May 26, 2020
When your partner asks you about what you’re feeling, what’s your typical response? Do you attempt to change the subject or joke around? Freeze for a while? Or maybe start blaming your partner? Everyone can find it challenging to open up their inner world of emotions - but a lot of men find it particularly difficult to do. It’s understandable why the topic of emotions and feelings can be puzzling for men. Yet, emotional honesty is a crucial aspect of cultivating intimacy, connection, and trust in a relationship; it’s an essential tool that everybody needs to develop to become relational heroes.
In today’s episode, I discuss the difficulty men experience when they share their emotional world in their relationships. I reveal the significance of emotional honesty in cultivating connection and intimacy in relationships. I explain why men avoid the topic of emotions and opening up to their partners and explain how a person should respond when someone shares their feelings, despite the difficulty of expressing them. I also highlight the importance of cultivating emotional truth within our friendships and share a story about a friend who honestly shared their feelings and emotions.
“This path of emotional honesty is the way of the relational hero.” - Pripo Teplitsky
This week on Relationships! Let’s Talk About It:
- What it means to be emotionally honest
- How and why men avoid expressing their feelings and emotions
- The relational dread and fear that men feel when they’re asked to open up their feelings
- The vulnerability that comes with being emotionally truthful and how shame prevents us from sharing our emotions with our partners
- Responding and validating our partners when they attempt to share their feelings despite their difficulty in expressing emotions
- How our childhood upbringing influences how we express, contain, or avoid our emotions
- Speaking our emotional truth without anger, blame, or judgment
- The difference between emotional honesty, behavioral honesty, and outbursts of anger
- Developing your distress tolerance to cultivate emotional honesty
- The impact of emotional honesty on intimacy
- The importance of practicing emotional honesty within friendships
Related Content:
- Difficult Conversations
- Building Trust in Relationships
- Stonewalling: the Silent Treatment that Blocks Communication
- Emotional Availability in Relationships
Let’s Talk About It!
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Theme music “These Streets” provided by Adi the Monk