To ask if lack of reaction/empathy is a common thing in certain men?

[BeautifulBenji]

When I was younger I lived in a house share with a couple - the girl once fell over and hit her chin on the floor, blood everywhere, chin split open. And her boyfriend didn't get off his chair. Everyone in the room was around her, and then he stood up and took her to hospital. But I always remember that he sat there for 3 mins not doing anything.

My DH is a difficult man. He can be brilliant, but I'm finding his behaviour increasingly unacceptable.

There have been a few incidents where I've been really shocked at DH's lack of reaction. Cutting myself with a kitchen knife when making dinner - he finished his game on his phone, barely looked up. Our DS fell into the fire guard, he didn't move. Our DS wandered towards some concrete stairs when he was 2, DH moved so slowly I got there before he did. This morning, I smashed my head in the shower really hard in the ensuite and let out an almighty cry, you know that shock of hitting your head and you really shout out. He didn't move from his bed or say anything

When I questioned it - he said 'Oh love. Of course I care if you're OK just knew you weren't dead or anything' When I said his lack of reaction was weird he said 'don't fucking take it out on me'

Is this something anyone else recognises? It's not that he doesn't care about me or DS. He does then come to our aid. But in the moment, he doesn't bloody move. at all. Just like that other bloke. It's like the natural reaction of moving or saying something or doing anything doesn't happen in their brain.

I didn't know to put this AIBU or relationships - I'm just interested in whether this is a thing other people have seen in partners.

I'll be honest op, overall your h comes across as pretty contemptuous towards you.

My DH is a difficult man

And why should you have to make your life with a difficult man. Yes, you've made the probable mistake of having at least one child with him, but ... Plenty of women on here have been in worse positions to leave.

Life with a man like him sounds demoralising. It also sounds potentially dangerous for your child. Though I suppose as they get older the hazard magnet craziness reduces somewhat.

See, as someone who isn’t particularly reactive, I’d hate that. If I’m upset the last thing I want is someone fussing over me and/or getting up in my personal space uninvited.

My ex was like this. I could cut my finger off and be bleeding like a faucet and he wouldn't react. I realized he was like this with his DCs too, but would react a little more with his own DC.

My father was like this as well, as long as we weren't dying he never really got emotional. He would react sometimes but rarely.

However my DD is the same. She doesn't panic at all.

It's not quite the same but made me think of this...
Recently DH said to me 'you were so quiet when I got into bed last night, I though you might have been dead! You didn't seem to be breathing!'
Me 'oh, what did you do?'
DH ' Nothing I was really tired so I figured if you were dead then you'd still be dead in the morning and if you weren't, well, you'd have had a great nights sleep and be alive! And you are so you know, win win.
Me ' you're so thoughtful my heart fecking melts'

So you’re a super empath and he’s not - you’re judging him on your standards. I would suggest that he might be somewhere on the high functioning Autism spectrum (or Asperger’s as it used to be called) The emotional detachment/reaction to you crying thing is v familiar from my days with an Aspie partner.

For context, he would leave the room if I cried as it’s ‘what he would want me to do if he were upset’. Didn’t want to give hugs if my crying was during an argument as he felt comforting me was him admitting fault and finally if I ever cried in public (history of depression) he would be mortified because ‘everyone would think it was his fault’

if he is ND or indeed if this is just a result of his upbringing/life experience/whatever, what you need to realise is that it’s not a personal judgement on you - that’s how he is and unless he decides to actively change behaviour he will keep being him and you’ll save yourself a lot of stress accepting that (or leaving if you can’t)

Fuuuuuck @HumourReplacementTherapy I hope you ascertained that he was joking otherwise he’s literally told you that he’s not hugely perturbed by the idea of you being dead.

As long as he got a a good night of sleep though

OP, your H sounds pretty horrible. I’d rather have an over enthusiastic hugger in my life than someone who does fuck all, and just shrugs, when his own tiny child could have been injured or worse.

I think I’m like that really. And last I checked I was female. I grew up quite physical and tough and I think I just expect everyone else to be the same. Friends have commented on it in the past with things like a teenage boy falling off a climbing frame and I just left him to it. From my point of view if that was me then I wouldn’t want a fuss unless I was practically dying. I’d be more likely to tell someone trying to help me to sod off so I expect the same. Men tend to hate faff too so maybe that’s why.

This sounds just like my DH. His catch phrase is "I'm sure it's fine".

I said that, lots, after I'd had huge surgery and a long stay in hospital and still felt very unwell. "Don't worry, I'm sure it's fine". It wasn't fine. I ended up in intensive care having organs removed and narrowly avoiding death.

Whenever I hear those words from him now, I say "No. You want it to be fine. That's not the same thing."

He's from a family of emotionally repressed people and, even more than most men, has been conditioned to minimise, diminish and ignore inconvenient emotions, gut instincts or feelings.

I'm determined not to raise our son that way.

HE said that, not I. Monumental typo.

Yes, men can be weird. When DS2 was a toddler he fell down an entire flight of stairs. I said to DH, we need to take him to hospital to get checked out. DH said, OK, I'll just go and have a shave (takes him 20 mins) and was really surprised that I told him his bloody stubble was less important and to get in the bloody car. He also doesn't react if I hurt myself and cry out in pain. I've started to ignore him too. Can't be bothered to cluck around him when he doesn't even acknowledge I'm hurt. But apart from that he's great, Just... a man.

That's not being a man.

That's some issue with their personality/brain.

I once fell down the stairs in our house very noisily and then lay there at th bottom for about 5 mins trying to work out how badly hurt I was. When I Limped upstairs to where DP was on his computer in the lobby I asked if he'd heard me. He said "yes, but I assumed if you needed help you'd have called out". Hmm yes or I could have bloody broken my neck and been lying dead at the bottom of the stairs mate!!! 🙄

Some men are just very strange.

Interestingly though he also hates it if I react to him when he hurts himself physically and try to ask after him/help. Gets really angry and defensive and "I'M FINE!" Maybe it is just fear, and projected when it's someone else who's hurt.

My DH has this exact same problem: he’ll either minimise what, to anybody else, would be a serious incident; he won’t move to DC if they have hurt themselves; stands stock still if there is an emergency; doesn’t react emotionally when told something bad has happened.

I find it all incredibly difficult to deal with, but his sister is exactly the same, so I don’t think it’s down to him being male. Their parents are cold, selfish & lack empathy, so all I can do is try to make sure our DC don’t emulate this behaviour.

I had an incident where my own reaction surprised me. A 10-year-old girl in my daughter's class tried to hurdle a very low fence, caught her foot, and face-planted onto the pavement right in front of me. She didn't make a sound, lay there completely still. At first, I thought she might be unconscious. I did nothing, just stood there and looked at her. Her mother was about 100 metres away walking slowly towards us. I remained frozen for what felt like several minutes, just staring at the girl, who I realised was conscious, but remaining silent and not moving. After a while, a woman behind me brushed past me to kneel next to her. Then her mother arrived. Strangely, her mother was completely calm and matter-of-fact, and the girl, when she eventually sat up and started speaking, was completely calm as well. I thought this was going to be a broken-skull call-the-ambulance situation, but apparently not. (Found out later the mother was a GP.)

I think most people (men included) choose to do those jobs precisely because they really DO care.

I worked in one of those professions for any years and all the men I worked with cared deeply for the people they worked with.

I've seen a video a few times doing the rounds on FB where a woman is outside her house talking to a delivery bloke and she sees her dog start to fall out the upstairs window. She catches it, big emotions. Delivery bloke barely flinches.

This is definitely a thing with "some" men.

It will be controversial because people on here like to insist there's no difference psychologically between men and women. I agree with you, I think men in general tend to lack a certain level of empathy, we see it everywhere.

I feel this has to be the case? How else can we explain the crime statistics? It can't ALL be socialisation that causes so many of them to be cruel/violent/selfish?

I wonder if the message from his childhood was you hold it in and don't say anything, maybe his mum would do this and then 'blow' blaming the kids and husband etc for not..doing..whatever.
And when you get upset he recalls that feeling of guilt she made him feel , thinks you're blaming him and that makes him angry.
My mum would do that quite regularly.

What do people mean by ‘empathy’ though? Because there’s different types. Emotional, cognitive, and compassionate.

emotional responses also exist on a spectrum, and the fact that X is more demonstrative in their reaction, doesn’t mean Y is repressing rather than just not having the same emotional reaction. I’m also not sure why the ‘fussing’ response is deemed to be the correct one. Some people aren’t fussers, but equally some people do not appreciate being fussed over.

I take all your points about not fussing or hugging.

But if someone cries out in pain, even if you know its not a huge accident, surely it's quite weird to not look up?

It will be if you choose an arsehole to mate with.

There’s too many factors that could explain why he is the way he is. Posters have run the gamut of the obvious ones from upbringing, socialisation, nuerodiversity, freeze/flight/fight response, and so on.

But I do not think his “lack of reaction is wierd” in the sense of lacking empathy or abnormal. It’s within the range of normal imho as many others exhibit similar behaviours and do indeed have empathy. As pointed out, fussing and emotions aren’t necessarily the best reaction in every situation nor do they indicate more empathy.

I think you are probably unreasonable to call his lack of a reaction “unacceptable” given the examples you’ve made so far. Because as you’ve said “he does come to our aid” your main issue is that “in the moment, he doesn’t bloody move”

I think you need to accept this about him. I’m a bit like him to be honest in certain situations and it actually was better to be calm, not emotional and just assess the situation before acting compared to knee jerk reaction. I was calm and almost “bored looking” according to my DH when he had a serious home accident resulting in loss of limb and I had to come to his aid, call ambulance, stop bleeding, etc. Due to upbringing crying scares me and I find my self backing away slowly (abusive parent would cry when working up to being violent). I also sometimes laugh inappropriately, ie when DH took a tumble off his bike and was a tiny bit hurt which is not good, but I can’t help it it’s apparently a well known brain misfire for some of us with ADHD and not in our control. Other times I’ve moved so fast I’ve teleported to save my DCs lives…ie one drowning I had dived in and fished out before the lifeguard had lifted their bum off their seat.

So I think we all are a bit of a mixed bag on how we react or do not react in the moment of different situations and so long as you know they do care and they are coming to your aid when they realise they are needed, that’s really what matters.

My best friends husband has a blood phobia that literally makes him faint…(even if his own blood) so she often jokes if she’s gone ouch! and cut herself…out the corner of her eye she sees him he’s sodding off as fast as he can. He goes to get a neighbour if it’s serious but still he’s fleeing in opposite direction. But he does care about her deeply, they are adorable and in love. He has empathy in buckets. He just has a phobia.

I am generally very reactive, but with certain people I am not. This is because these people are overly dramatic and attention seeking. My mother, for example, will exclaim tens of times a day. I'm not going to stop what I'm doing every time I hear "Oh no!" "Ow, bugger" etc because 9

*9 times out of ten she's only done something like forget to put the milk back on the fridge.