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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am 45 divorced and currently in therapy. The primary reason my ex filed for divorce was exactly what the OP asked about. When I met my therapist the first I asked her was how to become an emotionally present partner. She said we need to identify my emotional needs first. Ha! You thought it would have been easy. [b]Nope. I must have suppressed my own needs for so long that I don’t even know what they are.[/b] And my therapist is helping me. Women talk about their emotions, they are not afraid of them. They seek help, advice etc. We men we are the opposite. Most of us suppress them. I was blaming myself a lot but my therapist told me it’s much more complicated that I am making it seem. Right now I am not dating and I don’t plan to do so for along time because what I am learning about myself is making reflect harder about the type of woman that’s ideal for me. I am in no hurry. Let’s see in a few months where I am at. But I’ll say though that women are far more complex than I thought. Many of us men seriously underestimate the emotional needs of a woman. [/quote]

First off, congratulations PP on working on this! Whatever happens in your love life, I think it will make you a happier person in your life. If you have kids, they will appreciate it too.

But the bolded is, I think, at the heart of it. Men are taught to suppress emotions from a very young age because they are taught it is not masculine to feel deeply. So a lot of men are very cut off from their own emotions. This is why so many men have anger management issues, because anger is the rare emotions that is deemed masculine and therefore lots of other feelings (grief, fear, loneliness) get channeled into anger. But they even suppress their anger because of a stereotype that men must be "in control" at all times, and thus all their emotion comes out in angry outbursts.

I do think it's possible to work on this within a relationship, but you need both partners to be willing. My DH had this dynamic. We've been working on it throughout our relationship though, and he's always been willing to admit that he struggles with it (I also have things I struggle with and he helps me with). It helps that he had a serious relationship before me where this came up and the relationship ended because he couldn't work on it, so he was highly motivated to do so with me.

Another thing that helped, and I am sorry to say this but it is the truth: his dad dying. It's not the case with every man, but the for my DH, the example his dad set was a very bad one with regards to emotions. His dad was older, more Silent Generation than Boomer. He had a lot of very restrictive ideas about what men and women are like, and how they are different. He was extremely hard on my DH as a kid, but especially when he would cry or express fear or vulnerability. After he died, my DH had an easier time accessing those feelings. It was like he'd been released from his dad's mandate not to feel.[/quote]

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