4 Ways to Become More Emotionally Available

Emotional availability is the key factor in a great marriage. However, many wives complain that their husbands are not emotionally available. Conversations are superficial at best, merely citing facts, the weather, or how their day has gone. But rarely do men reveal the emotional part of their hearts, discussing their feelings, hopes, and dreams.

This lack of emotion is partly due to their embarrassment about being vulnerable to another person. This may also be partly due to past generations’ beliefs that men should be strong and not show their feelings. Sharing their feelings during past generations was seen as weak.

But wives want this emotional availability from their spouses. When a spouse is not emotionally available to them, this makes room for women to fall into the trap of lust and other emotional issues, which can be damaging to a marriage.

If you or your spouse is less emotionally available than you could be to the other party, here are four ways to become more emotionally available in your relationship:

Confess your sins

There’s nothing more vulnerable than one person confessing their sins to the other. Confession allows people to get to the deep parts of their emotions and thoughts, which may have led to destructive behavior. However, hearing about someone’s sins may also be hurtful to the other.

This confession is particularly crucial in healing a marriage, especially one damaged by lust or infidelity of any kind, such as pornography, sexting, or emotional affairs. The key to a healthy marriage is not to keep secrets. Confess your sins to your partner and allow confession to heal your marriage so you can be more emotionally available.

Be self-aware

Self-awareness is an important concept for both parties to have in a marriage. It is essential to discover whether you are emotionally available and if not, why. Perhaps this lack of vulnerability stems from childhood trauma or the lack of a role model that lived out what emotional availability could look like between men and women. Whatever the case, discover the reason behind the lack of emotion.

Do you have big emotions that are hard to process? If you are stuffing emotions like grief, sadness, or anger, be sure to release those in healthy ways. In some cases, a lack of emotional availability has less to do with the spouse and more with what the person experienced in childhood. Let them explore the difficult situations they went through as children. For people who are survivors of abuse, for example, this can be especially hard.

Let your partner express these emotions through a journal or let them talk. Don’t fix the problem or dispense advice. Let the spouse talk freely. Validate the feeling and ask clarifying questions. Self-awareness may be new for your spouse, so use it to bond and discover new insights about each other at your leisure.

Talk about the future

Getting caught up in the present and stuck in your current thinking is easy. A good marriage requires both parties to look toward its long-term future to ensure its success. Talk about your hopes and dreams with each other. Where would you like to see yourselves as individuals in five or ten years? Where would you like to see your marriage in five or ten years?

See if where you want to be is aligned with where your spouse wants to be. If it is, you can discuss in more detail how to accomplish those goals together. If not, don’t worry. Use this opportunity to discuss why you’re not on the same page.

For example, one spouse may want to change careers or move away from family, while the other may want to move closer to family or sell their home. Discuss whether there are opportunities for compromise. A healthy marriage can give both parties what they want while giving each person room to be heard and their feelings validated.

Discuss how your hopes and dreams may be similar rather than different. By changing the trajectory of how you see the future, you can become more emotionally available to each other. Discuss your differences and seek opportunities to make those dreams a reality.

Play a game

Couples who don’t know how to discuss more profound, intimate, topics may do well to purchase a game with starter questions. There are many clean, family-friendly games for couples where each must draw a card and answer the question on the card. Give each other leeway to skip questions if they’re too uncomfortable.

This game is an opportunity for growth for both parties. Just because your spouse doesn’t see things like you do doesn’t mean they are unhealthy. It may mean that that person could not express their feelings openly as a child.

They learned to hide their feelings and not discuss them as they grew up. Therefore, discussing them with their spouse may be difficult or even traumatic for them. Allow them to go at their own pace. Start with some superficial starter questions and go from there. As trust and intimacy are built and more intimate communication is established, both parties will become more comfortable discussing the more intimate details of their lives with each other.

This activity is also an excellent way for couples to bond together without the use of sexual intimacy. Often, one party, when they get emotionally vulnerable, wants the conversation to lead to a sexual encounter. However, the other party may not like that and prefer the other person to be emotionally open to them. Take sex off the table for the moment. The more emotionally available you are to your spouse, the more emotionally available they will become to you.

Emotional availability takes trust. If the spouse still does not want to be emotionally available to you despite your efforts, there may be a trust issue. Have a heart-to-heart conversation and ask what’s going on. The other party may be direct if there is a trust issue. If there is, work through it. Avoiding hard conversations will never get you what you want.

By working through challenging discussions and allowing both parties to express themselves openly, each person in the relationship will get the emotional availability they seek. Some conversations may be hard at first, but as you get into it, it’s good to express yourself and allow the other person to see things from your perspective.

For couples who’ve been married long, it’s easy to assume they already know the other person well. While there may be some truth to that statement, no one knows the other person thoroughly. A person gets to remain an individual while still being in a relationship.

As both parties learn to act as individuals yet share freely about their lives, they will need help keeping the boundaries between what is appropriate to share and what is not. They should be open to what is shared as they find those boundaries. Allow them to speak even if oversharing occurs.

Emotional availability can be difficult for any party in a marriage, but it is important for a healthy one. The more each party practices emotional availability to the other, the more both partners will get what they want. Marriage is the place where emotions should be expressed. The better the example each party lives out and the more practice each party gets, the more emotions will become available to the other party.

Help to make you more emotionally available

Would you like to learn more about emotional availability in marriage? The Christian Counselors at our location can help you further explore this topic and strengthen your marriage. Contact our office today.