It may be hard for you to understand, but it’s very likely your husband would rather face an angry man than your tears. He’d rather punch it out with another guy than slog through your feelings.

This is not because he doesn’t care about you; in an odd way, he’s this way because he cares about you. He hates to see you hurt or sad. What makes it worse is he has no idea how to help. He knows what works for him doesn’t work for you, but he doesn’t know how to help you. It makes him feel helpless, and he doesn’t want to feel helpless.

Another factor may be how he deals with emotions in general. Last year I wrote about the fact that men may feel emotions more strongly than women, but are better at suppressing those emotions. If his way of dealing with emotions is to suppress them, then you can understand how your seemingly unsuppressed emotions might be difficult for him. He has no experience dealing with emotions on the level you do. It would be safe to say your feelings scare him! 

A couple of suggestions for you on this. Help him understand what you want from him when you’re expressing strong emotions. He is hard-wired to fix things, and when he sees you hurting he wants to fix it. If he can grasp the fact that holding you does fix it, he might be willing to go there. Likewise for whatever else would help you. Tell him what would “fix it”, and ask him to do that for you. Beyond that, there are probably times when he’s not going to be able to do what you need. When that’s the case give him any facts he should know and then get a girlfriend to help you process. Keep him in the loop, but lean on another woman for dealing with it.

~ Paul – I’m XY, and killing the person who made my wife cry seems so much easier! (Only sort of kidding)

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