When Your Mate Is Emotionally Unavailable: Radical Steps to Transform Your Relationship

By Craig A. Miller

If you are willing to take a journey to become a healthier you, then you will obtain the tools to bring lasting healing to your life and your relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781946977991

Book preview

Notes

PREFACE

There is a widespread and devastating problem in our homes today that is difficult to recognize and rarely understood. The problem occurs when one mate has difficulty showing and receiving emotions, love, and affection, leaving the other family members to exist in a world of loneliness, disappointment, and disrespect. If there is little opportunity to communicate thoughts and feelings in the marriage relationship, the unloved mate believes the only choices are to resign to living in an unsatisfying relationship or decide to become one more divorce statistic. Living with someone that is emotionally unavailable is a very common, yet subtle, form of disrespect. This disrespect is often misunderstood and is a destructive problem of major proportions that is hard for couples to identify, with little-known solutions—until now.

When Your Mate Has Emotionally Checked Out is for people living in relationships where the lack of emotions, love, and respect continues despite repeated unsuccessful efforts to change the relationship through praying, loving, waiting, complaining, and counseling. This book candidly addresses how the lack of emotion destroys the ability to have heartfelt love and gives radical solutions to bring the emotions, love, and respect back into the relationship. This book also provides valuable insights, individual examples, inspiring scriptures, and powerful techniques to learn why a person becomes emotionally unavailable or unemotional, and teaches you how to help them emotionally relate the way they were originally created. Most importantly, the unloved partner will be empowered to do these things: respond differently to the unemotional mate; overcome the frustration of living with the stubborn attitudes of a selfish mate; and change the unemotional mate’s mind without the emotional mate losing his or her own heart, mind, and soul in the process.

It is also important to understand that the characteristics of people whom I call emotionally unavailable or unemotional are very similar in nature and will be discussed in detail in this book. These people have difficulty showing healthy emotions and are unable to provide healthy encouragement or support when others express emotions. However, one difference is that the emotionally unavailable individual would have the tendency to demonstrate various types of negative emotions, such as anger. In order to make it easier for the reader, the term unemotional mate will be used throughout the book to combine the problems and solutions for both the emotionally unavailable and unemotional individuals. The term emotional mate will be used to refer to the unloved partner who is struggling to change the unemotional mate. To help apply this information, case examples have been written from the stories I have heard over the years. The names used in each example are fictitious, but the examples are real to emphasize that you are not alone and there is hope with your struggles.

I would like to thank God as the source of my knowledge and direction for this book. I am also grateful for the many friends who have been prayerfully supportive and helpful in providing suggestions and encouragement throughout my writing. I want to especially thank my wife and two boys for their patience and love throughout my learning and writing. And finally, it is my hope and prayer that the reader will find the emotion, love, and respect that he or she deserves from what God originally intended in every relationship.

PART I

where have all the feelings gone?

1

STRUGGLING TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

—Miles Franklin

As Mary was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee, her mind drifted to people she thought of calling. Oh, forget it, she thought to herself, I wouldn’t want to burden them. To escape the familiar feelings of loneliness and sadness, she began thinking of all the things she had to do that day. She rationalized that her friends were busy people, her spouse worked hard, and it was important that she accomplish her own activities. After all, she reminded herself, I’ve struggled with finding meaningful relationships for so long, why should I expect them now?

Mary could not escape the gnawing emptiness she felt deep inside. Pushing away these feelings over the years was beginning to take its toll. She knew this wasn’t what she wanted, but she didn’t know how to change it. Deep inside there existed a strong yearning, like an ache in her chest, to share an emotional connection with someone in her life. She longed for conversation about things that mattered, with people who were important to her. Mary yearned for someone to share the burdens of her heart and the treasured moments of her day. She wondered if having those heartfelt conversations would ease the emptiness inside and help her to feel better about herself. Mary believed it was possible to have love and acceptance in close relationships, but couldn’t understand why it was such a struggle to make it happen.

A grumbling noise from the other room brought Mary out of her deep thoughts. Mary looked up to see her husband, Phil, complaining to the guy on the television. Seeing Phil slouched in the chair brought a flood of thoughts and emotions. Mary wanted to scream out, Why aren’t you sitting in here looking at me instead of having a relationship with that idiot box? Why don’t you talk to me about things that matter in life? For years, she tried to overcome the anguish she felt over feeling ignored. To Mary, it seemed that her husband always had more to do or say to others than to her. What is wrong with me? she thought to herself. Mary couldn’t remember the last time she had a meaningful dialogue with Phil about a subject that mattered. When Phil did not talk to her it was as if he were saying, You’re not important, and this relationship doesn’t matter. The more she grieved about what was missing in their relationship, the deeper her hurt and disappointment grew. Looking at the clock, Mary realized she was running late for an appointment. Just like so many times before, Mary pushed the ugly feelings aside, so she could get on with the day.

WHEN DREAMS ARE CRUSHED

Loneliness has become an increasing problem in our relationships today. Relationships are becoming lonelier as people are turning inward instead of reaching out to others. Our ability to share what is in our hearts and on our minds is becoming a lost art. Like Mary, when you are living in a relationship without receiving love or being able to express heartfelt thoughts and feelings, you struggle to have a meaningful relationship. Mary’s heartache and loneliness resulted from her disappointment at not having her dreams fulfilled by the most important person in her life. Mary wanted what everyone yearns for and what everyone desires in a relationship: to be loved, accepted, respected, and appreciated by another person. However, when you don’t receive those desires your dreams can be crushed. It would be natural to dream of having these basic human desires met by your mate, but disappointing to have those dreams crushed because your mate is incapable of fulfilling them.

If you live long enough without your dreams fulfilled, there comes a sad twist. The twist comes when your dreams are all you have left because it is too disappointing to live in the reality that your mate is unable to love you. One spouse explained it like this: Living for years with my unemotional mate had caused me to think that there must be something wrong with me. That my need for love was wrong, that no one could fill it. I felt I should give up my desire for an intimate relationship because my husband didn’t think it was important. I began to wonder why I should try so hard to get someone to love me. I seemed to be the only one starving for love so it must be my unfulfilled need, not my husband’s obligation to fill me or make me feel loved. Or at least that is what I’ve told myself, not realizing it is his emotionless way of life that has contributed to my emotional hunger and confusion."

NOT TRUE TO YOURSELF

This book will focus on what happens when you live with a mate that is either unavailable to meet your emotional needs (emotionally unavailable) or unable to communicate positive, tender emotions (unemotional). These are considered very common and subtle forms of disrespect that have often been misunderstood and are devastating problems that can be hard to identify. Most of the time, the unemotional mate is unaware of his or her lack of emotions, which leaves the other mate struggling to get emotional needs met. When you live without the opportunity to communicate what is in your heart and mind, you will not feel loved, respected, and accepted. If you feel trapped or unable to change your situation, you can eventually believe your only choices are to resign yourself to live in a loveless, unsatisfying relationship or decide to become one more divorce statistic.

You are not true to yourself if you believe for one minute you must exist in a relationship without love or emotions. When you only exist in a relationship, you become physically, spiritually, and emotionally unfaithful to yourself, the relationship, and to God. You are not true to what you want and need, not true to what God wants or needs from you, not true to what your mate wants or needs from you, and not living up to what your children deserve from you! You may believe you are having a loving and satisfying relationship, despite the loneliness you feel. Unfortunately, you probably are not fully aware of what the truth is for your life. Like so many others, you may not know what a meaningful, loving, satisfying, and close relationship looks or feels like. As a result, you settle for living with less of a relationship than what you really deserve.

I could see the hurt in Mary’s eyes as she continued with her story. Why have I allowed myself to live in this relationship without love? Mary said with regret and sadness in her voice. She had never realized her loneliness and not feeling loved was a result of Phil’s emotional unavailability. She never realized that she was being disrespected when Phil discouraged her and other family members from expressing feelings. Until now, Mary never understood that Phil was unemotional or that she was living in an emotionless relationship. To this point, Mary always thought the lack of emotions and loneliness was a normal part of life. Mary has come to understand that emotions and love are what should be normal in her relationship. She was delighted to learn it was not too late to change how she felt inside and change how she related to Phil.

WITHOUT EMOTIONS YOU WILL NOT HAVE A LOVING RELATIONSHIP

Without expressing emotions you will not have the ability to establish or maintain a meaningful relationship with love and respect. What is a meaningful relationship? you may ask. It’s when you can express what is inside your heart or mind and just be yourself without being afraid of rejection. It’s when you can freely share thoughts, dreams, sorrows, and tears, believing they are accepted and respected without question. It’s when you feel safe, secure, and loved inside your heart, like being wrapped in a warm, cozy blanket on a cold winter’s night. Those feelings shared from one heart to another are the very interactions that generate a sense of personal acceptance, worth, and importance that goes beyond ordinary lip service.

Mary’s heartache is one of the most common consequences of an emotionless relationship. When your thoughts and feelings are not allowed or accepted, you do not feel loved or respected as a person and you begin to question your own self-worth. How worthy you feel about yourself is often related to how your feelings are received from the important people in your life. The relationship can blossom or be shattered by your partner’s response to the emotions you express.

Like Mary, you may desire love, acceptance, and meaningful conversation. The feelings generated by the burdens and treasured moments in your life are meant to be shared, not hidden away where they lose their meaning. Having a tender moment happen in your life is only half the significance. Sharing the tender moment is the other half. Sharing life’s difficulties with someone is how burdens become lighter and healing takes place. There is a verse in the Bible that says, Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10). Sharing what is in your heart lifts the heaviness and brings encouragement to the soul to carry you through to fight the next battle. If you are unable to experience what you feel and think within your heart and mind, you will struggle to feel loved and respected in any relationship, even in your relationship with God.

WHEN THERE IS NO EMOTION, THERE IS NO AFFECTION

Signs of affection such as tender hugs, kisses, and touches are all outward expressions of inward emotions. Unfortunately, a life without emotion creates relationships without affection. The unemotional mate lacks the ability to give affection because they do not have the emotion to give, and there is not an understanding why affection is important to make a person feel loved. The lack of affection from an unemotional mate inevitably creates distance within the relationship, eroding the emotional union and destroying any potential for emotional growth as a couple. Additionally, lack of affection has long-lasting, devastating effects on the emotional well-being of current family members and those in future generations. Being in a relationship without emotion and affection is a lonely and agonizing way to live. Meaningful relationships are based on foundational needs such as being loved, accepted, respected, and appreciated. How you express those needs to one another will greatly influence the success or destruction of the relationship.

WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Are you living in a relationship like Mary and Phil? Have your dreams and needs been crushed? Are you struggling in a relationship that lacks emotions, love, and respect? Have you been waiting for your relationship to change, trying everything you can think of, only to be continually disappointed, disrespected, and unloved? The purpose of this book is to provide radical solutions to both the unemotional mate and the emotional mate in order to make drastic changes in the relationship. Hang on to your seat, because you will be surprised by what you learn and what you will be expected to change to make your needs, wants, and prayers come true.

STUDY QUESTIONS

1.Describe how you or someone you know is living a relationship similar to Mary and Phil.

2.What were your dreams and prayers for your relationship with your mate and what has been the reality of your situation?

3.Describe what a meaningful and close relationship means to you and how you have been struggling to obtain love and respect with your mate.

2

WHEN YOU LIVE WITHOUT EMOTIONS

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.

Helen Keller

Elliot was a successful corporate lawyer.¹ Life was going very well until he was suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor the size of a small orange. Choosing to live, Elliot decided to undergo surgery to remove the tumor. The surgery was considered a success and Elliot eventually returned to work with much of the same intellectual ability as before. It wasn’t long, however, before people began to recognize that there seemed to be a change in his personality. Elliot was not using his time wisely; he was becoming upset over minor details and was showing little sense of responsibility for his actions. Along with these behavior changes, a succession of life alterations took place: his wife left him, he wasted away his savings, and he was fired from his job.

Wondering what caused these problems, Elliot underwent extensive testing that concluded there was nothing wrong with his thinking. Seeking further help, Elliot consulted a neurologist who also found nothing wrong with his logic, memory, or attention. However, something the neurologist noticed was very striking. During the entire time they discussed the traumatic events of his life, Elliot displayed no emotion regarding the things that happened. As Elliot told his personal, horrific, and life-changing story there was no hint of regret, sadness, frustration, anger, or emotional pain. The neurologist concluded that the combination of the brain tumor and the surgical removal of part of the prefrontal lobes had severed the ties between the emotional part of Elliot’s brain and the thinking abilities of his brain. Elliot was able to make computer-like decisions, but unable to assign values to differing issues in life. Every decision was neutral. The doctor found that Elliot’s difficulty with making decisions was directly connected to his inability to have feelings.

In his book, Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Daniel Goleman emphasizes that, One lesson from Elliot’s in decisiveness is the crucial role of feeling in navigating the endless stream of life’s personal decisions. While strong feelings can create havoc in reasoning, the lack of awareness of feeling can also be ruinous, especially in weighing the decisions on which our destiny largely depends: what career to pursue, whether to stay with a secure job or switch to one that is riskier but more interesting, whom to date or marry, where to live . . . Such decisions cannot be made well through sheer rationality; they require gut feeling, and the emotional wisdom garnered through past experiences. Formal logic alone can never work as the basis for deciding who to marry or trust or even what job to take; these are realms where reason without feeling is blind.²

LIVING WITHOUT EMOTIONS

Elliot’s story is not meant to make you race to your doctor to find out if your unemotional mate ever had surgery. It is to emphasize that feelings play a vital part in making personal decisions. Telling others your innermost desires, needs, and re actions, regarding what is happening, are how you let those feelings out. Living an unemotional life similar to Elliot is like living in a glass bubble that surrounds your very being. You can see and hear everything, but it’s as if you are in your own secluded world. You don’t let people into your world, and you have a difficult time reaching out. Even the people that matter the most (or should matter the most) have a hard time penetrating that bubble. You can see them, but there is always something that separates you. That is why you struggle with relationships, even with God. The unemotional person believes emotions are not important since they can make you weak, get in the way of logical thinking, and/or threaten your control on life. In fact, this is how the unemotional person expects everyone else to be. This way of thinking is subtle, socially acceptable, and very damaging for relationships.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A PERSON THAT IS UNEMOTIONAL

As I mentioned in the preface, the characteristics for the emotionally unavailable or unemotional individual are very similar in nature. Although the emotionally unavailable mate may show some negative emotions, such as anger, both individuals have difficulty showing healthy emotions and are unable to provide healthy encouragement or support when emotions are expressed by others. A person that is emotionally unavailable or unemotional will fit many of the following characteristics. (These characteristics will be explained in detail throughout the book using the term unemotional mate.)

•Has (or had) people and experiences in life that have discouraged emotions

•Stubborn and sees life more in extremes—black and white

•Relates more with facts and logic rather than with emotions of the heart

•Unable to emotionally respond and validate the feelings of others

•Rarely shows emotion (crying) or initiates physical signs of tenderness (hugs or kisses)

•Does not understand why others show emotions and believe it is a sign of weakness

•Tunes people out when emotions are being expressed

•Struggles with getting emotionally close to people, including God

•Has difficulty with conversations that include feelings about self or others

•Demonstrates love by performing tasks or giving material things rather than by showing signs of love and tenderness

•If physical affection is given, there is an expectation to receive a favor in return

•Believes sex is what makes you emotionally close, rather than feeling close from a loving relationship—or emotions are so closed there is no desire for sex.

HOW THE UNEMOTIONAL PERSON RELATES WITH OTHERS

When emotions are not part of your life, you will struggle with relating to people and situations of daily living. Since unemotional people do not know how to deal with emotions the person will use a variety of ways to handle daily circumstances. For the unemotional person, the following behaviors can become the normal way of handling life. But, to others (especially family members), the behaviors can be seen as very frustrating, disappointing, irrational, childish, defiant, and irresponsible.

Just the facts

Since emotions are not part of life, unemotional people relate through facts, logic, and rules. If someone is hurt, showing compassion, tenderness, and empathy rarely happens since they do not have the capacity to use feelings to connect with the heart. Discussions will center on what and why something happened rather than a sensitive conversation to understand how the person feels or how they are dealing with the issues. When you don’t have emotions, there is not the capability to show affection, love, and tenderness to encourage a trusting, close relationship and little ability to validate or encourage emotions in others.

Matt was successful at his job and his strong work ethic made him serious about getting the job done right with little time for idle chitchat. If a fellow employee showed some emotion over an issue, Matt would become irritated inside. Matt might listen and offer some advice, but what he really wanted was to tell the person, Quit your moaning and get back to work. Matt could get away with his insensitive nature at work since his productivity thrived on his unemotional state of mind. However, his emotional insensitivity was very evident with his lack of patience and inability to get emotionally close with his wife and children. How Matt treated others was very frustrating, disheartening, and disappointing to his family members.

If you ignore it long enough, it will

Reviews for When Your Mate Is Emotionally Unavailable

[Rdenholl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was an excellent summary, full of relatable examples of a very hard topic to describe. The advice was very helpful. I like how he wrote to both sides of the problem. This might be a good book to work together as a couple. To really help your mate understand your perspective, and the affects his behavior has on you. And if your situation gets so unbearable, why you must remove yourself from his toxic behaviors.