Dh says he has no feelings

[littlecubs]

Dd went to a sleepover at the weekend for the first time and I was chatting to Dh and said how quiet it was without her. I looked at her empty seat at dinner and her empty space on the sofa in the evening and said I couldn’t bare it if anything happened to her and I was left seeing the empty space.

Dh said, see I don’t know how I’d feel, I probably wouldn’t feel anything and I definitely wouldn’t break down in tears like I know you would. I just don’t think I’d feel anything.
I questioned this and he said he just doesn’t have any feelings and never has about anything ever even as a child and that the only emotion he’s ever felt is anger in fact he said he feels all emotions as anger.

He admitted he would feel the same if his parents died or best friend and said he’d acknowledge it was sad but wouldn’t feel anything else but he knows he loves us.
I don’t know what to think, is he just emotionally disconnected?

I had to look that one up but it does sound a bit like him.

This was my thought too.

Is it that condition where he can’t identify what he’s feeling and so thinks it’s all ‘anger’? - alexithymia.

it would worry me a bit

Not to diagnose him, but there’s a condition common in some neurodivergent people called alexithymia - it’s an inability to recognise, understand and describe their own emotions. My DD and my DH both have it. They feel things very deeply, but cannot begin to explain how or what it is they are feeling, and get very frustrated if pushed to.

Might be worth looking into that before deciding he’s a sociopath!

Ooh, cross posted with @Dufff23!

great minds!!

This would be my interpretation too

This sounds like a massive contradiction. He says the only emotion he feels is anger but then he says ‘I love you’ every day, and you claim he is a very loving and affectionate person? So he is either lying about only ever feeling anger, or about the affection he seemingly displays and the loving words he utters.

I’d consider if he could be autistic. Not that he doesn’t have feelings but is unable to name them or work out what the feeling is. Especially since he said he always feels this way and he only feels anger. I can definitely relate to that.

I think it has a lot to do with understanding his emotions rather than not having them. My DH has said something similar to this before. He would probably even now maintain that he doesn't have 'feelings' or that he can suppress or manage them, but in reality he's actually one of the most emotional people I know.

So the scenario you played out with your daughter not being around, obviously he has never felt that loss, so he's not able to know how that would feel. Women are more empathetic and can probably go some way to imagining how that loss would feel, men probably less so.

We had our family dog PTS a few months ago, he was very much DH's dog and man's best friend for 14 years. It was absolutely no shock to me that this devastated DH and he was extremely upset. But to DH this was a shock, he was surprised how upset he was and the emotions that came about. Prior to it happening it was like he had no concept of how it might make him feel.

He’s not lying. He’s just clearly got some major issues with feeling, processing and articulating his emotions, which is no surprise whatsoever given his childhood and his now estrangement from his family. He needs to have therapy for a good long time. If he is really loving and affectionate then that’s a great base from which to start this process.

https://www.thebraincharity.org.uk/condition/alexithymia/

Could it mean that the one feeling he describes as no feeling is the feeling of emptiness?

Because when I think of such horrible event, that's the first feeling that comes to mind. That everything would be so overwhelming, I would be left empty, with all part of me being numb.

I'm not a psychopath in any way!

GP - check
Therapy

I hope he never finds out, but I expect the reality would be very emotional. I would take it more as a lack of imagination, he can't imagine it (except as an objective possibility) so he doesn't feel the emotion that goes with really imagining it.

Child, yes I’d be devastated. Husband & sister also. Anyone else in my life, not so much. It’s just the way I’m built. I’m not a sociopath, nor mentally unwell, I just don’t feel things that deeply.

Yes, it could be something like alexithymia, a cognitive processing issue or also be a trauma response - PTSD for example. I think I'd be thinking along those lines, given you say how affectionate he is, before I'd jump to sociopathy.

I find it really hard to imagine how I’d feel too, when ddog died, I thought I’d be relieved as he was so poorly and didn’t anticipate three months of horrible grief whatsoever…

Well if he’s telling the truth, he does have feelings.

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

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.

Yes, this makes no sense.

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.

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.

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.