He's Not Gone. He's Protecting You.
He built the wall between you to keep you safe, not out.
I’ve created a totally free (no catch) tool called The Gut Check. It’s designed to help grieving men, and their partners understand what’s happening them. It has a built in interactive coach that will help you see what’s going on and what to do about it.
I’m going to write a series of articles based on what people are asking the coach about so I can help with the problems that are most important to you. This is article is one of them.
You’re all sitting around the dinner table, making another attempt at a “family dinner.” He’s pushing his food around his plate while the kids are trying to tell him about their day. All he can muster up are grunted one-word answers. They think their dad is acting this way because they’ve done something wrong. You’re wondering the same thing about yourself.
You’ve been watching this movie on repeat for months and you’re at your wit’s end. You’ve tried to get through to him and you’re at the point of wanting to grab him by the shoulders and scream in his face. You feel completely alone and you know he must too.
Maybe he lost his father last spring. Maybe the two of you lost a child, and you’re grieving alone in the same house. Maybe it was a friend who knew him before you did. Whoever it was, he hasn’t been the same since and it’s looking more and more like he never will be again.
You’ve asked what’s wrong and gotten “nothing.” You’ve told him you miss him and watched him look at you sadly and say nothing. You’ve cried, and he left the room. You’re not sure how many more times you can stand having the door slammed in your face.
He’s not gone. He’s hiding, and a man who’s hiding can come back.
Shutting Everyone is Damn Hard Work
To you, it looks like he’s stopped caring about you, the kids and everything else that used to matter.
The absence is real, painful, and you’re not imagining it. There are two kinds and it’s important to know the difference. The first is a man who’s stopped loving you and checked out because he doesn’t care anymore. The second is a man who’s using everything he’s got to keep a lid on the roiling hell inside him. There’s nothing left over for dinner conversation, the kids’ games, or for you. It’s so easy to mistake the latter for the former.
He has things he wishes he could say but is afraid what’ll happen if he says them. They’ve been at the tip of his tongue countless times and he can’t make his lips say the words. The risk is too high.
He’s barely keeping his shit together and keeping his emotions and the people he loves at arm’s length is the only way to keep the train on the tracks. If he opens up he’ll have to feel the guilt, shame and regret for all the “what-ifs” and “if-onlys.” He’s in a constant battle with himself and it’s killing him. And somehow it still seems like the least worst option.
This didn’t start with the loss. Somewhere, a long time ago, he learned that emotional men are weak men. They’re unpredictable, and fold when things get hard. They let down the people who are counting on them. Strong feelings hurt people and his job is to keep everyone safe. The loss didn’t teach him any of that. It took a system he’s been living with a long time and turned it up as far as it goes.
He didn’t choose the rules he’s living by. He knows he’s giving you one-word answers. What he doesn’t know is that the rules are rules. To him they look like the truth. He isn’t waking up each morning deciding to give you nothing. Under the surface, where he can’t see it, some part of him believes the silence is the most loving thing he has left to offer.
Why Reaching for Him Backfires
Every attempt to break through the walls he’s put up has left you with shorter answers, earlier escapes from the room, and more hours in the garage. It’s maddening. How are you supposed to reach him without reaching for him?
“We need to talk” feels like a performance review he already knows he’s failing. Your tears, your frustration, the words “you’re never present” don’t sound like love to him. They’re proof of the exact thing he’s trying to prevent. He’s hurting you.
Put yourself in his shoes and follow his logic. If he’s hurting you when he’s silent, he’d hurt you worse if he uncorked the demons trying to destroy him. The safest version of himself is the one who says and shows the least. The harder you reach, the more necessary his behaviour feels.
Which means the fix isn’t pushing harder to get him to talk. It’s changing the words you use when you are talking to him.
Say It So He Can Hear It
“You’re never present” and “I miss you” mean the same thing but land completely differently. But the first tells him he’s failed you again. The second tells him you still want and need him. He probably couldn’t explain the difference, but try it and see what happens. One will make him leave the room. You’ve already seen that. The other just might make him look up at you.
Here are a few changes worth practicing. Instead of “You never talk to me anymore,” try “I miss hearing what’s on your mind.” “You need to deal with this” becomes “I want to be in this together with you.” “What’s wrong with you?” becomes “I love you even when you’ve got nothing to say.”
You might have noticed a pattern in those suggestions. Speaking from “you” is an indictment of him. Speaking from “I” is sharing your experience. An indictment gives him something to fight. He’ll start building the defense case before you’ve finished the sentence. Your experience gives him nothing to fight, and a man with nothing to defend can actually listen.
You’re not saying anything new. You’re saying it so he can hear it.
Let’s be real. You’ve probably said some version of these already and gotten nothing back. Say them anyway, and don’t expect them to work the moment they come out of your mouth.
He might give you the same nod and the same silence for weeks. It’ll make you want to give up. Keep trying. What you’re doing in those weeks is proving, one sentence at a time, that talking to you doesn’t end with a list of everything he’s done wrong.
Ask for a Drive, Not a Conversation
Stop aiming for the magic conversation you’ve been rehearsing, where he bares his soul and cries on your shoulder. Aim for one small yes instead. Ask him to come for a drive Saturday, to stay for the whole game, to help you move the shelves in the basement.
He’ll say no sometimes, and maybe the first three (or twenty) times. A no to the drive doesn’t mean the marriage is failing, and it doesn’t mean you asked wrong. He’s checking whether the drive comes with hidden expectations attached, and the only way he learns it doesn’t is repetition. Keep your asks small, keep making them and remember that keeping them small means a no costs you both almost nothing.
And when you get the yes, go side by side, not face to face. Men say hard things when nobody’s looking at them, in the truck, on a walk, or while they’re fixing something. Eye contact across a table feels threatening enough to make him avoid it.
If he’s in the garage every night, or buried in a project, or training for something, it doesn’t have to mean he’s hiding from you. Some men do their grieving with their hands. Ask him what he’s building. You might learn more from that answer than from asking how he feels.
And don’t diagnose him, despite how much you want to. Trying to convince him to talk to someone is you understandably trying to get him to talk to anyone. “You’re depressed” might even be true, and it will still land like an attack, because it tells a man who already feels like he’s failing at everything that he’s failing at this too.
Patience Has a Limit
None of this is fair. You didn’t teach him to hide, and you shouldn’t have to be the one trying to get him to stop. You’re doing more than your share right now, and it can feel unbearable. You’re paying the price for a problem you didn’t create. It’s ok to be honest about it, at least to yourself.
And still, none of this means tiptoeing around him forever. You’re grieving too. You lost what he lost, or you’re losing him, or both at once, and your grief doesn’t have to play second fiddle to his.
You can tell him the truth about you without handing him a deadline. “I’m lonely in this house” is honest, and he can hear it. “Fix this by Friday” puts you in charge of the timeline for another person’s healing, and nobody has ever healed on someone else’s schedule.
After our daughter died, my wife told me that she understood that the next five years were going to be brutal. She wasn’t giving me a timeline. She was telling me that she was in this for the long haul.
There’s a difference between patience and saying nothing about what you need. Patience is a gift to the other person. Saying nothing teaches you both that your needs don’t count, and it builds a resentment that destroys relationships.
If his silence ever turns into talk of being a burden, of everyone being better off without him, or of not being around, that’s not hiding. It’s an emergency. Too many men think about taking their own lives after a devastating loss. Call or text a helpline at findahelpline.com, with him or without him, the same day. He’ll probably say he’s fine. He’s not.
What Coming Back Actually Looks Like
It probably won’t look like a deep, heartfelt conversation. It might look like him saying yes to the drive. Or look like him going to the game and even staying for the whole thing. Or sticking around when you ask him a question.
Each of those moments is important because when he comes back to you, it will likely be one small yes at a time.
If you want to understand your partner, The Gut Check has a version built for you, not him. It takes a few minutes and it’ll show you how he protects himself and what you can do that might help.