I recently started getting to know a guy. We have been talking for almost 3 weeks. He told me he doesn’t feel an emotional connection with me. I find feeling emotions within myself towards people is very hard. Family and friends have told me I’m hard to read regarding my feelings and emotions. How can I show this guy I am willing to connect emotionally but I am slow at it because I’m not fully comfortable yet as it’s so new. I have never been a very open and vulnerable person so this is a new thing someone told me. I’m not even sure what is shown through an emotional connection as I’ve never been aware of it before.
Tl;Dr I’ve been told an emotional connection isn’t felt and I don’t know how to feel it or show feelings yet.
1 comment
This is a little bit tricky because it’s such a big question or blindspot for you. Do you feel you have an emotional connection with other people in your life, like friends or family? Do you open up to anybody, or not really?
An emotional connection is formed by sharing things about yourself. Usually in relationships, people start by sharing relatively impersonal facts about themselves that they’d be comfortable with anybody knowing (maybe your job, what kinds of things you do for fun, etc). Then once you get a little bit of a feel for somebody, you begin to open up and share more of your opinions and feelings, and at some point you get comfortable sharing something that feels a little more vulnerable (for example, values that you have, personal stories that you have emotional attachments to, things you’re embarrassed about, details about, a difficult period in your past, etc). You get to decide what these vulnerable sort of things are, and you don’t have to open up more quickly than you feel comfortable with. But if you just keep everything quite superficial, it’s difficult for people to connect with you on quite the same level.
If this is something you have a great deal of difficulty with, I’d consider talking to a therapist about it, because it seems like the sort of thing they could really help with.
And if you feel that you have a hard time showing your feelings, consider trying to just saying them out loud with more frequency. Saying things like, “I really like hanging out with you,” “I had a lot of fun with you on our date,” “I’m looking forward to seeing you this weekend,” helps new potential partners at least know that you’re interested, and although some people might find it a little corny or something, a lot will appreciate hearing those sorts of things.