Is your partner emotionally available?
Emotional availability is the willingness to participate in a healthy, mutually gratifying relationship.
Men and women have the same needs and desires. Men are just as capable of emotional availability as women. In fact, men are likely to profess love before women. Women are as likely to be emotionally unavailable as men.
Unavailable Personality Types
- Critic: Finds fault, nitpicks and always sees the down side. You can never do anything right.
- Sponge: Relies on the partner to fill a void. The relationship is responsible for this person’s happiness. Desperately wants the connection but can never get enough validation.
- Iceberg: Tends to be dismissive of emotional intimacy, unlikely to be a warm source of support. It feels like this person is indifferent to you.
- Silencer: Feels either they can’t connect or does not want to connect with their feelings. This person prefers thoughts or facts to feelings.
- Defender: Shields real or imagined threats, including criticism. Might blame, find fault, withdraw or defend based on perceived threats.
You may not recognize emotional unavailability when you’re dating, because you spend such small slices of time together. You might also miss challenges that are present, convincing yourself that changes will occur.
If your relationship provides you with more benefit than not, you can get a better view of what you need and want. Communicate about what causes tension.
Listen as Dr. Holly Parker joins Dr. Pamela Peeke to discuss emotional availability.
Dr. Parker, or Dr. Holly, as she’s more playfully known, is a psychologist with a passion for walking alongside people as they invest in their future selves by cultivating a more enriching, vibrant life in the here and now.