Reply to What do women mean by emotional availability?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am happy with a man who is self aware enough to understand what emotions he is feeling and to deal with them in a healthy way. That can be a guy who prefers to deal with sadness or anger on his own or via exercise or a therapist -- whatever works for him. I don't necessarily need a guy who is going to share all his feelings with me.

The main problem with a lot of men is that they have been trained not even to acknowledge emotions, because they were raised with the belief that emotions are feminine or "weak." What happens with these guys is that they still have emotions (they are human) but shove them down or channel them in unhealthy ways because they have no ability to recognize them, name them, and deal with them. A lot of these men are the ones with rage issues, because anger is the ONE emotion a lot of men believe they are allowed to have, so when they experiences grief, envy, sadness, embarrassment, etc., it just becomes anger. Thus: rage.

So I don't need an "emotionally available" guy. But I don't want an emotionally stupid guy who can't even figure out "[b]oh I'm feeling disappointed and a little embarrassed about being passed over for that promotion at work, instead of taking that out on my loved ones as rage, I will go for a run, maybe process my thoughts in writing, and then make peace and move on[/b]."

Emotional maturity, not emotional availability.[/quote]

Testosterone drives a lot of our actions. I don't understand why women want to define how we should act We are different for God sake. We are not going to react the ways you want us to react. I feel like we are trying to "reengineer" men into the kind of men that women want. It creates resentment on both sides.[/quote]

PP here.

I was giving an example of ONE healthy way to process negative emotions. I wasn't saying that all men should deal with the embarrassment and disappointment of a work failure by running and writing in a journal. That's not even how I would do it. The point is that I want a man with the self awareness to be able to realize that's what he's feeling (instead of just ignoring those feelings, pretending he was fine, and then later being a jerk to ME for no reason because he's in a bad mood but can't recognize why or deal with it) and then do whatever works for him to process the emotions and move forward.

I grew up with a father who buried all his feelings and viewed admitting to feelings like fear, sadness, guilt, or embarrassment as unacceptable vulnerabilities. He was angry ALL THE TIME. He raged at his family, at people who worked for him, at waiters and front desk clerks. Because he was totally lacking in self awareness about his emotions and rather than putting effort into figuring it out, he just took it out on other people. TBH, I also did this quite a bit in my young adulthood because I followed his example. But then I went to therapy, worked on myself, and figured out how to handle feelings.

I would expect the same of any man I married. [/quote]

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