My Husband Is Emotionally Unavailable.

Background 

A couple in their 30s, they just had their first child. The wife shares that her husband, while a nice man who makes a good living, struggles to be emotionally available. It’s difficult for him to share his emotions, making it hard to maintain a truly loving relationship.

I asked the husband to tell me his life story. This is what he told me:

He grew up in the South part of the country. When he was 11 years old, his father left the family. Leaving him, his mother, and two sisters alone.  There was a lot that needed to be done. It was difficult for the mother to take care of everything. And since he was the eldest, she would ask to take on more responsibilities. Like: Babysit her sisters, go shopping for food. And the more we discuss this, the more we understand that his childhood ended when his father walked out the door. Because from that point, he now was expected to be an adult, almost a quasi father.

As his life progresses, he becomes very demanding of himself: high school, army -He went to the most difficult elite Sayeret (unit) in the army- And he becomes what is known as איש המנגל (ish hamangal). Ish ha-mangal is what's known as the barbecue man. It  is the man that he's always in charge of the barbecue. Which on the one hand is great, he's barbecuing for everyone. At the same time, he's a little lonely to stand there by yourself.

Life has taught him that his job is to take care of others. After all this, you're not going to be surprised when I tell you  something about his wife. They love each other. They get married. And subconsciously, one of the reasons he married her was because she was in the S”baro bombing.

The story of terrorist  bombing pizza store known as S’baro. And of course, she has her own amount of issues. She lost most of her family members and everything she's dealing with.

But now you understand that subconsciously, it fits very much into his life story. Because what life has taught him is that  he has to take care of others. And so he's also supposed to take care of his wife.

The only issue is that that 11 year old boy could not take care of his mother and his sisters.  And this 30 year old also cannot take care of his wife, because it's the kind of care she needs. He can't provide.

All of this creates a tremendous amount of anger inside of him. But what he does is he shuts it all down.  He shuts down his anger. And by shutting down his anger, he shuts down all of his emotions. So he's emotionally not available. And all of this was triggered by the birth of his own son.

And subconsciously, he thinks: “what's going to be now?”  It was a new person that he'd take care of. 

In the follow up session, I asked him if he were to feel,  or if this 11 year old boy was to feel what he felt about his father leaving them,  leaving him to have to take care of the young boy, take care of things,  what would be the feeling? He said: anger. 

Here, the therapy is to allow him a space for his anger.

What I didn't tell you about this man is about two meters tall. He's built like a Greek God. He's very, very strong. There's a lot of power in his body. And so I said, well, let's stand up facing each other. I pretended to be his father, and I asked him to say what he wanted to his father.

Calmly, he said, “It wasn’t right what you did. That’s not how you treat children. I’m angry.”

From there, we worked to deepen his connection with that anger. I pushed him to feel it fully. As I impersonated his father, dismissing his concerns—“I don’t care. Your mother is your problem now”—his anger grew. Slowly, he raised his voice, repeating how furious he was that his father had abandoned him. He yelled. He screamed. He let it all out. 

This takes about 20 minutes where he can really experience the anger. So while we're standing facing each other, I ask him to close his eyes and say, I understand the anger. Anyone would be so angry, if they were left alone at such a young age.

Then I asked, “Beneath the anger, what is that boy feeling? What does he want?”

With his eyes still closed, he admitted, “He just wants to be supported. He just wants someone to be there for him.”

I asked, “Can we hold hands?” He agreed.

And now the two of us  standing there, grown men, holding hands, eyes closed. And I ask him just to repeat  it over and over again. “I just want someone to be there for me.”

And here we use a process known as  rocking. Rocking is something we do with our babies. We rock our babies back and forth. it's very soothing and healing for our children. And here we did the same thing.

We're standing, the two of us, holding hands,  and we're just very gently rocking back and forth, back and forth. And he repeats, I just want  someone to be there for me. I just want someone to be there for me.

The process was profoundly healing. The session is over.

Weeks passed, and then I received a call from his wife: “I don't know what you did, but we're now able to have conversations where he shares his emotions with me,  and shares these feelings. Sometimes he's upset. Sometimes he's hurt. Sometimes he's happy. But thank you very much for what you did”