Can you talk to your male partner about emotions and feelings, what would they say?

[Happyfarm]

I can talk to mine till the cows come home but he understands none of it. Sometimes he will say oh you have a complex like your mum or too sensitive or just look at me like I’m an alien.

He seems to have little feelings but the ones he does are over all the stuff he hoards.

Is it usual for men to not understand? I’ve not had many men in my life.

I agree. I think a lot of people are very emotionally needy.

If your partner is autistic, that could account for the reaction you are getting from him. Especially if he's been taught that emotions are these "troublesome things that women have". For context for my advice, my young adult daughter is autistic and is really struggling to understand what emotions she's feeling. When she's feeling something negative, she can't describe if it's sadness, angry, hurt or anything else. They all just make her feel "wrong" and we often have to talk at length about what is happening at the time, to try to find out what it is that she's feeling and potential reasons for the cause.

So it could be that your partner just doesn't have the emotional awareness to be able to understand what you would like from him. Hence why he clams up because he feels like he doesn't know what to do.

His talking about the worse day he's had can also be an attempt to connect with you and show understanding of the problem. It can be their way of saying that they have identified you are having a bad day, by describing their bad day.

Even though it feels undermining and dismissive of you, for an autistic person they don't mean it to be. It's almost like it's a "fact" that they have to recognise and then they answer that "fact" with what they think is a good response, that lets you know that they found it. Just like in the previous poster where she got a word for word repetition of what she had asked her partner to say, when she needed support.

I've had lots of discussions with her and we have talked about how we identify emotions and our thought processes and what the other person understands from different things. It's quite surprising to see how differently things can be interpreted.

I know that she doesn't represent every autistic person and your partner might not be either. However it's possible for anyone to learn to communicate with each other in better ways that suits the partnership, it does take effort and might need outside help to do so.

Thanks for your reply it makes a lot of sense. I think my H’s mum is autistic but doesn’t know and I think my FIL is very anti women or
should I say he is funny about women who are emotional. He has made quite a few comments over the years. Perhaps that’s why they are drawn together. I think perhaps my partner is autistic also and he has picked up these views along side the ASD. I can understand the not knowing how to respond but I’m not that keen when he says that emotions are pointless and manipulative, that’s his fathers words.

@BeNavyCrab could his hoarding be down to his difficulties with emotions? Sorry to ask but you seem to have lots of good knowledge.

I could not talk to my ex husband, he never listened and often told me that I shouldn't talk to him about my issue at work it wasn't his problem and he did not care.

I don't think it's demanding to want to talk about something you're worried or upset about with a partner. My DH has zero emotional intelligence or depth and it's slowly killing our marriage.

Now after years of him avoiding talking about things that are affecting me (bereavement, health, serious things) and making me feel like a huge burden when I do try bring things up, I no longer want to be intimate or even affectionate with him as I don't feel loved.

He can't understand this. I decided over the last few years that if I am lucky enough to grow old, I won't be spending my old age with him. There are other issues but knowing the one person who should be there for me in tough times simply isn't has made this decision easy.

It’s awful isn’t it, it makes you feel invisible or stupid or just not important. For me how we feel is the most important thing. Maybe that’s because I grew up with emotional neglect and it wrecked havoc in my adult life.

Sorry to hear that OP. Yes agreed, makes you feel so invisible and not worth his attention.

@Happyfarm

Maybe that’s because I grew up with emotional neglect and it wrecked havoc in my adult life.

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Am I reading this right- you have picked a partner that mirrors your dysfunctional childhood ?
From your first post it screamed out ND
And the mentioning of hoarding jumped right out at me.
Hoarding is a mental health problem in itself - and person is usually totally in denial- very hard to treat even with therapy.
It would be a complete deal breaker for me -

Probably have. I didn’t really realise till we lived together and had kids and I had some therapy for my childhood just how unavailable emotionally he is. Don’t get me wrong he is very sweet and he really does try. Eg he will buy be something he knows I will like to make me feel better but he won’t be able to understand how I feel. He isn’t like my mum, he doesn’t blow hot and cold and is controlling and volatile.

I thought the hoarding was just part of the ASD but I’m wondering if it’s secondary to his upbringing being very non emotional. I think perhaps he was more emotional than he was allowed to be and has developed this.

People often tend to keep the same ideas that they have been brought up with and carry them on into adulthood. They change them when they are faced with a new experience or grow into their own character.

However with many autistic people they already have developed these formative ideas into "rules for life" and would find it very hard and unsettling to change them. The feeling of being out of control when faced with something they don't understand, like say the situation where female colleagues at work are emotional, it's likely to cause him to fall back on childhood patterns and repeat the same thing his father said to him. This is especially true where the subject is something that the autistic person feels under equipped to judge or make their own opinion on. Often it can be an unconscious thing, almost like a default setting so to speak.

He wouldn't also understand that by repeatedly saying what his father has taught him, that you feel hurt, criticized, unsupported and not understood. In his mind he might even think he's being sympathetic by noticing that your emotions are "being troublesome to you". In his head he's thinking," it's a shame that you have emotions, they are always trouble but I guess it's expected because you are a woman and they all have them. I don't know why because it would be so much easier if she didn't and then wouldn't need to talk about them all the time."

If you directly challenge them on why they hold this "truth", it can be met with anger or withdrawal. The best way to get them to re-evaluate would be to go to counselling with someone who understands autism.

It's possible to be related to autism, from the point of wanting to have the things he likes around him at all times or to collect all of a group of things. Especially if they are part of an interest of his.

Or it could equally be part of self soothing and an outlet for stressors in his life, especially if he's actually been repressing or unable to identify his feelings.

Not all men but a lot are like this.
Can you get him a copy of men are from mars women are from Venus it might help him learn what to say or do. Also Jimmy on relationships on instagram has good little videos about this.

You might want to have at a look at the thread on here that's for women with autistic spouses.

My husband has amazing emotional intelligence and empathy. I think it comes from being brought up by a single mother. He’s very sensitive to my emotional and worries and is always supportive. I appreciate him very much.

That’s worrying. I really dislike his father’s views and I would hope that he would see that they are just plain nasty. Not understanding empathy and then just assuming it’s a waste of time and manipulative like his dad is quite scary. We need empathy, without it we are horrible.

Some people just do not have the same way of communicating emotions and understanding them. It is like talking in two different languages.

My DH loves me to bits but we do have really hard time communicating how each of us feels or understanding in nonverbally.
We get along in all other aspects so this is just a chore where we have to "translate" to each other how are we about certain things.

Only advice I could give you is to ask him frequently how he feels but start with random shit and add "feel".
"How you feel about getting a beer?"
"How you feel about this constant rain?"
It will very gently allow him to incorporate feel discussion in life.

For avoudance if doubt, I do have men in my life I can very openly talk to how I feel and we just connect on that level instantly.

DH and I talk about everything. I can't think of anything we don't talk about.

Yeah he's very understanding and good at talking about my emotions, he's done very good at learning to open up about his own feelings too because we give eachother the safety to do so.

I'm heavily pregnant, ready to give birth, my emotions are pretty wild. Today I told him I'm feeling very needy and don't like being away from him and that something I read triggered a thought of his ex giving him a hand job and him... ENJOYING it and it made me jealous. I can't imagine it was easy not to act like I was being absolutely ridiculous but he was very supportive.

It's really horrible how something like this attitude can be passed down the generations, isn't it. I can totally understand it's quite upsetting for you, especially when you want your partner to be on your side. It must make visiting his parents hard too. Do you have any close and trustworthy friends to talk to about it? If you can at least be able to unload your feelings it will make it easier.

Yes I don’t like visiting at all. They are so judgmental and think they are perfect (when in actual fact they have issues just like everyone else). I have a few friends who are good at listening. Sometimes I come
home and have to chat because the stuff they say is ridiculous and they make me feel so faulty. I don’t really like them and it’s probably quite mutual.

I'm totally with you on the impact of judgemental PIL, who are incapable of seeing any side other than theirs. I've been gobsmaked a few times by some of the sweeping statements my MIL has said about others who are in exactly the same position she was. For example she's quite happy to say "Mothers in Africa on a low income should be sterilised against their will, so they don't have lots of kids"😱 Not withstanding the ethical and morally horrific implications of that statement, she herself has 6 kids and has claimed benefits her whole life!! That sort of firm and unreasonable stand does tend to be their default position on so many subjects.

I don't know where they get their moral superiority and lack of empathy from but it makes it difficult to deal with, because there's no reasonable place to have common ground with them.

My only advice would be to try to see them less and remember that whatever hurtful things they say that makes you feel judged, you don't actually respect their opinions. They aren't nice people, so it doesn't matter what they think of you.

I did find it hard to let our children see them at times and have a relationship with them uncoloured by my feelings about the PIL. I had to explain to our DCs that not everyone thinks like granny does and help hurt feelings etc over the years. It's got easier in time and as our DCs grew up, they have made their own minds up about them.

I also would want to be able to come home and be able to express how things have gone through out my day. It's part of feeling valued. Although your husband might not be able to be that vocal with you, it doesn't mean he can't give you support. Maybe suggest that if you are feeling down he could do some practical things to make you feel better. Like giving you a cuddle on the sofa, running a bath for you, giving you a massage, taking over the meal preparation or things like this. Often this sort of thing is easier for autistic people to understand as it's a known expectation. Although it's not verbal it still shows that they value you and care about you.

For some people who don't have a good support network, keeping a diary of a sort where you can vent the negative stuff can be useful too. Just make sure you can keep it private so nobody else can read it. Just naming the way you feel can help, as can reading it back at a later date and seeing if you still are in the same place.