Emotionally cold partner: some people find it hard to show feelings. Others seem to have no access to their emotions at all. What to do when feelings grow cold? Can you have a relationship with an emotionally cold partner?
That’s what it’s all about:
- What does it do to the couple dynamic when one partner doesn’t show their emotions or is even cold to emotions?
- Emotional coldness is almost always a protective strategy, often learned in early childhood or in previous relationships to avoid being rejected
- Talking about feelings is something you can do, but you can’t force it. If cold-feeling people are distressed, they withdraw even more
- If the partner is cold to emotions, usually only support through couples therapy or coaching will help, because it is often deep seated beliefs and blocks
Help, my partner is cold to the touch
In couples counseling I often experience the reproach: "You have become completely emotionless." To which the criticized partner often responds: "You knew from the beginning that I’m not the romantic type. You know that I love you. Would I be with you otherwise?" Do such couples still have a chance?
While pragmatism should find its place in the relationship and in reacting to changes and conflicts, love needs closeness and attention. We do not only want a person at our side who supports us, we are looking for someone who shows us the world and ourselves from his eyes, full of affection, understanding and curiosity. Just as we want to know everything about our partner, we hope they do too.
Love is shown in the way partners communicate, and it is not just about words. Happy couples are characterized by affectionate communication. They reveal more than is necessary, they think with and further when they try to give each other pleasure, they put themselves in the partner’s place in order to feel what he feels.
How well do we fit together? The great love test
Based on experience from couple therapy and scientific research: Where do you share the same values?? Where do you complement each other? What are the differences that threaten conflict??
Emotionally cold relationship: what to do when feelings grow cold
Those who are no longer mirrored by their partner experience a loss of connection. Watch a child who wants to show her mother something she has seen. It wants to feel connected. For when she sees with her eyes what the child has discovered, there is a connection for a wonderful moment that makes it palpable: there is someone who is feeling just what I am feeling. I am important. I am valuable. I am not alone.
It is affectionate communication when the mother recognizes the desire for attachment, is mindful and shares this moment with her child and perhaps adds: "Yes, this is very nice. This reminds me of what we saw yesterday. Let’s take a closer look tomorrow?" Affectionate communication makes for secure attachment, without fear of loss, without fear of commitment.
Adults seek bonding at eye level, but they seek it quite as much as children do. When they tell each other what they have read, when they send each other text messages and pictures during the day to please each other, when they spontaneously give each other gifts because they found something their partners might like. They think for each other. They affirm each other through their attention.
Emotionally cold: When men or women have no feelings
The child who is not paid attention by his mother does not give up immediately at first. "Mom, look! Look! Mom!"It may get louder and even pull on the arm and point to something. Maybe it will even cry to get attention. And this is also repeated in relationships. Adults use a whole repertoire of behaviors to assure themselves of the partner’s attentiveness. They don’t tug at each other’s sleeves, but they hold hands, they tickle each other, they hug each other, they tell each other their experiences of the day – they try to bond. If they fail because the partner turns away, does not respond to them and shows no ambition of their own to seek closeness, then they feel coldness of feeling.
A very painful feeling, because it represents loss of attachment. Man as a social being dies in isolation. Our instincts react so violently to separation because evolutionarily being left alone meant certain death. This is why heartbreak is so painful. An emotionally cold partner is emotionally the precursor of a final separation. These are signals that a relationship is at an end.