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[quote=Anonymous]Emotional intimacy is a basic human need. If you go years and years without it, you will be lonely and sad and miserable. You might come up with workarounds that keep you from feeling horrible all the time, but those workarounds are usually dysfunctional.

Now, the degree to which men feel comfortable admitting this is a basic need of theirs, and their willingness to engage in the activities that will enable them to have it (activities like: knowing how one feels, being able to acknowledge those feelings to another person, and being willing to listen to another person acknowledge their feelings) can vary widely. The men who absolutely cannot do these things usually have Issues and make bad partners. Often they are angry and don't know why (hint, their anger is actually a mixture of other feelings they refuse to acknowledge because anger is the only emotion they feel comfortable expressing). They may use sarcasm or humor as a guard against basic emotions like disappointment or sadness.

If they have kids, men like this will often have high conflict relationships with their kids, because they crave the love and affection of their children but don't know how to show love affection FOR their kids, so over time their kids will avoid them or become hostile towards their fathers. This will wound these men, but they won't be able to acknowledge the emotional wound, so instead they will lash out with anger or sarcasm, only further distancing their children from them.

But a lot of men are not this far gone and it's possible to facilitate them becoming more emotionally available and vulnerable. Now, the degree to which a woman wants to put the work into doing that is also going to vary. I think more and more women just don't want to deal with this, so a lot of these men end up single or divorced, and retrenched in their fear and loathing of feelings.

The ideal situation is to raise boys to understand that feelings are natural, human, not that scary, and okay to talk about. You can be masculine and manly and still be able to say "I felt disappointed today when I didn't get a work assignment I felt I had earned." In fact, being able to acknowledge vulnerable feelings is a sign of emotional strength and is a lot more masculine than getting really petty and doing a sarcastic imitation of your "stupid" boss and complaining for months about how dumb your job is.[/quote]

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