Dh says he has no feelings

I used to feel like I had no feelings/cared about nothing when I was incredibly depressed and actually it turned out there was a vast well of sadness underneath that I had completely disconnected from. Is he ok?

So he said he’d feel nothing at all - total indifference. But he says he does feel anger? So he is capable of anger but he didn’t think if his child died he would even be able to summon any??

Sociopath. Serious red flag. I wouldn’t be able to trust anything he says. What do all his “I love you’s” mean if he also says he isn’t capable of emotion and has no real feeling towards people at all..?

This.

I think a lot of men tend to repress their emotions, push them down and try to ignore them, which means they often come out explosively as anger. He has probably done this with his emotions about his mother. And likely he has done it about death itself - death is a very difficult thing to navigate emotionally, so he probably doesn't allow himself to feel anything. While this is normal, it is not great and I would encourage him to talk through some of his feelings - especially negative but also positive ones and start with how he related to his mother. He needs to process emotions, either with you or perhaps with a therapist.

He sounds a lot like my DH, whom I have often "joked" is a sociopath. That being said, I have seen DH break down at appropriate times, like after the death of a pet, however in the days leading up to it, the emotion was all me and I felt very alone. My DH rarely shows emotion unless it is anger, yep.

DH is very affectionate to DC but not to me, and never has been. He has always had his walls up, can never show any vulnerability with me. I often feel like I live with a stranger. Has no close friends and never did, though I guess often male friendships are a bit different. Everyone in my life likes him but finds conversation with him to never reach beyond surface level, no matter how long they have known him.

DH seems to wear his coldness like a badge of honor, sort of like your husband's proclamation. Honestly, I don't think any of it is true, but rather that for whatever reason, he perceives people who feel emotion deeper as being weak. My DH always has childhood issues, not the same, but parental neglect issues.

It's very hard to live with someone like this.

For what it's worth, I think your DH would absolutely feel a lot of emotion if God forbid something happened to DD. I just have to wonder how much of this wall he has up is a defense mechanism of some kind. If it is, don't expect to break through it, though.

Pretty sure you need more than this to diagnose sociopathy! Maybe he was really feeling like you were just being a bit dramatic - daughter goes out for the evening and you’re weeping and wailing imagining her dying and empty chairs and empty tables like Marius. No wonder your husband is irritated most of the time if that’s how you carry on. Maybe he was just enjoying being childfree for the night!

''@Jacobs4 · Today 12:16

Cutting off his mother is a bad sign. You say he has erased her from his mind. That kind of compartmentalising is a sign of sociopathy. ''

There is another explanation for this that does not involve the OP's husband being Hannibal Lecter...

If you grow up in a dysfunctional family it is common not to learn how to express emotions and feelings in a healthy manner and instead to become 'numb' as a way of coping.

Cutting off a toxic parent is not a 'bad sign' either it is often a case of having to do this to protect your own mental health and completely natural if the parent was abusive.

OP, it sounds to me like your partner has some long standing issues due to his childhood and would benefit from some support in exploring that.

My DH has said the same sort of thing. On the one hand he has said he can not imagine what his life would look like without me. He tells me he loves me and was the same with the kids when they lived at home but he is not articulate in that way.

I remember discussing a tragedy that I had read of and becoming quite emotional. He said that he would never have emotions that would overtake him like that. Yet when our oldest DD went to university he was the one who cried. At my DF's funeral, 6 months after his DF, he read my eulogy and cried.

I think that rather than not having feelings as someone else has said, he just can't articulate them.

I think what he might mean is the concept is so overwhelming that he can't comprehend how he would feel. He probably can't really put his emotions into words very easily. That's quite common among men sadly.

Of course he'd be absolutely heartbroken if you or his daughter passed away.

Do you think he'd consider counselling? It's clearly there's an emotional blockage there or some sort of inability to express his feelings in the ways he wishes to. And therapy can help that.

Did your husband have a very tough childhood?
I would leave the psychopathy just yet.

It sounds nothing like ‘full blown psychopathy/sociopathy’

jeez. A little knowledge can indeed be a dangerous thing.

everything about this man as described by the OP points to anything but those disorders. It sounds much more like alexithymia as others have suggested or even perhaps anhedonia but his behaviours lean way more towards the former.

My son almost died last year. I had to tell my husband over the phone that he's had a cardiac arrest and things weren't looking good.

My husband isn't very emotional, I've seen him cry maybe 3 times in our 14 years together. One of those times was him frantically arriving at the hospital thinking his little boy was dead.

I think it's one of those things you can easily dismiss, not truly think about etc because it is so unlikely to happen. The reality is no one knows how they'd react in the situation.

I didn't cry as much as I thought I would.

I was thinking this. Sociopath/ narcissistic. Has no emotions and learns to “fake” emotion in childhood by observing others. Read more about it and see if he has any other traits

It doesn't mean he is a bad man, just some men have next to no emotions, often coupled to a mild mental health condition. If he is good in other respects then see past it.

I came from a fucked up family, I couldn’t experience sadness properly for a long time, every negative emotion came out as anger. I think it’s probably more common than people realise. You aren’t allowed to have feelings and anger is the one feeling that doesn’t make you feel unsafe or vulnerable.

I mean… that sounds like full blown psychopathy/sociopathy?

Not all psychopaths are necessarily dangerous, but they don’t feel empathy or love. Just anger and self-interest.

Many will act like normal, loving people just to fit in with the rest of society.

Either that or he has some serious issues with feeling/expressing his emotions and probably needs therapy.

Im going to be delicate with this - i grew up with a father who bottled things up and was irritable and impatient, as did many of my friends, and its impacted us in lots of different ways. What has he been doing so far to work on this? Does he understand how this can impact a child?

I imagine what he means is he can’t imagine how he’d feel so he’s translating that into he thinks he’d feel nothing as he can’t envision the emotion. Not being able to feel things that haven’t or might never happen doesn’t mean he actually doesn’t feel anything. People process emotions differently to eachother and he certainly shouldn’t be badged as a sociopath for this.

That's quite true. OP doesn't mention her husband's age or any other circumstances (but this could describe me) I am also estranged from all family and there has been a lot of other trauma and I said the other day (to a friend) I have no feelings other than anger. I explored in a bit more detail the other day (i.e. complex PTSD) just for my own reference and found I could relate to a lot of stuff and what you say was mentioned as a coping strategy.

There could be many reasons for it. He might have other emotions and just not know how to recognise them, label them, talk about them etc. If he’s cut of his mother then there’s a good chance he experienced an abusive/neglectful childhood which can lead to repressing emotions. A lot of autistic people also have something called alexithymia - inability to recognise/process emotions. Or there’s ASPD, but there probably would be other signs in his behaviour like disregard for others, reckless behaviour etc.

edited to say that I also experience this and I definitely love some people, my actions may be more performative because I don’t have a natural instinct to touch and comfort people etc so I learnt what others need in that regard. I feel neutral the majority of the time, but I recognise that I do probably experience emotions I just don’t recognise them until the point of overwhelm which can often feel like intense anger even if it’s not based on anger.

I think he is coming from a place of trauma. If loving people, or feeling complicated love from people has caused him to shut these emotions off to protect himself then unlocking them for others like his own children who he does love is incredibly difficult. It is easier to simply tell himself that he would not care, this is why when something does happen it will be incredibly hard for him to process as he as either not allowed himself to feel theses things or feeling them comes with so much pain.

Do you think he tells you he loves you because he's seen things on film and TV that have taught him that that's how a loving husband behaves and he's just copying the behaviour? Or do you think he does have loving feelings towards you and his love is natural and spontaneous?

Your OP made me think of an older couple I know where the husband is clearly ND, almost certainly autistic. I see him performing 'love' fairly regularly. On one occasion, after his wife had been away for a couple of days seeing her family, he ducked out of a social commitment by explaining that his wife was coming home and he had to kiss and hug her when she got back and then sit holding hands on the sofa with her while they watched TV after dinner. None of it was spontaneous: it something he had learned that he should do.

I wonder whether your DH, OP, simply hasn't learned to identify different feelings? Does he ever cry or get upset?

When I was a teenager and going through the classic moody, depressed, insecure stage my mum once said to me that she had never in her life felt depressed and couldn't understand me. I think she had: I could remember her being low at times (and for good reasons) but she just didn't associate the word depression with how she was feeling.

Yes, this makes no sense.

This is a fair point. But if had a child, and their father said that, I'd be absolutely crushed. I'll also wonder what - if anything - he felt about me.

OP, do you have anything in common with your husband? Because I also think feeling the house is empty because your daughter is not there for a short while is telling about the relationship.

Has he ever lost anyone he loves? Maybe he’s struggling to actually picture himself in that scenario?