Will Couples Counseling Fail if I Don’t Talk About Feelings? [Top 5 FAQ] [infographic]

If your girlfriend wants you to go to couples counseling because you don’t like talking about feelings, she obviously underestimates what she is asking of you. If it feels like there’s an ultimatum to go to (couples) counseling or else break up, that can make it even harder to talk about your feelings — or downright impossible.

What if you’re right to refuse couples counseling, and your resistance to talk about feelings shouldn’t be the end of your relationship?

If that’s what you’re wondering, I wrote this article just for you.

I’ve been that gf.
This is my apology.

              Table of Contents:

I specialize in supporting men in this exact situation, and I’ve collected some formidable colleagues who really get men like you. Our expertise lies in our lived experience facing a similarly baffling, daunting, impossible choice, and coming out more whole than before.

I finally ‘get’ men who don’t talk about feelings, and why you avoid couples counseling.

I’m a female who has become an advocate for men’s health, specifically. Receiving couples counseling made me realize how hard the dominant North-American culture makes it for men to know, let alone articulate, their own feelings.

I’m not against couples counseling, just coercion and circumstances unconducive to actual repair.

(My marriage was fine, BTW, it was just hard for us to be cooped up in one room day and night in a house full of other adults who thought 2 feet was 6 feet distance during early COVID lockdown.)

As a trained laboratory scientist with extensive experience in other ‘male culture’ workplaces (like public bus driving in Seattle on the graveyard shift, or postal delivery by bicycle in the Netherlands), I knew males were under unnecessary and cruel cultural pressures to not show much depth or range in emotion.

Later, as a nanny and preschool teacher, I realized how restrictive, limiting, and dehumanizing the impacts were.

But it was in couples counseling that I learned how urgently my skills were needed OUTSIDE OF COUPLES COUNSELING OR THERAPY CONTEXTS to undo the (otherwise lasting) negative impacts on your ability to sense what you’re feeling, even though feelings unconsciously inform even the most rational decision.

And it’s devastating to see how much you blame yourself.

The hidden cost of couples counseling for men who hate talking about feelings.

It’s a big deal to let go of something I think everyone holds to be true, not knowing what it will be replaced with. Much bigger than taking apart my closet to install shelving and then looking around me at the mess this project has made of the living room… just before it finally all comes together.

In personal development, this regularly recurring phase is scary, because clearing out my proverbial closets makes a mess of my actual working memory, attention to the present, etc. It’s necessary if I want to stop living by the outdated ideas I came up with as an intelligent child in altogether different circumstances, but it’s very inconvenient, and — if I were the breadwinner — it can seem threatening to more than just one day’s mental stability.

The emptying of the closet and its defunct storage systems is a metaphor for bringing assumptions into question about the nature of feelings and whether there are ‘bad’ and ‘good’ ones you can just stuff away indefinitely. The mess it makes in the living space of one’s mind represents the temporary disintegration of self-confidence.

During the phase of re-orientation to a new system I’m still installing, I’m simultaneously surrounded by the back-logged aftermath of the old system, the mess of tearing it out — perhaps before I felt truly ready — and the mess of whatever packaging and excessive bulk came with the new system, of which I’m only interested in installing and using what feels appropriate for me. That’s a big mess. All while neither system is functional yet/anymore.

That is not the moment for others to comment on the state of affairs. And it’s not a moment where ‘help’ is helpful. Human help can be even less helpful than a living room full of angry, incontinent cats climbing in my old things and obstructing access to the new shelving I have yet to build.

An ultimatum to go to couples counseling won’t help you discuss your feelings better!

When it comes to uncovering feelings, unhelpful help (like an ultimatum to go to couples counseling) can be damaging, destructive, and debilitating.

That’s what I think of as trauma: negative disintegration. Conclusions like “people are evil” or “I guess I’m just not lovable” are signs that a big identity shift took place, but was not permitted to complete, to unfold naturally, or to take place in supportive circumstances.

The phase involving disintegration of confidence doesn’t have to end negatively, though: under ideal circumstances, insights can disrupt my identity without creating an identity crisis.

Positive disintegration is a desirable, almost routine experience in my life now that I realize that life-hacks and emotional protocols optimized for one circumstance are by definition sub-optimal for new and different circumstances. In other words: I have an easier time learning and growing now that I expect to learn and grow over time, including re-evaluating and course-correcting my routines and assumptions… routinely.

Conclusions like “we’re both right, but not right for each other; both good, but not good for each other” or “I guess you like hand-washing and I like the dishwashing machine, so rather than teaching each other to care more, we’re just going to distribute the work in weird new ways that make us both happier than we previously thought possible” are examples of conclusions that might be drawn under circumstances that are not coercive or ultimatum-driven. Consent creates circumstances conducive to seeing ourselves as more than a victim or a rescuer.

Positive (instead of negative) disintegration is a lot more likely to happen when you can rely on the trust and support of your most beloved person/people. If, on the other hand, one of your first dozen experiences of disintegration takes place under duress, that’s harder.

The ultimatum to go to couples counseling might be more destabilizing and destructive than your partner can possibly imagine. An idea that’s more ableist than supportive.

What if you resist couples counseling for good reasons you can’t quite express emotionally or explain?

Did you know that 10% of the population CAN’T talk about feelings? Ten percent is a LOT of people! And guess what? Talk therapy, specifically, can make for worse outcomes for this large swath of the population, which includes women, too. More on that in the FAQ, below.

In addition, if you’re raised male, you probably know the taunt “you ___ like a girl” or were told to “Grow up!” “Buck up!” “Man up!” or “Suck it up!”

That is so unfair.

It’s simply not right.

And just because it’s in the past, doesn’t make its echoes go away.

A disproportionate number of men have lived experience with numbing, addiction, and a tendency to avoid conversations about feelings due to social, not biological reasons. To me, this fact is heart-rending, but it makes perfect sense.

Men who adapt by not talking about feelings, might get invited to couples counseling more than others… ironically.

Adaptation. Agility. Responding to circumstances. It’s an advantage, right?

Here’s a list of what are, at first, advantageous responses. While reading them, you might notice how often they are necessary, praised, and valued highly in the dominant North-American culture:

 

• • Studiousness,

• • workaholism,

• • people-pleasing,

• • fighting,

• • hiding,

• • secrecy,

• • not giving a fuck…

These are great ways to reclaim autonomy when your feelings are unwelcome. When your first-hand experience of life is being discounted, dismissed, or gaslit.

Temporarily, they work wonders and get you into a better position to escape. Each and every one is an intelligent, ingenious, innovative response …to an abusive situation.

Ironically, later in life, those same, previously appropriate responses cause the exact problems they’re meant to prevent, avoid, or solve. I’ll give you an example:

Case Study: how being trained to mute your feelings can get you into couples therapy territory.

The following is based on a conglomeration of clients’ experiences, as well as my own. To make it clear I’m not disclosing any client information, which I keep even more confidential than counselors and therapists do (e.g. I don’t report to authorities) I’ll tell it in the first person. Clients typically DON’T disclose this DURING our work; it just comes out in conversation AFTER the issue is resolved. I love that what seems necessary in therapy, is an optional after-thought in my line of work.

That said, this story is typical of my clients, who often love and speak very highly of their parents:

Say I don’t remember crying out of fear or frustration at home, even about fear of tests at school or gym or presentation assignments that anyone with a certain countenance might find daunting. I know/remember/imagine I would simply be encouraged to study harder to earn confidence. Makes sense, right?

Naturally, anytime some other kid might have asked for compassion, I became ever more studious. Studying and developing a great work-ethic is a sensible way to hide or ‘mask’ my emotional needs and unwelcome sensations. ‘Masking’ is necessary and good, but can be over-used.

Nobody has shown me that fear can be healthy, or how to tell when it’s actually best to let it run its course instead of stuffing it/saving it for later. I do not learn at a young age that fear can transform into discernment, good judgment on how much I can take on and what to delegate, and, eventually, self-confident peace with my own limitations. I learn to study instead of feel or trust myself. Studiousness is a reflex, more than a choice.

Because nobody’s coaching me on my feelings, let alone how long, where, and when to mask them in any one particular way… I might not realize that my childhood-specific protocol should be checked regularly for efficacy. If anybody told me that eventually, when my circumstances change, I will be free to handle fear differently, it might be an overwhelming memory. Maybe it was in a rhetorical remark that started with “while you’re under my roof…”

Say I become an adult living on my own. I am finally free to get comfort in ways my caregivers didn’t or weren’t able to offer me… finally! No need to hide my desire for compassion from anyone… Alas, i don’t know how to meet the need alone. It becomes anxiety about anxiety. anxiety squared.

Without ever reevaluating my mask as perhaps adopted under duress, I double down on being studious, working hard, and trying to outperform myself. This is how I manage present-day, adult-sized pressures and stress. What was a choice, then a reflex, now develops into an identity.

If this particular masking technique is still my go-to response to all stress, including stress teachers, bosses, friends, and partners, I am destined to become workaholic. Workaholism is so common, and often praised, it’s hard to see it set in. And having income and a good work ethic is a selection factor in romance! Giving up workaholism could be more unthinkable than giving up life itself.

Under these circumstances, I will have accrued multiple decades of fear that went without recognition.

I’d shun fear… so maybe I’d burn out at a start-up, or take out a dangerously big loan to hire a coach who demands I “just believe in myself.” I’d have decades of life experiences that went without real comfort… so I might use food, drugs, or distractions that never quite fill the gaping void.

I’d have no idea that in reality, recognition and comfort turn fear and sadness into discernment and, eventually, self-confidence. But I never learned that, so I dread disappointment and avoid hope at all costs. I live in more fear than those who learned to sit with fear. And it was never taught at school. It was made worse there.

So it is with a complete lack of self-confidence that I will have swept a lifetime of (extra) fear and (extra) sadness under this particular rug, and wonder why my (extra high) stress, and my responses to stress are getting out of hand.

Because my gut-feeling, my intuition, my wisdom of what I want, don’t want, and will be good at or should delegate, hasn’t developed yet, work deadlines give me headaches, issues with appetite, and disrupt my sleep. Others might remark that my thinking seems overly serious, rigid, or hard on myself, and I have no idea what they mean. People around me talk aimlessly about emotion, but when I share even the smallest thing, they mistake me for being demanding. I keep offering them empathy instead of advice as best I can, but it seems performative, meaningless, and fultile.

I have little experience with empathy from others actually reaching me. I might discover I’ve never dared to rely on anyone emotionally, and can’t really let love in. Even 10% of the pain, suffering, and sense of isolation I feel, feels like too much for me to handle. I don’t want to burden others as well.

This is one way workaholism can render one unfit for work. Paradox fulfilled.

Why couples counseling might feel like too little, too late for the emotionally silent man.

Where once upon a time, simple TLC could have transformed each instance of second-guessing myself into discernment and courage, because I was denied this, my studious/workaholic response (which was wise at the time) became automatic, and a false identity. Now I might have an incrementally less and less accurate assessment of what I should say no to, and lack the courage to do so, so it’s too late for just TLC. TLC is nice, but to address the compounded problem, I’d need skilled help at dismantling the ticking time bomb that might just detonate and exterminate my identity, my relationship, and my ability to work.

And this is where many men are, when their gf insists couples counseling will help him talk about his feelings… making him feel like a shunned, shamed, shy child all over again.

(I’m not educated enough to talk about trauma in sessions; my clients don’t have to explain any history or justify their behavior at all. My modality side-steps story altogether. I just thought I’d write the above for the ladies reading along, in case they are where I once was: baffled and frustrated as to why you might dread talking about feelings, while she assumes couples counseling / therapy would be good for you… good for anyone.)

If you’ve been puzzled as to how you might release pent-up emotions and their unwanted impacts on the present and arrive at your true self, without talking about feelings in couples counseling, or revisiting any memories talk-therapy style, there are many ways to do so. It can be surprisingly fast.

If you want help choosing from multiple great alternatives, contact me. (And no, I’m not helping men release pent-up emotions by prostituting my time. I offer a money-back guarantee on permanently dismantling a mood-bomb within a certain period of time, and I refer out if mine are not the right services for you.)

Just because you don’t talk about feelings, doesn’t mean you’re broken (or that you need couples counseling.)

I’m passionate about bringing out the best in men by supporting them one by one in discovering the real person they’ve always been, deep inside. This includes whatever sensitive, tender, thoughtful man your girlfriend fell in love with, without sacrificing loyalty to your true self, and without excluding what masculinity means to you, personally.

I’m a professional consultant to therapists around the world (some of whom are or have been couples counselors!), and I base my opinions in this post on what my own clients’, my intervision buddies’ clients’, and my current and ex-partners’ resistance to couples therapy has taught me — reasons you might be right to refuse unhelpful ‘help,’ too.

There are many men who refuse couples counseling and DON’T end up losing their girlfriend over their refusal to talk about feelings.

There are men who supplement or prepare so thoroughly for couples counseling through one-on-one support, that it becomes obsolete and reduces talking about feelings to a non-issue.

And you might like to know: it’s common for couples counselors to recommend each person in the couple supplements the couples counseling with some kind of one-on-one support.

One-on-one support where you don’t talk about feelings, avoid talk-therapy, and make couples counseling obsolete.

Especially if you have to go to work the next day, many men don’t want this one-on-one support to make them emotional, or require talking about feelings, the past, suicidality, secrets, or addictions.

I’m one of very few experts in a once-and-done type of alternative to talk therapy that’s perfect for if

 

• • you don’t want to go to couples therapy, talk about emotions, or listen to people vent,

• • you’re uncomfortable sharing feelings in couples counseling, and can’t bear crying,

• • you can’t communicate uncomfortable feelings without shutting down or going dumb or numb, even (or especially) in couples counseling,

• • you hate talking about feelings with your gf / wife / partner, and you’re pretty sure couples counseling will make it worse,

• • you wonder:
    “why is it so hard to communicate about feelings?”
    or
    “what good is couples counseling when we’re just girlfriend and boyfriend?”

(If you’re thinking more along the lines of “how to stop my girlfriend from drawing me into her drama” in a practical, every-day way, please subscribe to my eZine: I plan to address that in a separate article.)

The post you’re reading now is more about not being able to convey feelings verbally to a girlfriend who’s sincerely listening, but doesn’t understand why no words come out of your mouth when she asks “what are you feeling?” (Specifically, girlfriends who wonder if couples therapy could really help you learn to express yourself.)

Top- 5 FAQ from men who don’t talk about feelings re: couples counseling

In my experience, men who don’t get very emotional frequently ask questions of a technical nature that seem deceptively rhetorical.

 

1. Will couples counseling fail if I can’t talk about feelings without shutting down?
   
   
2. Can couples counseling make things worse if I don’t talk much, talking is hard for me, or expressing emotions feels bad/ weird/ wrong?
   
   
3. What is it called when you can’t verbalize your feelings and you don’t want advice, therapy, analysis, diagnosis, treatment, or a ‘cure’?
   
   
4. How to get out of going to couples counseling if I’m uncomfortable talking about feelings?
   My gf wants couples counseling but I don’t.
   I won’t go.
   
   
5. How to keep my girlfriend happy without couples counseling, when it’s so hard for me to identify or express emotions?

These FAQ are all but rhetorical. They’re sincere.

I address them one by one, below.

Tricky points that deserve more attention include:

• • Terminology for “a lack of verbal self-expression” depends on why.

• • Physical/physiological difficulty vocalizing more than just feelings…

• • It’s NOT YOUR FAULT you can’t voice your feelings!

• • You know you can love someone and not go to couples counseling with them. (She doesn’t.)

• • Let’s render couples counseling and “talking about feelings” obsolete!

1) Will couples counseling fail if I don’t say much, talking is hard for me, or expressing my feelings feels bad/ weird/ wrong?

TL;DR I think so, because the wrong goal and the wrong ingredients using the wrong medium makes 3 wrongs – which don’t make a right.

blabalaobla

In my experience, all goals for couples counseling will fail until all parties accept the fact that you shut down instead of being able to talk about feelings. For many guys, something fully automatic is actually running the show. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s permanent, it just feels that way because that’s how it’s always been. (For more detail, see Question 3 “What is it called when you can’t verbalize your feelings?”)

If the purpose of couples counseling is to reach some OTHER goal that relies on you FIRST sharing about feelings (for example, if your gf wants you to be better at listening to HER feelings and spend less time playing video games,) then yes, couples counseling can fail by focusing on behavior and failing to recognize the most basic ingredients (both of you feeling safe talking about feelings) as a priority.

Furthermore, even if addressing your automatic shut-downs is goal #1 on a list of goals, chances are pretty poor that goal #1 will get all the time it actually needs to truly become a non-issue, so again: couples counseling could fail you there.

If the ONLY goal of couples counseling is to offer space and safety to relax whatever mechanism shuts you down, and all 3 of you are open to being surprised as to why, then maybe couples counseling can help.

But beware: talking about something that involuntarily mutes you requires special facilitation.

By definition, couples therapists get little opportunity to practice such skills on anyone: for practical reasons, many such guys don’t show up in the first place. And it’s an ethics issue as well as a chicken-or-the-egg issue to whether they even should or can practice on guys who are being dragged into couples counseling involuntarily or under duress, as that non-consent alone could be the cause.

If the only goal of couples counseling is to offer you room to explore in complete safety, free of pressure to perform, so you can access and become your best self… why would your girlfriend need to be present?

2) Can couples counseling make things worse if I can’t talk about feelings without shutting down?

TL;DR: Talk therapy can make things worse for men who are uncomfortable talking about feelings, yes, so screen against over-confident counselors and consider alternatives to couples counseling if three out of three couples therapists you interview (for free) don’t feel quite right for you, even if you can’t put your finger on why.

Talking about feelings might be something that your girlfriend thinks of as merely a stepping stone to her own ‘greater’ goals for the two of you (see question 1), so if you don’t want to end up feeling ashamed and disempowered, don’t let your gf pick the therapy AND the counselor AND set the goals.

Of those of us who don’t sense or speak feelings, many have clear thoughts or full-blown ideas instead, or spontaneously act out of extreme stress. It’s perfectly common for those thoughts or actions to include what seems like violence. If you are honest about urges or ideas of hurting anyone, even yourself, and even if such plans come to your mind unbidden and you have no urge to act on them, this kind of self-regulation strategies or expressions of need for the comfort of home can be misinterpreted and paradoxically result in unexpected, involuntary psychiatric incarceration. It’s life-altering, to say the least.

That said, even if you have no such ideas or if you keep them completely to yourself, couples counseling that relies on the voicing of feelings can be unnecessarily difficult for guys who don’t feel comfortable doing it. For these men, even the idea of attending talk-therapy can be stigmatizing, cruel, and debilitating. If energy came in spoonfulls, it might use all their ‘spoons’ for the week.

Intense grief isn’t the only perfectly reasonable cause of temporary mutism. Many people are unable to voice anything at all, or just feelings in particular, for reasons they themselves don’t understand, and stay intermittently mute until that specific mechanism is supported in releasing its grip on them.

Some counselors believe they should cajole all of their “patients” into sharing their feelings, even though that’s been scientifically proven to backfire in certain situations. Others might do the same damage at a slower pace, believing they are earning your trust, without realizing they plan to apply an altogether mismatched framework or modality once they have won it.

If you would like support from a professional in defending your right to privacy, to not have to “share your feelings” or risk losing your lover altogether, you might need to openly state that as your goal. Doing so in the free intake should screen against any of the therapists with unrealistic, non-consensual goals for you.

Not all therapists are aware enough to screen for or try to help you figure out the possible causes for difficulty expressing yourself. And they still charge!

Addiction has been shown to be worsened by talk therapy in “patients” who don’t have verbal skill at emotional self-expression. Without recognizing that mismatch, talk therapy can actually compound the experience of loneliness at the root of addiction. Well-intentioned counselors and therapists can add to existing shame and stigma with erroneous assumptions.

3) What is it called when you can’t verbalize your feelings and you don’t want advice, therapy, analysis, diagnosis, treatment, or a ‘cure’?

Persistent Drive for Autonomy, or PDA (which goes by another, more diagnostic term, too) can take a nervous system out of gear, often with socially and personally disastrous consequences like shame and involuntary loneliness.

If you’re involuntarily “stubborn” and unwilling to do things when prompted (but you can still engage your voicebox), PDA might explain what’s going on.

Before I go into other terms that could label or explain things (feel free to skip to two headers down), I just want to comisserate with you about the requirements of talk therapy. That world, including couples counseling, seems to require words from a specific subset of linguistic labels. Feelings vocabulary such as “sad,” “mad,” “glad,” etc.

I, on the other hand, specialize in working with men who would honestly answer that they feel “fine,” “okay, I guess,” “nothing,” “numb,” “frozen,” “clammed up,” “shut-down,” “stuck,” “speechless,” “alien,” “mute,” “unable to speak,” “dumbfounded,” “emotionally dumb,” “overwhelmed,” “bewildered,” “disengaged,” “far-off,” “distracted,” “log-jammed,” “grid-locked,” “blank,” “unsure,” “hazy,” “vacant,” “static-y,” or “covered in white-out,” and I accept and am able to work with “Ugh” or “I don’t know” as a perfectly valid description of how you “feel” as well. In fact, this specificity is key, because in my and my clients’ experience, it’s a combination of very specific experiences that need recognition in order to stop overwhelming you.

I help these men retain “emotional lock-down” as one of many options at their disposal, to apply as needed, but expand beyond that so it’s not the only (auto-pilot) choice available to them.

Dictionary language might be ‘good enough’ to help many people feel heard, seen, and less alone, but more than 10% of the population doesn’t have that beneficial experience. For this set of people, the game of guessing at others’ feelings is a lot less rewarding and more stressful.

10% of the population CAN’T talk about feelings, and couples counseling doesn’t change that.

7 Reasons Couples Counseling Fails Men Who Don’t Talk About Feelings

Interpreting what someone else means by a supposedly common word like “sad” might be a fully conscious effort that, for some of us, leaves more questions than it answers, never feels complete, costs a lot of mental and emotional energy, and (and here’s the kicker) causes more pain and stress in one person than it can possibly resolve in another.

I am not into analysis and I don’t talk about this with my clients, but it makes sense to me to have read that many of us, for better or for worse, and often without choice, sacrifice interoception (internal awareness) and prioritize exteroception (attention to external stimuli) in order to play the no-fun, stressful, unrewarding, energy-zapping guessing game of “talking about feelings without problem solving or saying “me too!””

10% is a huge number of people, and for these folks, the closest thing to the relief others get from having feelings guessed correctly, is finding out there is a word for what we experience!

I AM NOT A THERAPIST. My expertise is that I have lived experience of half of the 7 terms I elude to below. This is not medical or mental health advice, just an article supporting people who don’t like advice.

Terminology for “a lack of verbal self-expression in couples counseling” depends on why

I’ve hinted at PDA, at the top of FAQ #3. But what is this 10% of the population I keep mentioning over and over?

If talking about feelings is always where you get tongue-tied, maybe it’s because you can’t feel your body and trust what you sense, or feelings vocabulary others use just doesn’t feel applicable, true, or right for some other reason. There are tests to find out whether you have Alexithymia. A-lexi = no-words for. Thymia = feelings/passions. (It is NOT a diagnosis in the DSM. Again: I have therapists as clients, but am not a therapist, myself.)

Alexithymia can be physical, like your wiring just won’t let you, but it can also be enculturated.

If you think that

• • feelings don’t matter,

• • feelings are imaginary,

• • feelings are red herrings,

• • feelings are sinful, or

• • feelings should not be respected, given credence, or paid any mind,

like I was taught when I was a little girl, then maybe you have the same kind of Alexithymia I used to have.

This kind of enculturated numbness to inner experience happens so extensively, systematically, and systemically to males, specifically, that Alexithymia with socialized self-denial at its root is called Normal Male Alexithymia.

It’s a little weird, but it’s true: I am a female who has had to live with (and then overcame, and set out to help others overcome) something that is technically called Normal Male Alexithymia.

If you can identify feelings and share your inner world in text or in a journal, maybe look beyond Alexithymia.

Physical/physiological difficulty vocalizing more than just feelings in couples counseling?

If you’re being threatened with abandonment if you don’t say all the right things in couples counseling, or if you’re viscerally repelled by the way your couples therapist smells, or if they remind you of someone you had a bad experience with in the past, those are examples of things that can cause many people to lose their ability to speak both during and after sessions — or, more commonly, refuse to go in the first place.

If your voicebox is completely out of gear, a couples counselor should ask you whether your voice comes back after you escape the situation that causes it, to help you determine whether you have Reactive Mutism. Reactive Mutism follows you home, and no matter how much anyone ridicules the cause, the situation causing it has to be changed, not your perspective on it.

It’s important you don’t get “treatment” for the wrong kind of Mutism, because trying to force yourself to be exposed to the stressful situation a little bit at a time (“exposure therapy”) only makes Reactive Mutism worse, and can lead to you developing additional types of involuntary Mutism, of which I will list a few below.

Low Profile Selective Mutism might be something you want to look into if people call you “extremely shy” but for you it’s debilitating. Low Profile Selective Mutism involves pushing yourself to utter some words when you really don’t have the capacity to speak at all. Speaking comes at far greater cost to you than it would for many others.

Examples of aftermath can include things like flying off the handle, meltdowns, migraines, compulsive ‘spacing out’ and ‘addictive’ behavior, often for long periods. I want to help you with this — without talk therapy.

Quieter still than Low Profile Selective Mutism is just plain Selective Mutism, often referred to as Situational Mutism; a phobia of the expectation to speak. It only affects one in one particular setting (e.g. couples counseling, or public speaking, or on the phone) and doesn’t follow you home.

Situational Mutism is a still-ambiguous term many laypeople prefer when talking about what is medically referred to as Selective Mutism, because Selective Mutism isn’t elective; it’s not a conscious choice to simply not talk. ‘Selective Mutism,’ isn’t like ‘Selective Hearing,’ where we ‘tune out’ some sounds in favor of what we’re listening for (an ability I am slowly regaining since a Traumatic Brain Injury robbed me of it in 2019.) Like the other terms discussed above, Selective Mutism is not a conscious choice.

It’s NOT YOUR FAULT you can’t voice your feelings in couples counseling.

Persistent Drive for Autonomy (PDA), Selective Mutism, Situational Mutism, Reactive Mutism, Low Profile Selective Mutism, Alexithymia, and Normal Male Alexithymia are not at all elective, voluntary, or a preference.

Many men tell themselves they choose not to talk about feelings voluntarily, only to discover in couples therapy that what might seem like a preference can’t simply be overridden when they choose to.

If that’s you, I want you to know: I will never pressure you to do what your girlfriend claims is “normal.” I will never demand you answer a question. I will give you a lot more predictability as to what I am going to ask, and all the non-verbal ways you can respond, than is offered in see-as-you-go, conversational therapy: I don’t do anything like talk therapy, but my clients get results they thought were only attainable through talk therapy (or a miracle).

You can’t explain what you can’t explain, and I won’t make you. My clients directly experience, see, and feel trust in themselves return… or set in for the first time in their lives, ever.

For Mutism to stop happening to you altogether, you’d have to alter the way your brain registers threats and how it triages in response to stress. There are no guarantees I can help, but if I can’t, you’d get your money back …and you would finally have had an experience of not being coerced, shamed, or grossly misunderstood!

I get it. You don’t want to go to couples counseling only to have a team of people beating up on you instead of just one?

My ex said “why would I go when it’s always the man’s fault, anyways?” Ouch. Now I know he might have been right to refuse: there are plenty of horrible therapists with power issues, and well-intentioned-but-horrible ones who’ve never been the one “on the couch” in their entire lives.

4) How to get out of going to couples counseling if I’m uncomfortable talking about feelings? My gf wants couples counseling but I don’t. I won’t go.

TL;DR If your gf has proposed an ultimatum, couples counseling or abandonment, it might be wise to get yourself a better kind of support you’d benefit from either way. Whether she leaves and you need support licking your wounds, or she stays and drags you to couples counseling or into fights challenging you to defend your views on it… you can opt out of this win-lose scenario and transform it into a win-win-win. Invite support you do want into your life, and honestly tell your gf it’s part of making the conversation about couples counseling more collaborative, constructive, and clear.

For this example, I’m going to pretend your gf is saying something like “you never listen to my feelings, never answer me when I ask you what you’re feeling, and you refuse to go to couples counseling: you’re making this relationship impossible!”

First, I want to offer you a ton, a ton of empathy for having to hear this.

• • The absolutes (“never,” “never,” and “impossible”) make the statements false by definition.

• • The adding up of 3 things as if the conclusion flows naturally from those, catastrophizes and confuses.

• • The last bit, about the relationship being made impossible by you, stands in direct contrast to the fact that you are, in fact, still subjecting yourself to this person’s opinion, even though it doesn’t bring you joy.

If she were a stranger making absolute, false, catastrophizing statements, the fact that there is no relationship would allow you to shrug and walk away.

The fact that you are listening and trying to think of a way to respond stands in direct contrast against her last statement: you obviously feel love, and struggle to express this love, especially in the face of confusion, accusations, and blame.

I hope you re-read that, or do what you must, to really, truly let that empathy in.

Because next, it might seem like I’m siding with her. I’m not!! I just want to wonder aloud what is happening here.

What if she is challenging you, in an unskilled and highly unattractive way, to declare what you want…?

She clearly hopes you want her in your life, and that you full-throatedly declare you want the two of you to be happy together. She is showing a pretty transparent agenda. It might be misguided in that it conflates love with attendance at couples counseling, but that can be remedied.

She might be panicking about how very much she loves you, and how unsure she is that this can last long. You might act differently, even if you actually feel the exact same.

The issue is: you know you can love someone and not go to couples counseling with them. She doesn’t.

Her agenda and way of presenting it might make it hard for you to actively feel any pleasant attraction towards her and her behavior… it may even be quite painful to love her right now, because she’s demanding an over-simplified, behavior-based proof that threatens or denies your inner reality. If she’s asking how you feel a lot, she might even be implying you should declare your love to reassure her on demand.

That’s not love at its best. It’s unattractive, yucky, bah. It might even feel coercive, and make you want to just walk away.

If you’ve considered walking away, and it doesn’t work, I have some questions for you:

• • Do you doubt that anyone’s advice on what to do right now could possibly apply to your particular situation, your particular gf, today and at this particular time, and work for you?

• • Do you wish you knew how to convince her that couples counseling isn’t for you in a truly alive, wise, attractive way both of you would trust, because it came from deep in your bones?

• • Do you wish you had the courage and energy to pull off difficult conversations like this without needing outside instruction or pep-talks, because who you truly are and who she truly loves would be shining through your every thought, word, and gesture, and you’d have everything, everything you need to be able to straighten out any misunderstandings as you went along?

If you said yes to all of the above, I want to reassure you you’re onto something.

All this is perfectly reasonable to want.

It’s far more likely to work than any manual or instruction anyone can generate from the outside.

It’s perfectly reasonable, and possible, to become your true self and handle this issue with a clumsy new grace that’s both effective and endearing — to your gf and to yourself.

I hereby challenge you to tell your gf you want to talk seriously about the benefits she thinks can come out of couples counseling, and all the other avenues that can get you those benefits — but first, pursue some personal development support so you’re your best self for whatever the two of you end up agreeing to do instead of breaking up over this.

See what I did there?

You can take initiative to work with someone one-on-one who does get you, who does support you, who does recognize couples counseling isn’t right for you… and you can put that before couples counseling — not just to help you have the presence of mind needed to talk her out of couples counseling as the only way forward, but to actually make talking about feelings a non-issue in your love life and to render couples counseling itself obsolete.

Now, if you’re pretty confident you don’t need one-on-one support, here’s a DIY alternative to couples counseling that side-steps talking about feelings you don’t feel, and stops an over-sharing or blameful gf from blowing your fuse. It takes 5-10 minutes a day.

I don’t expect it to work, but you can try it if you feel one-on-one support isn’t necessary for you.

5) How to keep my girlfriend happy without couples counseling, when it’s so hard for me to identify or express emotions?

If your girlfriend is specifically asking you to talk about feelings with her in couples counseling, and you specifically refuse to attend, your relationship is definitely at a turning point… but it’s not necessarily the end. Couples counseling isn’t the only way forward. As long as each of you are willing to put in time and learn new things about yourselves, and about your differences, there is no reason to presume it’s hopeless.

Hopelessness can be intoxicating. While drunk on hopelessness, one can feel free of all responsibility to do anything, and just enjoy things while they last. The hopelessness hangover starts when staying carefree gets hard and reality catches up. It’s hard to be kind to oneself and get an accurate assessment of reality in that state. Issues of guilt, deserving, wanting results ASAP, and financial investment can clutter one’s thinking and make it hard to fathom any way forward besides what you’ve already heard of. Breaking up or accepting couples counseling as an ultimatum. Even if you’re pretty sure it’s not for you.

Whether you can sense and name feelings or not, the idea of breaking up sends most people’s IQ/EQ into a nose-dive: who would sleep where anymore? How different would life be? How to escape the ugliness of a breakup? And the kicker: won’t I regret spending money on couples counseling if it’s all over soon, anyways?

Having to bet the farm on whether something you don’t think will work, will work, sucks. It sucks money, energy, time, and morale. Your girlfriend’s enthusiasm belies her hope, but the whole issue is that she doesn’t see how hard her asks are, and you have a hard time explaining it to her…

Here’s a list of things you can do alone to escape the trap of a “couples counseling ultimatum,” and to help you meet your girlfriend halfway on the “talking about feelings” issue.

• • $250 Short series of mutual support calls in a small group of men who don’t talk about feelings and hate ultimatums, too. Peers help each other shop for meaningful, viable alternatives to couples counseling that fit your personality, and you actually get started.

• • $ 50 Learn how to use a card game that does the talking about feelings for you, so you never say the wrong thing, and drama is nipped in the bud within 20 minutes/week, no couples counseling involved.

• • $ 5 Witness yourself and other men speak without getting criticized in a mixed-gender, flat-hierarchy, online meeting where sharing your thoughts about couples counseling can get you a surprising amount of peace.

Often, partners who think y’all will benefit from couples counseling simply need to see what they think of as ‘progress’ — emotional development that, in the dominant North-American culture, was left up to the stay-at-home wife.

Her role in society was to make babies, care for neighbors of all ages and abilities, serve business luncheons, host soirees, and so forth. She secured household stability, social status, and professional promotions for the breadwinner. That was a 24-7, around the clock job you’re now sharing in, or delegating e.g. to the government through taxes, or to religious organizations through other tithes.

If your girlfriend is wanting couples counseling, one ear can hear that and take offense. That’s only human.

Your other ear can take that same information and hear her confidence in all she sees you capable of: great relationships have positive effects on job interviews, workplace success, sex life, social anxiety, addictive tendencies, and overall health and happiness. She’s wanting that for both of you.

Sure, by insisting on bringing up couples counseling, it’s like she’s wrapped the wrong gift, but you can kindly accept and return it and exchange it for something that fits you better. Something useful you actually enjoy.

If she’s anything like the hundreds of smart, attractive, heterosexual women I met before I decided to exclusively advocate for men… she’ll be ecstatic.