What Emotional Availability Really Means
Thinking back over our lives, both Bob, a 67-year-old retired electrician, and I, a 65-year-old retired insurance-industry worker, recall moments that shaped how we connect emotionally. At a recent family dinner, Bob’s daughter called him “emotionally unavailable.” That label is common but incomplete. Bob drove four hours through a snowstorm to be at his wife’s mother’s bedside in the hospital and spent years coaching his kids’ softball teams, actions that indicate commitment even if he didn’t use many words.
My own path is more complicated. I retired at 62 after 42 years in the insurance business and only recently have started to confront my limits with feelings. In marriage counseling in my forties, the most I could say was “I feel bad,” which showed how hard it was for me to name emotions clearly.
The Quiet Struggle
My father, a factory worker in Ohio, belonged to a generation whose emotional disconnection often stopped at words like “tired” or “fine.” That lack of language for feelings is what psychologists call alexithymia (a term that literally means “no words for feelings”). It is more common in men who weren’t shown how to express emotions or weren’t encouraged to do so, and it affects how they relate to others and to themselves.
I noticed a “one-way attention dynamic”; I was tuned in to other people’s feelings but had little connection to my own. With my wife’s help, I began to link physical sensations to emotions: a tightness in my chest sometimes meant fear; a sudden heat in my face often meant frustration. Mapping body signals to feelings made naming them easier.
Finding a Way Back
I tried different ways to rebuild that emotional bridge. Joining a book club (mostly women) exposed me to more emotional vulnerability and vocabulary. Five years ago I started journaling; what began as short, factual notes slowly turned into more reflective entries, including phrases like a “swelling of something close to grief.”
I also learned basic sign language for my youngest grandchild, who was born deaf. That opened up ways to show feeling with touch and movement when words failed. And then there are the small daily things: morning walks with my golden retriever, Lottie, at 6:30 AM. Those walks became a practice space for saying feelings out loud and connecting bodily sensations to words.
Why Patience and Listening Matter
When people label men as “emotionally unavailable,” it’s often assumed they’re holding back on purpose. From my experience, many aren’t withholding; they lack the language. Seeing it that way requires different responses: more patience and different kinds of help. My wife started asking about what I felt in my body rather than abstract emotions, and that shift made a measurable difference.
Relearning emotional expression is similar to rehabilitating physical ability: it takes time, effort, and patience, much like navigating an identity crisis. Recognizing this process can help men and the people around them work toward greater emotional fluency.
