You are going through a significant emotional phase, whether sad or happy and want to share those emotions with someone. Of course, your first choice is your husband, who is closest to you and who should be your emotional support.
Your attempt to share your emotions gets a cold response from your husband. Are you already familiar with this situation?
Why can’t you talk to your husband about your feelings? Because then your husband gets defensive, angry, invalidates your emotions, or doesn’t want to talk about it.
We all know communication’s importance in any relationship, especially in marriage.
However, communication is not just the sharing of information. It is actually much more than that. Communication is a two-way street.
By communication, we mean the ability to actively listen to someone, understand them, recognize their needs, and be adequate support.
You want this from your husband but are not getting that response. That’s why this article is here to help you with that.
How Does Your Husband Avoid Talking About Your Feelings?
It has already happened to you many times that you want to share some emotion with your husband. Still, instead of understanding, you experience a total misunderstanding or a cold response.
Here’s what it usually looks like:
1. Your Husband Tells You You Need To Toughen Up
“Toughen up” what does that really mean?
You know how men know to pretend they are too strong and have some stupid beliefs that showing emotions is a sign of weakness.
This behavior of your husband may also be related to how he was raised by his parents. Maybe he comes from a family where emotions were not shared enough.
Your husband answers to your emotions that you should be stronger and that you must not let anything shake you emotionally.
And not everything should throw you off balance emotionally, but if you want to feel sad or hurt, you have the right to do so, and you are not weak because of it.
This can also be related to the concept of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and recognize and influence the feelings of those around you.
If your husband has difficulty discussing his emotions, he probably lacks emotional intelligence because he may never have worked on expressing his feelings enough.
2. Your Husband Gets Angry
You approach your husband expecting support and words of understanding, but he gets angry.
That’s right, instead of talking about your feelings, your husband gets angry and offended that you even want to talk to him about it.
According to him, he is too busy, and it annoys him that you even bother him with such discussions.
Those are irrelevant stories for him, it is more important for him to talk about how you should prepare food better or whether you did the laundry today, and your feelings can be skipped.
This behavior is characteristic of narcissists who always put themselves before others.
3. Your Husband Becomes Defensive
Why does talking about your feelings make your husband defensive? He feels attacked.
The first thing that comes to your mind is that he is hiding something. When people hide something, they desperately need to defend themselves.
What is he hiding so much? A potential affair, spending your savings, returning to his old vices? You do not know.
In that case, your husband probably has a whole bunch of excuses and lies that don’t make sense, as people who lie usually have in that situation.
Speaking of lying, you’ve already caught your husband in a lie so often that you don’t even know when he’s telling the truth.
4. Your Husband Feels Guilty
What if your husband feels that he is responsible for your negative emotions?
Perhaps he feels that you are criticizing him and feels personal responsibility for your dissatisfaction.
Let’s say you are sad because you feel trapped in the place where you live. Your husband may feel you are blaming him for his wrong decision that you should live with his parents.
Or because he is still at the same job you hate because you don’t even see each other enough because of his crazy work hours.
Your husband feels like a letdown because he didn’t manage to change those things that bother you so much, and when you tell him about it, it only hurts him even more.
5. Your Husband is Irresponsible and Lazy
What does this have to do with the topic of your emotions?
Maybe your husband wants to listen to you sometimes, but something always happens that throws him out of focus.
Irresponsibility is not just that your husband skips household chores. You must constantly remind him to do anything.
Irresponsibility is that he also avoids serious conversations, such as about emotions. He would rather watch TV or play video games all day.
When you manage to start talking about serious topics with him, he is completely distracted and looks at the phone more than he listens to you.
How Do You Feel Because You Can’t Share Your Emotions With Your Husband?
Of course, you’re not happy because you can’t share your emotions with your husband. After all, who will you share them with if not him?
Here’s how this behavior of your husband affects you:
- You doubt your emotions and even question whether you are overreacting;
- you feel misunderstood;
- you feel a lack of support from your husband;
- you feel neglected;
- you notice that a distance is being created between you and your husband;
- you doubt your husband’s feelings for you.
These are all not good signs and can lead to the end of your marriage.
6 Tips to Communicate Your Feelings Better With Your Husband
Here are some tips that can help you solve your problem:
1. Don’t Doubt Your Feelings
Before we start with how you should address your husband, we must tell you immediately that you have the right to feel whoever you feel.
And you also have the right to share them with your husband.
You took vows when you got married that you would always be there for each other when you got married. Listening to each other’s feelings falls under that category.
2. Be Clear and Concise
There is a well-established stereotype that men have a hard time reading emotions and like to be told everything directly.
We’re not fans of stereotypes, but your husband obviously doesn’t read emotions well, so try a direct approach to explain what you’re going through.
You might expect your husband to read your mind and understand you immediately. But it’s not always like that.
Emotions are complex; sometimes, even someone you spend many years with will not understand you. So explain your feelings well so that there is no misunderstanding.
3. Let Your Husband Know That He is Invalidating Your Feelings
Everything that bothers you about your husband not talking about your feelings, you have to tell him.
Just because he doesn’t want to talk about your feelings doesn’t mean your husband doesn’t have feelings for you.
Maybe he has his “manly” attitude, which implies that “boys don’t cry.”
He will have to melt that cold attitude if he cares about you.
4. Explain the Importance of Deep Conversations to Your Husband
Although most conversations are random, even with close people, the whole relationship cannot be based only on such discussions.
The conversation isn’t just about what you did during the day, what you’ll eat for lunch, or what movie you’ll watch tonight.
A conversation with the closest person should also include those deep, meaningful conversations where we will talk about our emotions, fears, hopes, and similar.
It is precisely such conversations that deepen relationships and creates greater closeness between partners.
5. Don’t Attack Your Husband
We know his behavior annoys you, but attacking him can only trigger his fight-or-flight response. And, of course, he then goes into his defensive mode.
Creating an environment where your husband will feel safe to show his emotions and listen to yours is necessary.
Another tip is to use “I” statements instead of directly blaming your husband.
It looks like this: Instead of saying, “You always make me feel hurt,” say, “I feel hurt when you do or say that.”
6. Let Your Husband Know That it is Enough Only That He Listens to You
Your husband feels guilty because you feel bad, even though it’s not his fault.
He loves you and wants desperately to help you, so he feels guilty for not having a solution to what’s bothering you.
Let him know that not having a concrete solution to your problem shouldn’t be something that should make him feel bad.
Sometimes it is enough to listen to you and support you that way.
In Summary
“Showing your emotions is a sign of strength, not weakness”
– Saba Sutar
Apply these tips to make it easier for your husband to understand the importance of talking about emotions.
Establishing healthy communication patterns may take some time and effort, but the benefits to your marriage can be significant.
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