we become distant because of fear…

another fear is when we’re afraid to expose our feelings. when we’re afraid to expose our feelings we become very distant.

genesis 3.10 (niv) adam said, i was afraid because i was naked so i hid. he ran from the scene. he tried to hide.

and we do this all the time. we hurl at other people and we hide from ourselves and hide from the other person. we become distant. he’s running away.

notice that the man ran first. he hid first. he felt exposed. we men are particularly good at using distance to mask our feelings and to deal with emotions. typically men withdraw in the face of emotions. we become cool, detached, we withdraw, we seem insensitive, aloof, apathetic.

one guy said, “i’ll never forget in the early years of my marriage, whenever my wife would get emotional i didn’t know how to handle it. i did not know how to handle emotions. when she became really sad or really depressed or really angry or any kind of major emotion i would just back off, detach. i’d become distant. a little glaze would come over my eyes. i’d pick up a newspaper. i’d try to change the subject. i’d go for a drive. i couldn’t handle it.”

“the amazing thing i discovered”, he said, “was the more distant i became the more emotional she became. i couldn’t figure this out. then when that didn’t work she started intentionally pushing my buttons! she knew the things that would get a rise out of me and she pushed those very buttons. why is she doing this? i wasn’t bothering her. she’s upset. why is she getting me upset? she’d push and push until finally i’d become emotional. bingo! she just wanted me to admit that i had feelings too. she just wanted me to admit that i had emotions and to stop stuffing them down.”

when i do marriage counseling, probably the biggest complaint i hear is, “i don’t know how he feels. he never talks to me. he won’t tell me what he’s thinking. he doesn’t tell me how he feels.”

this is a major shift because in the wooing stage of marriage men talk a lot. one woman said, “before we were married we’d talk all night. now that we’re married he only talks when he wants food, sex or to have the tv channel changed.”

men, you need to be a little bit more of a self-starter in talking about your feelings. i’ve discovered that if men were more self-starters there would be fewer women who were cranks.

just a thought from the front porch…