Emotional Unavailability Isn’t a Real Thing

What makes a good relationship?

Most of us can agree on a few different things: number one, love. Number two, communication. And number three, openness and trust with each other.

And that openness also includes opening up about emotions. Sharing how you feel with your partner. Being willing to be transparent about what’s going on in your head instead of hiding it or lying about it or deflecting.

When there’s a lack of this openness, it’s usually viewed negatively. We tend to assign labels to people who aren’t good with discussing their emotions. We tend to call them emotionally unavailable.

But I don’t believe in emotional unavailability. In fact, I think it’s all a big myth, a colossal misunderstanding. So let’s talk about it.

Emotional unavailability, as we know it, is a myth

Let’s think, for a second, about how we define emotional unavailability.

Typically, when you think of an emotionally unavailable person, you think of someone guarded and cold. Someone aloof, gruff maybe. Someone who rarely opens up about their feelings or attempts to describe them in words.

But that’s just the thing — it’s someone who doesn’t attempt to describe or articulate their feelings. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have those feelings.

But this is not emotional unavailability. It’s something else:

These people are not emotionally unavailable — they are selectively available with their emotions

Emotional unavailability would be someone who struggled to make their emotions available at all. They would be closed off from the world and completely numb and out of touch. Which, quite honestly, I’m sure you’ve met a couple of those people in your lifetime. I certainly have. But they’re not always the people we’re referring to when we use the term “emotionally unavailable.”

When we use this term, we’re often referring to those people in our lives — parents, partners, even friends — who never cry. The ones who have angry outbursts but never apologize. The ones who blame everyone else for their problems but never discuss how they, themselves, fit into it all. The ones who never seem to feel happy about their lives and rarely express joy.

But that’s not emotional unavailability — that’s selective emotional availability. That’s someone who feels emotions and even expresses them, but only chooses to express some of them.

Our misuse of this term comes from our tendency to regard “negative” emotions as less legitimate

As a society, we have a bad habit of seeing “negative” emotions as illegitimate.

For instance, when we say someone was getting “emotional,” we don’t normally visualize a person getting angry or shameful or aggressive, even though those things are incredibly emotional. Instead, we imagine the person getting sad, maybe touched, maybe feeling bittersweet.

All of the socially acceptable emotions, like happiness, contentment, pride, and even sadness or wistfulness, are the ones that we see as “desirable.” They’re the reason why, in their absence, we label a person in our lives as emotionally unavailable.

But just because that person isn’t making those specific emotions available does not mean that they are emotionally unavailable in general.

Because maybe they’re angry or often upset. Maybe they are resentful or guilt-tripping. Those don’t fall under society’s definition of good or normal emotions, but they still are common and normal, and they are emotions like anything else. So is this person really emotionally unavailable?

Well, no. They’re just selective about the emotions that they choose to share. Or maybe they’ve trained themselves to only feel a certain spectrum of emotions and have buried the others deep inside.

Selective emotional availability can also mean exhibiting exclusively “happy” emotions

Some people are still not entirely emotionally available, but instead of masking their feelings in anger or shame or guilt, they mask them in happy emotions. It’s sort of like toxic positivity, but to an extreme degree.

But avoiding emotions isn’t any better than expressing negative ones. It, too, masks the problem. It bottles up feelings until they overflow or become nauseating. It ignores the problem until there is nothing left and it becomes easy to feel lost and alone.

The point is, selective emotional availability is not healthy or sustainable, and it needs to be addressed

Is it incredibly human? Yes. Is it often born of trauma? Yes. Do I know people in my life who fit this persona? Of course. And do I empathize with them and everyone else like them? Most certainly.

But it doesn’t mean that we should turn a blind eye to addressing these behaviors and supporting the people who exhibit them.

Expressing only some emotions and never others is unhealthy. It can get toxic, and fast. Using anger or guilt to deflect from deeper problems is not a good way to go about life. It may be a certain form of emotional availability, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

So what do you do if someone in your life is selectively emotional? What if it’s you?

I’m sure many of this can relate to this issue in one way or another, because I’m willing to bet you’ve all met someone who you’ve once deemed “emotionally unavailable.” Maybe it’s even yourself. I know I’ve been there before.

Firstly, I want to empathize with people who have both been selectively emotional and people who have had someone like this in their lives. It’s not easy to live with, nor is it easy to be. And I think we all deserve some grace and love in acknowledging that.

Secondly, I want to give the disclaimer that if you are in an abusive situation, these recommendations go out the door. Selectively emotional or not, abuse is never okay, no matter what the abuser is feeling or where it is stemming from.

But if you are this person or know a person like this and it’s not really abusive but just toxic (or even just annoying), it still merits some confrontation. If you’re comfortable, that is.

There’s no tried-and-true technique for solving this problem, and it’s easier said than done because we can’t control other people. Sometimes it’s even hard to control ourselves. But there are a few things that could help.

1. Recommending therapy

This one is case-by-case, because some people are averse to therapy or become deeply offended when someone recommends it to them. But if you feel comfortable broaching the topic with someone, by all means, do it. And if it’s you, consider therapy. Learning how to be open with all emotions — not just some of them — is a great reason to seek therapy.

2. Modeling healthy emotional expression

Modeling healthy emotional expression can go a long way. Don’t be afraid to discuss your emotions in front of this person, or even inquire about theirs. (That goes for any and all emotions, provided that you’re being respectful and safe.) Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions or act in a completely different way than they do. They might find comfort and openness in your expression and slowly feel safe to do the same.

3. Approaching life with a lens of gratitude

I’ve found that the people who are most selective with their emotions — even myself — are usually missing aspects of gratitude. They have trouble feeling content or happy or vulnerable because it’s unfamiliar. Because they haven’t yet fine-tuned the habit of finding the little things in life to enjoy. And once that falls into place, once we can feel thankful for what we have and what we know, everything else seems to fall into line.

You can model gratitude, too, if you’re seeking to help another person. You can speak about things you’re grateful for with them and ask what they are grateful for. It can slowly ease people into familiarity with a wider spectrum of emotions (because believe it or not, gratitude opens up a lot of feelings and discussions) and it can really turn things around.

At the end of the day, emotional unavailability isn’t actually a real thing. At least, not as we know it. We’ve been using this term all wrong when we actually mean selective emotional availability. Or being selectively emotional.

And I know, I know, changing the terminology doesn’t change the issue. It’s not a band-aid for all of the people out there experiencing this. But the more we can understand about emotional expression, the better we can be at addressing it. And that’s why, out of a desire to seek understanding and empathy with one another and improve, I think we should shift the language we’re using to talk about this.

And as I mentioned, there’s no easy fix, and almost everything we do to mend this habit is going to have to be done slowly and patiently. But we all have the ability to get there and escape the restrictive mindset of selective emotional availability.

If we can do that, we will be all the healthier, all the happier, and all the better.

We deserve to feel the huge spectrum of emotions that this life has to offer. Every emotion is powerful, and it all means something in the end.

We deserve better. Let’s be part of the change.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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