Your Marriage Needs Something You’ve Been Avoiding

[00:00:00] The Man Who Says He’s Not Emotional

There's a moment that comes up pretty often in coaching conversations I have with men. A guy is talking about his marriage. He's trying to explain why things feel distant, how his wife keeps saying that she wants more from him emotionally, how she says she doesn't know what's going on inside of him.

And at some point he'll look at me and you'll say something that's honest and pretty simple. Something like, I don't know what to do. I'm just not that emotional. Or I'm just pretty flat emotionally, no big highs or lows, or maybe something like, I'm calm, I'm steady. I'm just not wired that way. And usually when a man says that he means it, he's not trying to lie.

He's not trying to dodge the conversation. He genuinely experiences himself in that way. And I know that because I used to be that. If you had asked me during the hardest years of my marriage whether I was emotional, I would've told you no without any hesitation. I would've said that I was calm, I was steady.

I was solid. That's just who I am. That's just the type of guy I was. But what was actually happening was something very different. When my marriage was falling apart, I had almost no access to what was going on inside of me. I didn't know what I was feeling. I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't even have the words for it.

I wasn't unemotional. I was what I now call emotionally restricted. I just didn't know what that meant yet. And if you've ever considered yourself to be just not an emotional guy, and you're like, yeah, that sounds like me, then I want you to really pay attention to this episode.

Because by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why so many men think they're not emotional. Why that emotional restriction makes sense. How it actually gets rewarded in so many parts of life. And ultimately why it also creates distance in your marriage.

And once you can see that clearly, you can stop labeling yourself as unemotional and actually start doing the work that will give your wife what she's been asking for and actually strengthen your marriage.

Stick around. You don't wanna miss this one.

Welcome to Better Husband, the podcast that helps you answer the question, how can I be a better husband? I'm Angelo Santiago, a men's marriage and relationship coach, and every week I bring you practical insights to help you strengthen your marriage and become the best husband you can be.

Now, I've talked before on the podcast about some of the harder years of my marriage and about the fact that becoming a better husband has been a real process for me. This is not something I figured out once and now I just teach it. I know this work from the inside because I've lived it and continued to work on it. And a lot of what I just shared about being emotionally flat, checked out, unavailable, I learned at an early age, but it was also reinforced during my years in the fire service.

You see, as a firefighter, being able to shut things down emotionally is like a badge of honor. You would go and see things that were heartbreaking, things that are hard to even talk about out loud. You would step into moments of chaos, grief, trauma shock, panic, pain, and the unspoken standard was always the same: how fast can you get yourself under control? How fast can you move on? How fast can you go back to functioning? How fast can you go back to the firehouse and start cracking jokes again?

That was the culture. And to be fair, some of that made sense. When you are in a high stress environment, you do need composure. You do need to keep moving. You do need to make decisions under pressure. But that culture also taught me something else. It taught me that the less access I had to my own emotions, the stronger I was.

We used to have these things called critical incident stress debriefings after especially traumatic calls. It was one of these spaces where you were supposed to sit in a room with all the other guys on the call and talk about what you were feeling after difficult emergencies you had just experienced. And I'm talking about real challenging ones.

And pretty generally across the board. Firefighters hated those. We despise them. And I was a part of that culture.

We didn't like it because talking about your emotions, especially after these tough moments felt awkward. It felt forced. Especially when you spent years learning to move past hard things fast, slowing down long enough to say what something did to you felt almost unnatural. And I brought that culture home with me.

I would come home from work and I would not talk with my wife about what happened or how I was feeling. Part of that was probably protective. Part of me did want to shield her from some of the things I had experienced. But part of it was also that I genuinely did not know how to begin talking about hard things and hard emotions. I didn't know how to open those doors. I didn't know how much to say. I didn't know what I was even feeling half the time.

And if I did feel something, I had no real practice putting it into words. So when my wife was telling me that things were not going well in our marriage and she was telling me she didn't know if she could keep doing life with me right after our son had been born, my immediate response was to do what I had been trained to do.

To shut it down, numb it out, become the solid one, become the strong one, become the flat one, become the man who just keeps functioning and finding solutions. My life was falling apart, my marriage was crumbling, and I had almost no access to what was going on inside of me in that moment.

And what she really needed was so much more. She needed a husband who could connect with her on a deeper level. And when the time finally came where I had to learn how to express what was going on inside of me, that was a brutally hard thing.

I didn't know how much to share. I didn't know how to share it. I didn't know what she would think of me if I got emotional. I didn't know what she would think of me if I cried in front of her. Could I even cry at all? I mean, I honestly didn't know.

I still see the same thing all the time with clients. Men telling me that their wife wants them to open up more, wants more access to them, and the man is sitting there saying, I honestly can't remember the last time I got emotional.

So as we move through the rest of this episode, I want you to hold that picture in your mind. The firefighter version of me, the husband version of me. The man who thought being flat was strength. The man whose wife felt like she was talking to a wall.

It's even better if you can connect to that part of yourself because that's going to help make sense of everything else we talk about from here on out.

[00:05:50] What “I’m Not Emotional” Really Means

before we try to turn this into a problem that has some sort of easy fix, like just tell me where my emotions button is and I'll turn it on. Let me slow it down and define a few things.

When a man says, I'm just not emotional, what does he usually mean?. He usually doesn't mean there's nothing happening inside of me. What he often means is something more like one of these, I don't know how to identify what I'm feeling, or I don't trust emotions, or I'm only comfortable expressing a few of them, or I just don't have the language for what's going on in me.

That's a very different thing, because now we're not talking about a man who has no emotions. We're talking about a man whose emotional range got squeezed down to almost nothing. Terry Real, the founder of Relational Life Therapy, has this idea that I think makes this really clear.

He talks about how a lot of men in our culture are only really giving permission for two emotions, anger and lust. Now that doesn't mean men only feel two emotions. It means those are often the only emotions men are allowed to express openly without shame. That is a huge distinction because if anger and lust are the only emotional languages that feel safe, everything else starts getting rerouted.

Hurt becomes anger. Fear becomes control. Loneliness becomes withdrawal. Shame becomes defensiveness. Sadness becomes numbness. Tenderness becomes awkwardness, or silence. And longing becomes sex or frustration.

So a man can have a very active emotional life and still experience himself as not emotional. Most of the softer, more vulnerable parts of what he feels rarely gets said out loud. They get translated into something completely different.

And you see this all the time in marriage. A man feels embarrassed after his wife points something out, but what comes out is a hard tone in his voice. He feels hurt because she questioned him in front of the kids, but instead of saying that he shuts down. He feels scared that he doesn't know what to do and so he tries to grasp for more control. He feels lonely in the marriage too, but instead of naming it, he pulls back and seeks satisfaction in work or in something else.

That's why defining this matters so much, because if a man thinks he's just not emotional, then he assumes there's not much to work with. He assumes his wife is asking for something unnatural. He assumes she wants him to become a different kind of man. But if the truth is that his emotions are just blocked, not missing, then the work changes.

Now the question is not how do I become emotional? Now the question is, what am I feeling that I've gotten really good at covering up, minimizing, or hiding before it ever reaches the surface?

If I think back to the moment in my marriage I described earlier, I would've told you I wasn't that emotional too, and yet I was full of things I couldn't name. Pressure, fear, shame, loss, distance, grief over how badly things were going. And because I had no real access to that language, what often came out was shutdown, defensiveness, distance, or logic.

Maybe you're not emotionally absent. Maybe your emotional range just got really small, and the reason it got small is not random. You were taught which emotions were safe and which ones would cost you. That's a completely different problem. And if you name the wrong problem, the work you do to fix it will be wrong too.

[00:09:03] Why Emotional Restriction Makes Sense

Now I wanna be careful here. This episode is not about shaming men. This is not me saying men are emotionally dead and need to get it together. I'm saying a lot of men learn this pattern for a reason. It makes sense and it got rewarded at every stage.

A lot of boys learn very early, which emotions cost them. Showing fear can cost status, showing sadness can feel humiliating. Showing tenderness can invite mockery. Showing hurt can feel like exposing weakness. But performing and enduring, winning, staying controlled, and getting things done, that gets rewarded.

So many men become emotionally efficient. They learn to compartmentalize, override what they feel, minimize what's happening inside. They solve or fix instead of feel. They perform instead of being vulnerable. And most men did not choose this in some deliberate conscious way. They adapted. They learned what got approval. They learned what got respect. They learned what kept them from getting embarrassed.

If I think back to the fire service, that was absolutely true for me. Nobody had to sit me down and say, here's how to shut off parts of yourself. You just absorb the culture. You see what gets rewarded. You see what gets mocked. You see how fast people are expected to move on, and you build yourself around that.

When something gets rewarded for long enough, you stop questioning it. You start building an identity around it. You tell yourself, I'm just calm. I'm just not dramatic. I'm just steady. I don't get caught up in feelings. And on one level maybe that does make you effective. Maybe it makes you dependable at work. Maybe it helps people trust you under pressure. Maybe it helps you carry responsibilities without falling apart. And those are real benefits.

That's why a lot of men do not let go of this easily. Because from their point of view, not being emotional is not a problem. It's actually part of what made them good and competent, part of what made them respected, part of what helped them survive.

But the problem that they don't see is that there is a cost involved. Because what helps a man function out in the world can make him hard to know at home. At work, emotional distance can feel like composure, but in your marriage, emotional distance feels like absence.

The skills that help you in pressure heavy environments do not create intimacy. Marriage is not just asking whether you can stay controlled. Marriage is asking whether your wife can actually feel that there's a man in there that she can know and she can trust.

And for a lot of men that's where the confusion starts. Because he thinks I'm here. I'm doing my part. I'm providing. I'm trying. I'm staying steady. I'm being the man. And she's saying, you feel so far away. Where are you? What's going on inside of you?

So now as adults, when somebody asks men for more emotional access, it doesn't just feel unfamiliar. It can feel unsafe because you're being asked to stop doing the very thing that helped you succeed everywhere else. That's why this is deeper than just telling a man you need to open up more. If you don't understand what the pattern was protecting, you won't understand why it's so hard to put down.

[00:12:05] Why It Backfires in Marriage

Most wives are not asking for a more dramatic, emotionally chaotic husband. They don't want a man who expresses his emotions erratically. At any given moment, they are asking for a husband they can actually feel. She needs more access more. Honesty, more sign that life affects you. That you're human.

More signs that the marriage matters to you emotionally. More sign that there's more going on inside of you. And if she can't feel you at all, then even if you are responsible, committed, and caring, the marriage can still feel lonely.

A lot of men measure their worth by their effort and output. They think I'm trying hard. I'm doing a lot. I'm still here. Shouldn't that count for something? And yes, it counts, but effort is not the same as access.

Trying hard at the wrong thing will still leave your wife lonely. You can be working really hard to hold everything together, keep everything running and stay composed, and your wife can still feel like she has very little access to you.

Again, if I think back to my own marriage, that was absolutely part of the problem. I thought I was being solid and dependable and reliable. I thought I was doing what a man was supposed to do. And what my wife was experiencing was a man she couldn't connect with a man who could function, a man who could get things done, A man who could keep moving, but not a man she could fully feel.

That is why this matters. Emotional restriction doesn't just shape your inner life. It shapes what your wife experiences when she's with you.

[00:13:29] When Men Mistake Suppression for Strength

I think this is worth naming too, because the culture we live in is sending men a very clear message. Be strong, be the protector, be the rock.

And honestly, I can understand why. There is something good and necessary in the desire to be steady, disciplined, and not ruled by impulse. But a lot of men have taken that desire for strength and translated it into something else entirely. They think strength means don't feel, don't show weakness, stay tight, suppress everything ,never let anyone see what's happening inside of you.

But that is not real steadiness. Even if you look at traditions that men point to for discipline and composure, the ideal version of a man has never been about numbness. It's been about mastery and not letting impulses drive your actions. Real steadiness is having access to emotion without being ruled by it.

The answer to emotional chaos is not emotional numbness. The answer is groundedness, discipline, reflection, access without flooding, feeling without losing yourself. And that's important to say because a lot of men think their options are either: one, be emotionally shut down or two become emotionally messy. And that's a false choice.

There is a third option, and that third option is grounded emotional access, not chaos, not numbness. It's steadiness with more honesty. Strength with more access. And a lot of men are trying to become quote unquote, strong men. And in that effort, they unintentionally start cutting themselves off from the parts of their own humanity.

They start confusing suppression with discipline. They start confusing coldness with composure. They start confusing emotional distance with maturity. And in doing so, they are creating some real unintended damage in their marriage.

Because real strength is not becoming harder to reach. Real strength is staying steady without disappearing.

[00:15:23] Your Marriage Needs More Access to You

So what does this all mean for your marriage right now? It means that if you've been telling yourself I'm just not emotional, that may not actually be the truth.

You may be more emotionally alive than you think. You may simply be living inside a smaller range than your marriage needs. And if that's true, than the problem is not that you need to become a different man, the problem is that you need more access to the man you already are.

Because strong marriages do ask more of you and you have more that you can give. And if this episode is resonating with something real inside of you, then I want you to be ready for the next one.

This is the first time I'm doing a two part episode, but this topic felt really important for me to dive deeper into. Because in the next episode, the question is not just why are men emotionally restricted. The next question is, what does your wife actually want when she says she wants more from you emotionally? What is she really asking for? What does emotional access actually look like in a real conversation on a real Tuesday night? That's what the next episode is all about.

[00:16:23] Awareness, Action, Accountability

But for now, let's end this one the way we do every episode. Let's make it practical. How do you actually apply this in your marriage? Here are your awareness, action, and accountability steps for this week.

For awareness, I want you to sit with a question, and honestly, this one is harder than most, so I'm gonna give you several ways into it, because for a lot of men the answer isn't obvious.

It's buried under years of just doing what felt normal. The big question is this, where in my life did I learn that certain emotions were not safe for me to feel or show? And if that feels too broad, I'm gonna give you some more for you to try on.

What was the emotional climate of the home you grew up in? Was emotion welcomed or was it something people avoided? Was one of my parents emotionally shut down and I learned to match that? Was one of my parents, emotionally volatile, and I decided I would never be like that? Did I watch someone express emotion and pay a price for it? Did I express emotion as a kid and learn it wasn't safe? Who am I mirroring and when did I decide that was the only way to be?

Now, take your time with those. I know it's a lot. You don't have to answer all of them, but sit with the ones that hit you because most men have never traced this back to where it started.

Now, here are your action steps for this week.

First, pay attention to what emotions show up first and what it turns into by the time it leaves your mouth. Notice if hurt becomes irritation, if fear becomes control or sadness becomes shut down. And when you catch yourself saying, I'm fine, or I'm good, or I'm just tired, ask yourself if that's actually the full truth or if there's something underneath it.

Second, at least once this week, I want you to name one thing that is happening inside you more honestly than you normally would. Keep it simple. You don't need a full speech. One sentence is enough. Say it to your wife, say it to a friend. Just say it out loud to yourself if you have to. Just practice giving honest language to what you're actually feeling.

Third, pay attention to where you feel emotion in your body before you explain it away in your head. It might be tightness in your chest, a heat in your face, a knot in your stomach. Your body often knows what you're feeling before your mind has a word for it. That alone will tell you a lot.

And for accountability, if this episode is helping you see your patterns more clearly, and you want practical help learning how to show up differently in your marriage, go check out my workshop, the Three Secrets to Becoming a Better Husband. You can get it at betterhusbandsecrets.com or click the link in the show notes again. That's betterhusbandsecrets.com.

[00:18:59] Closing Takeaway

If there's one thing I want you to take away from the episode, it's this.

If your wife has been telling you, she feels distant from you, if she's been saying she wants to actually feel you, and you honestly don't even know what that means or how to give her that, I get it. I've been there. Most of us were never taught how to do this. We were taught to bottle it up. Be strong. Provide. Take action. Don't slow down long enough to feel anything and definitely don't let anyone see it if you do.

And that got us far. It helped us at work, it helped us carry responsibility, it helped us survive a lot of hard things. But it's costing you your marriage. And if you wanna give your wife what she's been asking for, you have to be willing to look at parts of yourself that you closed off a long time ago.

Parts you may not have touched in years. That's not easy, but that's the work. You're not as flat as you think. You've just been living inside a smaller range than your marriage needs. And the man your wife is looking for is not some different version of you. He's the version of you that's been locked away.

Now I just wanna say thank you for listening and going deep into this topic with me. You're listening to Better Husband. Stay tuned for part two next week. I'm Angelo Santiago, and I'll see you on the next one.