It’s been said that women have an average of 20,000 words a day, while men only have around 7,000. Who knows if this is actually true or not, or if it’s just common in a lot of self-help books nowadays? However, I think it’s generally safe to assume that women actually do tend to talk more than men.
I’ve got a couple of guesses on why that is—
1. Women tend to think out loud and process, while men tend to keep stuff in their heads and process on their own.
and
2. Women feel more feelings. They don’t necessarily have more feelings, but they tend to be better at actually allowing themselves to feel them. Feelings create thoughts and thoughts create words and discussions; therefore women tend to talk more.
Now, if you’re married to a quieter man, you might find his quietness frustrating. Perhaps you’re married to the man who never shares how he feels but always seems to be mad—also frustrating. Well, there might be some reasons for his quietness that you don’t realize.
Common reasons why your husband may not share how he feels.
Your man may not be sharing how he feels simply because are you ready for this?
He doesn’t know!
Yep, you read that right. Many men aren’t well versed with feelings and therefore struggle to identify them. Men can live in a world of fine, good, and mad. It’s incredibly possible that your husband was raised under the teaching of men don’t cry, they don’t feel, they just suck it up and deal with life. Their lack of feelings is a result of that kind of wrong teaching. But the truth is, God made emotions for a reason, and we’re all designed to have them. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything tougher than a man who is willing to shed a tear of pain, sorrow, or compassion, in fact, ask any man what’s harder, sucking it up, or crying it out? They’ll choose crying every time.
If you think this might be your guy’s struggle, try checking out our free downloadable conversation exercise, How do you Really Feel? It includes all the feeling words and great discussion questions for good chats.
He also may not be sharing because he’s overly concerned about upsetting you. Believe it or not, men don’t like to say the wrong thing. They don’t like to bother you with their feelings or have something they’re stressed out about create stress in your life, so as a result—they withhold. They become passive and struggle to share how they feel because they’re too worried about the outcome.
If you’re married to an angry husband who only seems to feel mad, this might actually be the cause. Behind every passive man is some passive aggression.
Lastly, let’s be sure to not overthink issues with your not-so-talkative man because truth be told, he might not share how he feels because of his personality. Maybe he’s introverted, naturally a man of few words, or he is just content with life. In other words, he’s not opposed to sharing, but he just doesn’t have a need for much of it.
In this case, it’s important that he knows that you do. Let him know you have a need to for understanding him and would truly appreciate his sharing more with you. This is also a great way to use the free download, How do you Really Feel?
Overall, the best way you can start to hear from your husband on how he feels is to enter into your conversations with a heart of seeking to understand him. Validate his feelings when he does share, ask open-ended questions and create a safe place for him to share anything with you.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Expedition Marriage
Featured Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
