Jefferson Fisher

Thanks, Jody.

That is a more common issue than you think, Jody, where you have a spouse who has a very hard time expressing emotion.

Sometimes, Jody, I have that same problem.

I don't want you to think that lack of an emotional response is lack of feeling emotion because there is one thing to feel it.

There is another thing of emoting it.

So a lot of the times, like I can tell you from things in my childhood of how I've been raised, from my parents to other family members, there is this what I call static mode.

When there is some kind of conflict, there is usually somebody within the relationship that can go static, meaning they kind of get gripped by their emotions.

They have a hard time expressing them, sifting them, sorting them.

Maybe they can't name them.

Maybe they have something within them that is very hard.

There's also people who have what they call like a...

reduced affectivity, meaning if that's a bell curve right upside down, that the extremes are going to cut off.

They have a hard time feeling sadness, and they have a hard time feeling extreme joy.

So they're right there kind of within that middle of ways to work around that.

So I don't know where your husband falls within that bell curve, but what I can tell you is I'm confident that he feels something.

And the issue is he's not expressing that emotion.

And I hear you being a wonderful spouse and saying, hey, what are some things that I can do to create that safe space to make him feel that this is some emotion to try out?

Here's what I would encourage you.

One, have a conversation of whether or not he'd be willing to engage in increasing his emotional vocabulary.

meaning we generally go towards, and we're never taught, that there is more emotions than sad, angry, tired, grumpy, frustrated.