I’m an Emotional Man, but am I Emotionally Available?

By Jim Herbert

As I sit here today, I am an openly and unabashedly emotional man. While I have always been emotional, even since my early childhood, it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I became more comfortable being openly emotional. It wasn’t until I was in my late 50s that I started to let go of the shame of being a highly emotional man and began to lean into being unabashedly emotional.

Over the last ten years, I have poured countless hours into studying human emotions and how they affect our life circumstances. As a coach and a MenLiving facilitator, I find myself in conversations almost every single day where I am trying to help other men get comfortable with the idea of expressing, feeling and using their own emotions to create constructive change in their own lives. I have read nearly everything I can get my hands on as it relates to men and their emotions. There are parts of me that feel like I have the equivalent of a PhD in being a student of human emotions and then there are other parts of me that feel like I am still in kindergarten.

I will be working on understanding how our emotions affect the reality we create in our external world for the rest of my life, but lately I have found myself asking myself one particular question inside my head as it relates to my own emotions and that question is this:

Am I emotionally available in my primary relationships?

For years I have worked under the assumption that since I am highly emotional, that I am also an emotionally available man. The truth is that being emotional and being emotionally available are two very different things. There are some fairly common markers that can be used to help me measure whether or not I am emotionally available:

• Am I able to build emotional intimacy with others?
• Am I comfortable in committed relationships?
• Am I able to show my vulnerability?
• Can I hold space for others and make them feel psychologically safe?
• Do I have a good level of self-awareness and engage in regular self-care?
• Do I set clear boundaries that address my own needs and respect the needs of others?
• Am I open to discussing future plans with confidence?

Most of you who have been in a meeting or have had a one on one conversation with me would likely agree, that as it relates to the way I show up in the 3D matrix of life – my persona – I appear to be fairly emotionally available. I would agree with that conclusion.

The place where the slope gets a little more slippery for me is in my two primary relationships at home with my wife and daughter. I believe that there is a slightly different set of more nuanced questions that I need to ask myself as to whether or not I am emotionally available in my primary partner relationship with my wife:

• Do I make her feel seen and heard on a daily basis?
• Am I a stable, mature presence as the patriarch of the family?
• Do I receive and process feedback in a constructive way?
• Do I help her feel understood?
• Can I confidently engage in planning discussions for our family’s future?
• Do I inspire her to feel secure in our relationship?

I’m pretty sure if you asked my wife Christiana to answer those six questions from her perspective, she would politely say that, “He tries his best and there is room for some growth.” I would agree with that conclusion also.

Primary relationships like the ones that I have with my wife and daughter are far more emotionally intense for me than other relationships that I have, even with friends who I consider to be in the innermost circles of my life. For all the work that I havedone around my emotions in the last decade, when things get emotionally challenging at home, I still have a tendency to a) withdraw to a safe space and shut down b) become defensive when I get feedback or c) collapse into my victimhood and question my self worth.

There are plenty of logical reasons why I (and many other men) tend to be less emotionally available than women in general, and in primary partnerships in particular. In my mind, this pattern begins like all things, in our early childhood. Society has historically placed expectations on young boys to be tough, resilient, and indifferent to their feelings. Phrases like “big boys don’t cry” have echoed through our world for generations, teaching young boys that expressing their emotions is a sign of weakness. As a result, many men grow up believing that having big feelings is something to be avoided, which can definitely decrease emotional availability.

From a human psychology standpoint, research suggests that men and women tend to process emotions differently. As a general rule, men think logically and analytically about their feelings, while women often engage in a more detailed emotional exploration. This difference in no way means that one way is better than the other; rather, it highlights a mere difference in how we are wired.

I believe that for men, pretty much all emotions can be perceived as overwhelming. Even positive emotions like excitement, happiness and joy can feel uncomfortable to a man who has not yet learned how to experience and process big emotions at the body level. As a man who identifies as a super empath, this is totally the case for me. While I am living through the world feeling all my big feelings, I am also picking up everybody else’s feelings. I don’t only get a sense of other people’s emotions, I actually feel them in my body. That’s what causes me to withdraw at times. I see my withdrawals as my survival instinct kicking in whereas my wife and daughter experience those withdrawals as me being emotionally distant, which can make them feel like they did something “wrong” to cause the withdrawal. My shutting down is in no way a reflection of my ability to feel deeply. It is merely a self-protective mechanism.

Perhaps the single largest reason that men tend to be less emotionally available than their female counterparts comes down to one of the most powerful of all emotions – FEAR! One of the things that I think men fear the most is being vulnerable. Fear of being judged, ridiculed, or rejected can be paralyzing. Many men have experienced situations where opening up led to negative consequences, causing them to build emotional walls.

One of the best things about MenLiving is that we create safe spaces for men to express themselves. By promoting an environment of acceptance and understanding, we can help tear down the walls of emotional resistance and help men create deeper emotional connections. As a result, instead of perceiving emotions and emotional availability as a flaw, men can learn to view all exploration of their emotions as an opportunity for growth and connection.

So here’s to helping create a world of healthy, intentional, connected AND emotionally available men. I’m doing my part by looking in the mirror and trying to do my best, while at the same time, accepting myself as I am.