Are you emotionally unavailable? If you are, then you may be screwing up your chances to get and keep a woman around. Being emotionally unavailable means that you avoid being emotionally intimate with other people in various ways.
It is important to be emotionally available in all of your relationships – but especially with women. When you lack emotional intimacy, your partner may look elsewhere for it because it is a need…not a woman.
Without emotional intimacy, you are just acquaintances – not even friends. Even friends are emotionally intimate.
Why would any woman want to be with a man like that? She will experience loneliness and pain and feel isolated in the relationship.
Not Sure If You Are An Emotionally Unavailable Man?
Following are 11 signs that indicate you are not an emotionally connected man.
1. You Can’t Talk About Emotional Needs
Does the thought of asking for emotional support when you feel down, angry, or lonely make your cringe? I’m talking about support from anyone – man, woman, parent, stranger.
How about offering support to someone who is feeling down, upset, or even depressed? Do you avoid doing that at all costs?
If you can’t express your emotional needs or help others with theirs, then the chances are good that you will be emotionally unavailable to a woman when she reaches out for your support or tries to be there for you.
For instance, if you are obviously upset, but push a woman away when she tries to support you, then you are being emotionally unavailable to her. You are not expressing your hurt, pain, or anger, and you are keeping it all to yourself.
When you just can’t talk about those feelings, you close your emotional self off to everyone around you.
2. Other People’s Feelings Are Not Something You Focus On
An old woman is reaching for the last box of crackers at the supermarket and you grab it off the shelf without a thought. That may sound a little harsh – but I see acts like that every single day from both men and women.
- Cutting in front of people
- Bumping into people
- Racing people for a parking spot
- Stepping over the homeless on the street
If you don’t take into consideration other people’s feelings, or can’t recognize when other people need you to be considerate or show compassion, then you can easily be emotionally unavailable to a woman.
You will not be able to tell when she is happy, angry, sad, or lonely, and that will cause a disconnect between the two of you because you will not be there for her when she needs you to be.
3. You Are An Addict – To Anything
When you are addicted to something it becomes the focus of your life. You don’t worry about how your partner feels or what she needs because your addiction is number 1.
Even if you do think about her feelings, it doesn’t matter because you will still choose your addiction over her every time. In short, you will be emotionally unavailable to her because your addiction will be more important.
I’ve been here a few times.
I know how it feels.
If she is hurt by your addiction, then you will become defensive or even accusatory when she tries to talk to you about it. That will make her feel bad about her feelings, cause her to keep them inside, and avoid emotionally connecting to you about the situation.
And that will lead her to feel as though you are not there for her emotionally and stop trying to connect with you at all.
4. You Can’t – Or Won’t – Make Eye Contact With Other People
Talking is not enough. If you are saying “uh-huh” and looking elsewhere you may feel like you are listening and supporting other people, but the truth is you are only partly doing so.
Have you ever noticed how you can feel the hurt someone is feeling when you look into their eyes? That is the emotional connection that is made through eye-contact.
When you are able to look into a woman’s eyes and feel her emotions, then you are able to offer her the full emotional support she needs – even if it is just by listening and understand where she is coming from.
“Eye gaze is such a key part of the social engagement system to regulate emotions and maintain a sense of connection.” – Linda Graham, MFT
5. You Get Accused Of Taking And Not Giving
Part of an emotional connection is the give-and-take aspect of a relationship.
Giving is the one natural gift you have to make other people feel better, happy, loved, cared for, thought about, and appreciated.
Do you often give to other people for those reasons? If not, then this is a sign that you are emotionally unavailable. You don’t understand the value in giving.
When you take without giving, you make other people feel unloved and under-appreciated. You are not balancing out the emotional aspect of your relationship. You are denying the other half that emotional respect they deserve.
6. You Have Poor Listening Skills
In order for other people to feel like you really care, you have to really listen. This can be hard for some people, but it is necessary to maintain an emotional connection.
Do you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves?
Do you not remember what someone just told you a few minutes ago?
These are signs of poor listening skills.
How do you think a woman will feel when she pours her heart out to you about her bad day, and you can’t remember what she just said? Do you think she will feel a strong connection with you?
Doubt it!
She will feel unheard. Worse, she will feel not important enough to listen to.
The good news is that you are capable of being a good listener. Think about your favorite TV program, movie, or video game. Chances you are can recite what people have said from one of those things, so you are capable of listening in an effective manner.
“To enhance your listening skills, you need to let the other person know that you are listening to what he or she is saying.” – Mind Tools
7. You Let Relationship Problems Fizzle Out On Their Own
It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you are in, if you had a fight, you hide until the anger has passed and then continue on with your relationship like nothing happened. (I can actually hear women screaming ‘YES’ right now!)
Many men seem to be guilty of this, and it is important to understand that most women don’t want to just move on from an issue. They want to talk it through with you.
They want to feel heard, understand where you are coming from, and fix any issues so that it doesn’t happen again.
If you just let it pass, then you are being emotionally unavailable and not letting the other person resolve the issue – and that puts a huge emotional disconnect between the two of you.
You have to face problems with others head on in life. That’s the only way to move past them once and for all.
It may be upsetting.
It may be painful.
It may be uncomfortable.
But it is necessary for a healthy relationship.
8. You Would Rather Text Than Talk
Texting is easy. You don’t have to have an emotional connection when you text. You just write words and hit send! But, for that same reason, it makes you emotionally unavailable to a woman.
If you hate talking, then you are avoiding the emotional aspect of a relationship.
You cannot text your way through a relationship – and if you try, your partner will feel as though you are emotionally unavailable to them.
9. You Don’t Stick To Your Promises
If you make a date to go out with a woman, and then break it at the last minute, that is hurtful to her. If you do it repeatedly, then you are playing with her emotions on a regular basis.
How does this make you emotionally unavailable? In a relationship, every time you cancel plans, you are attacking the emotional connection between you. You are saying, “My plans with you are not as important as something else,” and she will feel as though you are emotionally detached from her feelings and needs.
10. You Sleep Around And Avoid Cuddling
If you are more about finding a woman to sleep with than you are to date, then you are emotionally unavailable. You are not thinking about building a connection with a woman.
More accurately, you are not trying to build a connection with a woman.
Even if you are thinking about a connection, you are too scared to do it, so you keep sleeping with woman after woman, night after night.
If you don’t ever want to cuddle, that even makes it clearer that you are emotionally unavailable. Cuddling is about emotional connection, not physical connection.
11. You Suddenly Lose Interest In Women When They Admit Their Feelings To You
You may like a woman as you date her, get to know her, and have fun with her, but as soon as she tells you that she is really starting to like you – you ditch her.
This shows that you have a fear of getting close to a woman, despite enjoying being around her. This is a huge sign that you are emotionally unavailable!
