this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Agreed.
My husband has had virtually no emotional support from anyone, so much so that he doesn't understand how to communicate any of his feelings.
"How do you feel?" "I don't know" "Can I do something to help?" "I don't know"
I definitely don't ignore his mental health but his lack of communication drives me up the pole. Often I have to just walk away out of frustration. I wish I understood how to get through to him without it making me want to bash my own skull against the wall. I think a big part of it is that he doesn't want to admit that he has any emotions at all
Yeah. That's real fun isn't it? And I really don't know. I'm luckier than most men, in that I have an understanding wife who doesn't use my emotions against me.
Seems like you two chose each other well!
My husband is usually functional, but when things go wrong he crawls up inside himself and just doesn't wanna come out. I deal with problems by facing them head-on, and he deals with them by pretending they don't exist. Obviously that creates conflict (which then doesn't help either of us. It's extremely frustrating to know there is a problem but not know what that problem is)
He's told me that he'll go to therapy. I'm hoping that a third party will be able to help him unravel why he doesn't know how he's feeling, and how to communicate his needs
I am like that too. When I go over my limits, my tendency is to isolate myself.
I am better now, but I've been with a psychotherapist since 2020 and I am a lot better now at identifying my emotions and not isolate myself.
For me what worked was learning to identify my emotions. My first reaction to pretty much any negative emotion is anger and I don't think that will change. However, I've learned to identify the emotion after the anger and then I speak it out. Sometimes, just a small statement to myself (" I acknowledge this emotion X") and sometimes, it leads to a long thinking about the situation that caused the emotion and how that made me feel.
So to help your other half, helping him identify the emotion after the anger would be the first step.
I concur, but after 3 years of me trying to help him identify what he's feeling, a third party has to get involved. The problem is that I get frustrated and that doesn't help anyone. He absolutely needs someone neutral to guide him. It can't be me
I understand. And a therapist will have a multitude of tools to help him find the right one to start the journey.
I wish you the best and hope that your situation will get better soon.
Therapy and/or an ADHD diagnosis (not joking, one symptom of neuroatypical people is the inability to identify emotions in themselves (like me lol)).
I suspect autism with him. He's an Engineer, so he has a lot of Braun power but I've had to teach him to greet me, say please and thank you, and introduce me to people I haven't met. He literally left me in his friends doorway when we were dating. (It was a party and he opened the door, walked in and started hanging out with their 3year old while I stood there dumbfounded until I started introducing myself as his girlfriend. Yes, we broke up over it, but we figured it out and now we're married)
Maybe this could help him? It's from a peer counselor who deals a lot with these types of problems, usually with fairly nerdy guys, many of them on the spectrum.