emotional intimacy, because he is important and the relationship is important, I would consider it carefully. I would give what he needs, if I could reasonably do so — while remaining true to who I am. And in the meantime, while he is lover, friend, and partner, I retain pieces of myself purely for myself, and others that are shared with those few I mention.
I had previously written this, with regard to loving someone who is emotionally unavailable:
… Emotional intimacy is not an absolute any more than emotional unavailability; there are dimensions and degrees. Problems arise when one partner feels wanting and the other is unwilling or unable to engage in a mutually acceptable way.
Dimensions and degrees – the very phenomenon that the cited article above addresses, referring to sporadic emotional availability. Do note, however, the judgmental tinge in the terminology (and use of the word “limited”), as if “sporadic” availability is inferior to a variation that is viewed as more complete.
Connection Opportunities
When we carry difficult burdens, as does the reader who sparked these thoughts, it’s hard to imagine that any one individual could shoulder the load. Not he or she who bears it, and not the partner who is also living those same burdens. This, it seems to me, is especially true if he feels ill-equipped to make a difference.
What if we were able to separate the ability to feel and appreciate from the ability to articulate those feelings or respond to ours? What if we were able to be clearer on the nature of communications we hope to have with a spouse? What if there were other avenues for talking about what we’re dealing with, not to mention help in doing so?
What if our husbands or wives were not the sole recipients of news on the front lines of our toughest personal battles, any more than they are the sole recipients of our joys? What if we didn’t make marriage and committed relationships an all-or-nothing proposition?
Think about it. You may trust intimate details concerning a child’s behavior with a knowledgeable aunt or grandparent. You may trust a difficult conversation concerning your own childhood with a sibling. You may trust your most personal dreams with a spouse.
But what if you have insecurities at work? Do you trust your spouse with those, knowing you may trigger extreme anxiety over the mortgage, when he’s already afraid he’s about to be laid off? Are you withholding a level of disclosure as a result – or redirecting it? Is that the best long-term course, or a stop-gap measure – for now?
Bell Curve for Trust and Disclosure?
There is an interesting dynamic in relationships that occurs – and this is purely a personal observation – to do with trust and disclosure.
There is a growth of trust as you get to know each other, a continuing expansion of that trust as your bond becomes committed, and with time (and the business and busyness of daily life), the nature of your disclosures may seem to become less profound. As time goes on, you know each other better, which surely contributes.
Is this a typical Bell Curve of growth and decay? Maybe. Maybe not.
But tell me, haven’t you experienced this? The longer you have invested in the two of you as a “unit,” or the two of you in conjunction with children as a family unit, the less likely you are to rock the boat. This is both emotional and logistical; your lives are intertwined.
The consequence? You may turn to others to express more challenging fears or feelings, thus opening a path to an emotional connection that may or may not threaten the core relationship.
Is this a protective mechanism or a smart one? Is it a natural progression or a warning sign? Doesn’t that depend?
Ruminating Without a License
Lest I be accused of “practicing ruminations without a license,” let me say that I am thinking aloud (on the virtual page), and hoping to engage others in discussion. These words are not intended as conclusions for anyone except myself, here and now.
And so I arrive at this.
When it comes to a deeply satisfying emotional connection, there is no easy, there is no perfect, there is no absolute. For me, the fundamental issue is one of understanding the specific ways in which we depend on an intimate connection for feeling close, attached, supported, valued, accepted and loved. The requisite level of vulnerability and sharing need not exist in every aspect of our lives; it does need to be mutually present to a satisfactory degree, in the most important areas – to us.
If these areas are compromised by withholding or usurping, we know we need to work on them – whether connecting to the feelings themselves (fear, anger, pride, pleasure) – or being able to articulate them. And likewise, we need to welcome them from the person who has every right to expect the same of us.
What suits me may not be precisely what suits the man in my life; as long as we keep talking and listening, it is likely to be pretty damn close. What suits your relationship may be entirely different. It is yours to fine tune for today, and as life changes, in the future.
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I found just scanning through this post fairly emotionally challenging, not to mention mentally! The bell curve thing sort of rang a bell (sorry); it’s not so much about not rocking the boat for us, it’s that after 18 years we know each other pretty well, there is less to reveal. I don’t know but what sometimes ’emotionally unavailable’ might be confused for ‘not on the same page’. I remember being struck by the idea that it was important that you and your partner were both ‘looking in the same direction’, ie shared similar goals and priniciples. And I wonder if perceiving the other as E.U. might also sometimes be about how ‘needy’ the perceiver is feeling. Just some thoughts.
Good thoughts, Shelley. Differences in emotional neediness skew expectations, don’t they…
I connected with your commenter’s thoughts about my level of emotional need (prior to marriage). It was only in great loss and pain that I realized the self-protection that my first husband had, which hindered his ability to connect with me. In therapy during that marriage, I learned that he simply wasn’t capable of more and learned to accept what he WAS able to give. In light of his personal limitations, I did seek support elsewhere – for me this was my family, sister and a close knit group of friends, along with my therapist.
In the “all or nothing” mentality, I was trying to get from him what he didn’t have the skills to give. So, I had to shift my expectations, and while disappointing to realize, it worked for us.
My caution would be to find healthy places for emotional connection because it could be easy to slip into that grayish realm of emotional infidelity. Are there proper boundaries in place? Is your significant other aware of the relationship? Do you depend on others to the detriment of your current relationship?
I think there may be seasons of connection, too. When my now-husband is more scheduled, stressed or physically depleted, we are less likely to expend energy emoting in general. When this goes on for too long, I know it is time to voice the concern and be more intentional about sharing my own feelings and exposing my own sense of vulnerability. Yes, yes, trust is so vital!
These are very insightful and helpful perspectives, Missy. And those are excellent questions to pose re a confidante who is not the spouse/significant other.
I have been married for 34 years now. I have also been the recipient of an emotionally unavailable husband, not just me but our kids, and infidelity, and know that he is unavailable to us but not to others. I have attended birthdays, holidays and vacations alone, was asked always where my husband was, “working” always 13 hours a day, would come home to eat and go to sleep, our only time together is going out for breakfast on Sundays, come home, go to sleep.
I blame nobody but myself because to keep the peace I put up with everything.
I’m so sorry, Rosa. You are not alone in living this way, which is likely small consolation. What do you give yourself to feel good about who you are?
And don’t carry all that blame.
I know marriage has been talked about, the topic has been coming up a lot 4 me. If it was broken again I feel I revealed too much information.
I feel my info can’t be secured, it’s always like I get told I’m hiding something in my past. I’m willing to be vulnerable again, but I should reserve the right to keep my info safe.
The Autism Spectrum and undiagnosed adult male aspies: taking emotional unavailable to the ultimate level.
I appreciate this article. My wife is not an emotionally available person, and rather unskilled in sharing or receiving emotional information, as am I. We are starting to focus not on content but technique; our communication styles are both direct and often explosive so we have to find another way that doesn’t trigger underlying anxiety. I’m having to sloooow down my reaction time and intensity, so that I can hear her. I’m using a book called “Emotional Bullshit” (seriously, that’s the title) as a guide. It’s quite good.
Often I think men are emotionally unavailable because the anxiety of their partners triggers a sense of anxiety in themselves. Most of being a man is gutting out our fears and sticking it out in the pain locker. We don’t want to share or be vulnerable because we’re fighting like Hell to Not be vulnerable, to be tough, to get everyone through unscathed. Taking time to talk about the feelings that we are trying to avoid so we can make it through the day and not curl up into a weepy ball of crazy is central to masculinity. The other bit that we don’t share with our partners is the aggressive, hateful chimp mind that we battle constantly. I don’t share that with my wife because it scares the Hell out of her. Men often operate on four levels: angry, horny, terrified and fine. To be perfectly honest, the only two that my wife is actually interested in are horny and fine. She’s scared of my anger and has no respect for my fear. So when I’m “emotionally unavailable”, I’m simply not telling her things she’s already told me she doesn’t want to hear.
It almost feels like people who want to be intimate with men are asking to look in our mouths while we’re eating and then complaining to us about how disgusting it is in there and how awful our manners are. Maybe I don’t have a lot of experience with successful intimacy, but there’s only so much contempt a person can take for their emotions before they clam up. I’m not sure what those who desire intimacy with men expect; we are mostly plain-to-ugly inside, and it’s not a lot of fun to see or share.
I do appreciate the above comment about Seasons of Intimacy; that makes a lot of sense. There’s just not a lot of capacity (or need) to share deeply when it’s all about the rent. I also appreciate the idea present throughout the article that communities of support are necessary to healthy relationships. I truly don’t feel that a single person can or should be expected to be all for another, and the notion that we serve support roles in the lives of others as they do in ours and that such an arrangement is normal and healthy is important. My wife and I do share intimacies that are exclusive, but there are things she simply does not have the capacity or interest to process with me, so I turn elsewhere as does she. As long as we are clear about our boundaries and capabilities, and keep true to our goal of a successful marriage, we are safe. When things get out of balance, we are responsible to balance them. I have had an emotional affair, it was devastating, I don’t want that ever again, and I know how to avoid it…but the answer is not to put all of my emotional need on my wife. That’s part of what lead to the problem: I wanted more from her than she had to give, and I didn’t appreciate what she did have to give because I had inappropriate (all or nothing) expectations. It’s ok and healthy to accept your spouse’s limits. It’s ok and healthy to find your support in a community rather than expecting an individual to completely meet all of your emotional needs. We are troop-based animals; we need our troop as well as our mate to function.
Great article, good discussion. Thanks for this.
Thank you for this comment, Geoff. Fascinating, insightful, and informative — certainly to this woman.
Link to the book I mentioned. It’s a good ‘un.
Geoff,
I appreciate you sharing all of this. Very insightful!
Your personal explanation of how a man operates on 4 levels and your further examples actually helped me to understand and perhaps empathize with a man who is currently trying to pursue communications or some sort of human connection with me. And my own triggers, thoughts and feelings that are surfacing.
You have given me some things to consider. I appreciate your thoughts!
D.A. and Geoff,
I want to say thanks to both of you for the essay and the comments. This certainly gave me further insight and helped me with a decision to stop participating with a man who was pursuing contact with me. I have a tendency to give people the benefit of my doubt which sometimes lures me into unsafe territories. I am going to pay attention to the red flags and go with my thoughts that it is better to be safe rather than hurt sorrowfully.
Sounds like you basically just gave up on your husband, marriage, vows. Sometimes a separation is necessary to jump start a partner into passion – not just theirs but yours. But entirely breaking a marriage isn’t something to celebrate, and pointing the finger (calling the ex emotionally unavailable instead of bored) shows that there is some unresolved issue there the pointer hasn’t worked out in their own character yet.
I’m currently with someone who has the most bizarre relationship with emotional intimacy. I think he doesn’t know what it means and he seems to misunderstand what I want. I have been having a bad time recently and said I felt like just being really close to him at the moment, which he found sweet. So we went for a walk and I started a conversation – initially about my emotions and the bad time I’ve had then asked him if he ever felt the same way.
He went quiet so I told him if he was uncomfortable talking about this we could talk about something else. But he said he could “tell it was important to me” so told me about some anxieties he’d had at work, relating that he felt there was no “solution”.
I listened and told him that it feels that way at the moment because that’s often how stress works but I promise there is a solution and perhaps – if he liked – we could try a relaxation exercise together to see if he’s able to reduce his overall stress and perhaps that small, short-term “solution” to one of his problems (physical tension) would help give him confidence in his ability to do something about his worries. I also told him that if it didn’t work, it didn’t work, but perhaps it was worth a try just to see.
He nodded then told me he would “feel stressed now he had talked and that was the cost of him sharing” so I told him that was ok and I would try to take his mind off it by talking about other things. But “stressed” was the least of it. He had a 3-4 hour meltdown, apparently in extreme distress. He then resentfully told me he didn’t understand my need to hear about emotions since they were “him” and they “happened to him”.
I understand that disconnect because I’ve often experienced it myself so I just tried to explain I hadn’t really set out to talk specifically about stress or emotions, but simply to have a conversation with each other with the goal of getting to know and understand each other deeply. He said he has never experienced that before and does not understand the benefit of it. This is just one of several occasions where having anything beyond a shallow discussion about our days has resulted in a total emotional meltdown followed by a slightly passive aggressive conversation about how he’s “trying to meet my need” but that it’s very difficult for him.
I have now decided to stop attempting to connect through conversation and am reconsidering the relationship altogether. We’ve been together for about a year at this point and it’s getting … weird …
The odd thing is he isn’t ’emotionally unavailable’ in other ways, which was how I didn’t even notice anything amiss until the point in a relationship where you typically get closer emotionally. We connected well at the more superficial level you do in the first few months of dating; he is capable of listening and supporting me when I feel bad (and initially seemed very empathic); and he’s very physically affectionate as well as telling me he loves me all the time. But for me, it’s like being loved by an acquaintance because I just feel like I don’t know him on the inside.
Hey Ann. Wow. Tricky. First, let me say this. I’m not a therapist and I’m not an advice columnist. But I certainly welcome relationship conversation and hope others will jump in with their thoughts and ideas.
Putting on my “E. Jean” hat just for a moment… when you say things are getting weird, what do you mean? Scary in any way? If so, get out! If not scary, then again, what do you mean?
Ok. I don’t know how old either of you are or how experienced in relationships you are. It sounds like you were very gentle in trying to get him to communicate more, but whatever is going on with him, you definitely hit some triggers. We don’t necessarily know what those are until we bump into them (sometimes headlong), but without a significant investment in the relationship (or many many “pros” that outweigh the “cons,” let’s just say, walking on eggshells around your bf’s or gf’s (or spouse’s) hot buttons can be exhausting. Another variation — loving someone who never shares to a deep level, when that’s what you want — can be very lonely. Even if you know you’re loved.
When you say he isn’t emotionally unavailable in other ways — what do you mean? You said he was empathetic when you feel bad about something, but are there other ways in which emotional intimacy feels like it’s enough? Enough, relative to what you’re seeking?
This is a very helpful and thought provoking piece that has helped me conceptualize a blossoming relationship I recently ended.
We met online and seemed to have good chatting chemistry over the period of a few weeks. We eventually met in person and had good face-to-face chemistry across 5 dates over a little less than a month. However, I got the sense that I was feeling pressured and could not fully understand why.
In retrospect, it was because he was initiating all of our dates without giving me a chance to. He initiatiated his heavy emotional disclosures and requested that I do the same. Then he said that we should be spending more time with each other.
From there, I experienced him as being needy; not because he wanted those things from me or in a relationship but because he did not wait for me to become comfortable in reciprocating what he was throwing out, even after I told him I don’t rush into things and prefer that my relationships take time to organically develop; now that I think about it, I made that statement to him about date 3 or 4 when he initiatiated a conversation about defining the relationship.
I think a needy mindset and emotionally unavailability can become related. For instance, if a person is being emotionally available at a rate that does not match what their partner is reflecting back, it will have the same impact as giving anything to that partner in excess of what they are receiving back. When this happens, the clingy/needy label gets used and there is a smaller chance of the other partner becoming more emotionally available.
With emotional availability, it is important to be kind to yourself as in other aspects of the relationship. If they aren’t matching your level of emotional availability that you are giving out, give them space to do so because you are working really hard and they aren’t. If they don’t do it in a reasonable amount of time for you, then try to find out if there is a misunderstanding of how much emotional availability they want to give/receive or how they implement their brand of emotional availability (could be based on personality, culture, etc.).
There is always the possibility that a person will never naturally be as emotionally available as their partner will prefer them to be. As disappointing as that may be when a partner has other qualities that are desirable, it can still be a deal breaker. If that is the case, it is easier to end the relationship and not force it as it will probably lead to resentment and won’t be real emotional availability anyway.
This works the other way too. If there is a person that wants you to be more emotionally available than you care to be, why stay and be put in a position where you are shamed for someone else’s idea of healthy emotional expression for you?
I think if it becomes a pattern in relationships where one feels unfulfilled, emotionally or if one keeps losing out on relationships for not being emotionally available, then they should find better matches in partners and/or seek guidance from a therapist.
I really appreciated this article and I hope it helps others as it helped me conceptualize my future dating experiences.