Wondering how to become emotionally available? Becoming emotionally available can be challenging and requires self-reflection and vulnerability. Below are some tips to help you become more open in a romantic relationship!
Hey Kyle, I read your last few articles about emotionally unavailable partners. It makes a lot of sense that you recommend others to avoid those of us with those flaws. Personally, I don’t want to be this way, but my childhood experiences, failed relationships, and lack of growth in becoming more emotionally available is downright depressing.
If other people start taking your advice to heart, what would happen to the rest of us? Many of us lack the money and emotional depth to become the emotionally open souls professional therapy promises.
Can you please offer some relationship advice for us on the other side of the tracks? Maybe some tips that will help us grow to becoming more emotionally available? What are some ways we can open up to create happier relationships?
– Closed Off in California
Hi Closed Off,
Being emotionally unavailable is rooted in life experiences.
Here’s how it works: If deep down I feel inadequate and fear I don’t deserve love, then my instincts tell me that eventually, you’re going to find out about me, realize that I’m not good enough, and break my heart.
So I love you at a distance. I stay aloof and disengaged. I refuse to give you much of my time because it won’t hurt as much when you tell me you’re going to leave me. I know it’s coming. It always does. My parents. My exes. They’ve all done it. I know you will too.
I wear my self-protected armor and hold you at an arm’s length. I’ve been flooded by rejection, sadness, and feelings of being unworthy before, and it’s not something I can handle after I get close. In my core, I don’t feel I deserve your love.
Related: 6 Dominant Personality Traits of Emotionally Unavailable Men You Should NEVER Expect Love From
While half-hearted love does offer safety, it will always sabotage the opportunity to create a deeply loving relationship. People who are emotionally unavailable are called avoidants, because they do exactly what the word says. They avoid their partners. They avoid intimacy, and closeness. But they do this for a reason.
The feelings of unworthiness cultivate a feeling of insecurity. True security in a relationship requires interdependence.
It’s the ability to simultaneously depend on your partner, while also being able to stand on your own two feet. To take responsibility for your part of the relationship as they do for theirs, as equals. It’s the ability to be open to their feelings and needs while working with your partner to get your needs met. Here’s what I think about your needs…
Emotionally unavailable people don’t like hearing what their partner thinks or feels if it goes against what they want to hear. And if for some reason their partner does say something, the unavailable partner doesn’t like, the unavailable partner makes it emotionally costly for doing so.
They emotionally beat their partner into obedience. This is why the other partner becomes needy, acts crazy, and will make massive compromises to make the relationship work, even if it is unfulfilling.
Emotionally unavailable people do this because most of the time they feel empty. So they focus on tending to their own needs and interests. They believe they don’t have the capacity to devote time and effort into their partner’s needs in the relationship. They find their partner’s needs overwhelming and burdening.
It’s very clear that the emotionally unavailable partner has a lot of internal battles going on. It also explains why they struggle to be there for their partners when their partners want or need them to be.
Below are six steps to becoming emotionally available in a relationship
1. Take A Hard Look At The Beliefs You Have About Yourself In Your Relationship
Explore why it is that you don’t feel worthy of a close loving relationship. Is there a way to challenge your belief that if your partner gets to truly know you, they will reject you?
Is there a way both your partner and you can discover reasons why you are lovable and deserving of your partner’s affection?
Related: 16 Ways To Tell If Your Man Is Emotionally Unavailable (And May Never Love You)
2. Make Your Partner’s Needs And Feelings Equal To Yours
Doing this requires developing empathy and compassion for your partner’s feelings, needs, and requests for closeness.
3. Stop The Secret Life
Emotionally unavailable partners often have one. They have a backup plan for when the relationship fails. They may have someone on the side to protect themselves because they believe rejection is inevitable. A secret life with others helps keep a safe distance in the relationship.
Your relationship cannot afford your secret life or side person. It requires you to offer complete transparency. Sometimes this may require opening up access to your computer, text records, and so on to clean up any past feelings of betrayal or mistrust. Not keeping secrets is a vulnerable place, but it is the only place that allows you to invest into the relationship and get the returns you deeply need.
4. Make Time For Your Partner
Place your partner (and children) at the top of your priority list in life. This can only be done by your actions, not your words. Words might sound comforting to your partner but without actionable follow-through, they are meaningless. Making time for your partner also requires you to be available and accessible to your partner most of the time.
Often avoidants will avoid phone calls, ignore text messages, and reply only when they want. They focus only on their needs, which makes their partner even needier.
If you give your partner the reassurance that you are there for them, they will turn their attention away from the relationship because you have given them the security that you are invested in the relationship. This is called The Dependency Paradox of Love.
Related: How To Find Out If a Man Really Wants A Committed Relationship With You
5. Work On Taking Responsibility For Your Emotions
Take control of your temper. Stop acting in hurtful ways or saying things that cut to the core of your partner’s vulnerabilities. As an emotionally unavailable person, you are an expert at finding someone’s weakness and exploiting it so they give you the distance you want.
Stop threatening to leave the relationship if you don’t get your way, and stop using anger and personal attacks to bully your partner into doing things your way. That’s not a relationship.
Even if you get your way, you are still avoiding a relationship that will change the deeply rooted beliefs you have about yourself. A loving relationship requires two people who work together equally.
Related: 8 Dangers Of Dating An Emotionally Unavailable Person
6. Commit To Opening Up
Share your deepest fears. Tell your partner what makes your spine tingle. Tell them your life’s greatest disappointments and your biggest dreams.
Love requires more than physical touch. It requires emotional touching. It requires both your partner and you to let each other see you inner world. Quit walling off your inner self, and allow yourself to be deeply known by your partner.
This will not be an easy task. You will feel overwhelmed. You will want to attack your partner. When you feel like you’re suffocating from a lack of space, you’re on the right track. You are suffocating the belief that you don’t deserve love. You’re allowing someone else into your heart as you fill its emptiness.
Your childhood and failed relationships may have been a great source of pain, but it is your responsibility to make the effort to change the undermining beliefs that destroy your relationships. It’s up to you to build the emotional skills required to be an emotionally available lover.
To work on becoming a better listener. To stop letting your addictions control you. To being more of a giver than a taker in your relationship. And most importantly to stop, being so judgmental and critical of both your partner and yourself.
For more ideas on how to become more emotionally available and feel secure in your relationship, snag my Passionate Relationship Toolkit here.
This article was originally published on Healthy Relationships with Kyle Benson.
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