When men withhold feelings/emotions: do they have them or do they just not care?

katiekat0214 · 2021-09-04T21:43:14+00:00

My first husband was very emotionally constipated, and to this day, I could not tell you if the emotions were there, or he just didn't have them. It was a negative learning experience, and ultimately the reason I divorced, because he just couldn't express himself. At first, I thought he just wouldn't, and with a little love from little old Pick-me, he could express himself... nope. It taught me that as someone who values "words of affirmation", I simply couldn't date someone whose sole love language was acts of service; there HAD to be verbal facility in there also. Second time around, late second husband was the man for me: verbally expressive, and he did things for me, thought ahead, anticipated needs, treated me like a queen. Lesson learned.

AAlegend8 · 2021-09-04T20:22:25+00:00

There was recently a post on mixed signals which could be of value. Mixed signals=he doesn’t care or he is using you. Couple that with if he wanted to, he would, and you have your answer.

Geocities_SEO_Expert · 2021-09-04T21:18:14+00:00

I think they are trying to avoid saying the truth, without using a lie that can be held against them in the future. They just don't care.

theredwolf07 · 2021-09-04T21:25:45+00:00

No, he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t want to outright say it due to fear of losing his supply/target, but also doesn’t have the manipulative skill to straight up lie or love bomb.

Peak_Tree · 2021-09-04T21:37:35+00:00

It doesn't really matter. Some can care but they don't want you to know because they think that makes them wipped...and that's very telling of what they think of us saying what we feel for them tbh.

You just need to make it a part of vetting and spare yourself the pain.

lansburysoda · 2021-09-04T23:40:52+00:00

There’s a difference between being emotionally guarded and emotionally manipulative. Unfortunately they often look like the same thing. The only real way of knowing is to trust your gut. If you’re confused and questioning all the time, trust that feeling.

Junior-Lion7893 · 2021-09-05T02:08:34+00:00

Men who can withhold feelings/emotions are the transactional type. It’s always tit for tat, and 50/50. I’d steer clear of this.

basuragoddess · 2021-09-05T06:33:56+00:00

I was just thinking about this. I think that when men are emotionally unintelligent, conveying apathy is the only way to have power with emotional dynamics.

ShegoGreen · 2021-09-05T04:06:26+00:00

Many men genuinely struggle to express their emotions due to a combination of biology and how they were raised. Yet as cold as this sounds, it is not our jobs to guess what they are feeling as if we are their mothers or therapists paid by the hour. If a man cannot communicate effectively or be emotionally available for their partner, they should not be in a relationship. It's not fair to the women in their lives that have to constantly be the emotional guesser and supporter when she is also in need of emotional support. This will eventually lead her to feeling burned out and like she's the one carrying the relationship. How is she supposed to be attracted to a man physically is she's not connected to him emotionally or psychologically?

It's proven that the foundations of healthy relationships aren't wild sexual escapades- it's communication. But if the woman is doing all the communicating, and there's no one listening, is there really communication going on? Obviously not. And then there are many men who withhold emotional availability in order to always keep women pursuing their affection. These men hide behind the facade of the first kind of men mentioned above and I feel no sympathy for them. What they enjoy is abuse.

shljock · 2021-09-04T23:12:00+00:00

🚩 he's into stoicism and marcus aurelius (more accurately his sociopathic interpretation of it)

arnezuara · 2021-09-04T21:49:53+00:00

You shouldn’t care whether or not they do care. You shouldn’t care about the “why”. The very moment a man shows you that he is not capable of (or willing to) emotionally investing in you, he should be dropped instantly.

2021-09-05T06:41:29+00:00

Had a guy from junior college (senior high school in the US) who was very obviously attracted to me. He called me frequently and took me out on a date, but he never actually admitted that he liked me. He’d say shit like “your cousin (my younger cousin who I’m very close to, he’s like a little brother to me) is such a creep, he’s attracted to you”. He’d say this because I spent more time with my cousin than him, and because my cousin HATED him. We all played video games together and this guy was verbally abusing my friends and cousin for being “bad”. My cousin despised how he let his friends mock me for being bad at the game, and how much he was contacting me. This guy, no joke, never left me alone and bothered me the SECOND I came online. He’d contact my friends and ask them for my details, which they obviously never gave him. He’d join my game lobbies uninvited and I was “too nice” to tell him to fuck off.

The best part? My cousin is GAY. Like he’s so obviously not attracted to women, and this guy was jealous of him. My cousin has very high standards for men and immediately knew that this guy was a loser.

So instead of just telling me he liked me, he literally preferred harassing me and my friends and trying to cut me off from my friends/family so he could have me all to himself.

Spoiler alert: Even in my pickme days (this was about half a decade ago), this dude was SO creepy that I never started a relationship with him.

fierce_and_mighty · 2021-09-05T12:34:29+00:00

My ex was a MAJOR dismissive avoidant and did all those things. 6 months traumatised and taught me enough. Initially tried to use attachment style info I learned to “help” us but that was completely foolish because stupid fucktard liked the way he was. When I once asked him what he loved about me, he only named things that benefitted him 🤦🏻‍♀️ how I care for him, how I fit in with his goals etc etc. I think the thing that fucked me up on top of all that abusiveness is that the only intimacy he felt comfortable with was sex... which I only ever want to partake in when I felt safe and loved... aka HARDLY EVER with him!! When I didn’t want to be intimate in that way (I would have loved to be intimate emotionally, my god) he withdrew even more and I felt so alone in bed with him in those moments. An hour away from home, at his house, with no way to get back home until he drove me home the next afternoon. Completely untethered from the “love” holding me to the earth, floating in a cold, lonely abyss. Sexual coercion at its finest.

ComprehensiveAmoeba9 · 2021-09-04T21:33:38+00:00

I dated a guy who didn’t even have the balls to tell me he wasn’t ready for a relationship even though he called us exclusive after seeing each other for a few weeks. He claimed he thought he was ready but his ex left him just a few months before so he was still healing from that. I had to be the one to break up with him because he was becoming low effort and our conversations couldn’t go beyond surface level and I realized how little I knew about him as a person. When I told him I was done, that’s when he finally decided to tell me how he was feeling all along. He practically lied to my face, kept dating me, and he told me he did that because “he didn’t want to hurt my feelings by saying he changed his mind”. I told one of his friends about it and he told me how the guy I dated had a bunch of childhood trauma and hardly ever told him anything about it or other stuff about his past because he hardly ever opened up or shared his emotions. They’d been best friends for years too. Turns out I dodged a major bullet because this guy clearly needed therapy so he could address his personal issues but refused to acknowledge he needed help and just suppressed his emotions with alcohol instead

hopeful_flounder93 · 2021-09-05T11:43:59+00:00

Oh, they care.

About themselves.

RecentSprinkles5997 · 2021-09-05T16:24:43+00:00

I think some truly lack the emotional intelligence to even know what they feel let alone articulate it .

Ironsculpture · 2021-09-05T10:59:23+00:00

Why does it matter? At all? If a men leaves you emotionally dissatisfied and neglected then he's just not worth it.

afrodeasyak · 2021-09-06T15:29:46+00:00

For me that's a sign to get tf out and save my heart and self for someone who truly cares. If he can't show me and tell me, he doesn't deserve to be with me.

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Technusgirl · 2021-09-04T21:24:59+00:00

That guy was emotionally unavailable, his thing he's had someone you used to date and are not still with

Title	When men withhold feelings/emotions: do they have them or do they just not care?
Author	WinterDoughnut
Upvotes	346
Comments	65
Date	September 4, 2021 8:13 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/phyqyy/when_men_withhold_feelingsemotions_do_they_have/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/when-men-withhold-feelingsemotions-do-they-have.1066865 https://theredarchive.com/post/1066865

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