Alexithymia is a term to describe problems with feeling emotions. In Greek, it loosely translates to “no words for emotion.” It is estimated that 1 in 10 people has alexithymia, but it is much more common in those with depression and in autistic people. 1 in 5 autistic people have alexithymia.
People who have alexithymia may have have trouble identifying, understanding and describing emotions. They may also struggle to show or feel emotions that are seen as socially appropriate, such as happiness on a joyous occasion.
So what this looked like was that he had a very 'flat effect'. He seemed to be on a very steady baseline which never changed. He didn't 'do' excitement for example. So I'd say are you excited about going on holiday. And he'd say I'll enjoy it when I get there. But the excitement never came. It was the same when I was pregnant. He was going to be excited and enthusiastic once the baby came. He wasn't. I once said something about joy and he sneered and said that's some kind of made up thing, no one feels that.
He couldn't tell what his current emotional state was or what joy or any other emotion actually felt like. He couldn't answer the question 'how do you feel?' He would answer it with anything but a feeling, he would answer it with a fact or a statement. The therapist couldn't get him to answer. I once pushed and pushed and pushed him asking over and over how he felt out of sheer exasperation and he answered with everything but a feeling and eventually shouted 'I don't know!' and ran off. I guess it's like emotional blindness. If you can't see then no amount of asking you what something looks like will lead to meaningful l answer.
He also doesn't call himself I. He refers to himself as You. That's a hard one to explain! At one point he said someone was bullying him at work (they probably were and I don't mean to condone bullying but the woman was absolutely exasperated). I said to him how do you handle that? And he said well you just get your head down and do your tasks (meaning I just get my head down and do tasks). I wonder if it's some sort of dissociative mechanism. He found it almost impossible to make an 'I' statement.
One consequence of this was that he doesn't understand other people's emotions as he doesn't have a context to for them so empathy is very difficult. If you don't understand your own how do you understand someone else's, including your children's.. If one of the children is upset you can see he's clearly unmoved. He will do the mechanical actions to try to stop the upset but other's distress doesn't touch him in the way it does me.
I felt bad for him for a long time thinking what a struggle that must be but in some ways it doesn't actually bother him very much because he doesn't feel the negative emotions about it!
Both my children cried a lot when they were with him as babies and toddlers, I think they sensed they weren't getting their emotional needs met. I'd leave the room and shortly after they'd start crying and stop when I came back. They do go to him now every second weekend. Longer visits don't work well, particularly for my daughter. She is also autistic and needs help regulating her emotions (she almost feels them too much) so it's like chalk and cheese because he can't provide what she needs. When she's there she texts and calls me a lot for emotional support.
I found that after I left it took a long time to get my emotional self back as I had been repressing my own emotional needs to get by. I stopped trying to get emotional connection from him. I had to relearn all that.