Think back to a recent issue where there was a disagreement or conflict with your ex-spouse.  It could have been around money, parenting, a blame game, or any former routine engagement where you often disagree. Take a quick second to picture the interaction.  Picture her face.  Picture her reactions and gestures.  Hear her tone of voice.  Now, take a second to see how you feel.  Where do you feel it?  Is there tension or discomfort in your throat, heart, belly, or someplace else?  What is the feeling you’re experiencing?

If you are like most men, you feel something in your body, and possibly have an idea of what the feeling could be.  But you may be unable to connect with it, and unsure how to release it.  You see, we men don’t have a history of connecting with feelings.  Our history is one where we instead learn how to suppress or swallow the feelings.

I don’t remember a time in my youth where my father asked me how I feel during trying times.  Usually, he showed his love with advice, and possibly a pat on the butt and an affirming “you’re okay, now go on.”  This pattern is common among men.  Men are taught from a young age, unbeknownst to them, by parents, grandparents, coaches, and even other boys to contain their emotions – to “tough it out”, or to “not be a whiner”.  

What happens when life pitches a curveball and pulls the rug out emotionally during, arguably, one of the highest emotional events one can face, a divorce.  Many men are facing deep emotions as a result of a failed relationship, and are lost in understanding these emotions.  Divorce is one of the most stressful things we can go through in life.  Not only is it a long process, and a process that lasts well beyond the date a judge stamps the divorce decree “final”, it is also a process where we are faced with a loss of our intended life partner, a loss of dreams we had for our family, and even a loss of identity we assigned ourselves as a full-time husband, or father.  

Whether you are in a marriage contemplating divorce, in the process of finalizing a divorce, or are divorced and trying to raise kids or move on with your life, the emotions are real and sometimes very sticky.  As difficult as it may be, emotions are pivotal to understand as emotions are a great teachers for us.    

When we feel tightness in the throat, it’s often a sign that we are frustrated over communication or verbalizing our feelings.  When we feel discomfort in the belly, it’s a sign that we are feeling unworthy, diminished, or not good enough in some fashion.  When we feel tightness in the heart, it indicates we are not loving our self, or forgiving our self.  Our body is a great communicator.  These physical responses are its way of letting us know there is an issue, and it is time to take notice.  

Most men, however, don’t take notice.  Instead they fall into an unconscious response conditioned since our youth.  We may swallow, or suppress the emotions, waiting for them to go away.  We may burst out in anger.  We may belittle someone, or show superiority in some way.   We may turn to a vice to help – alcohol, an illicit drug, extra work, excessive TV, pornography, or any other commonly used mask aimed at distracting the attention from the emotion.  

This is not a healthy pattern.  It is not only unhealthy physically, it is an unhealthy behavior that will follow us into another relationship, and a behavior that we openly publish to our kids as we emulate our role as a husband and father.  (Kids learn mostly from watching us, not from what we say.)

The key to any uncomfortable, and even excessively pleasing, emotion is to face it.  I include pleasing emotions because we can also seek fulfillment through, let’s say a sense of accomplishment, that causes us to boast, or feel we are superior.  This emotional reaction is sometimes harmful too.  

Start by looking at the emotion with a welcoming eye.  Study it.  Crazy, right?  However, as one can’t find a water leak without searching for the source, one can’t find the cause of an emotion without looking for its roots.  This is where many men get stuck.  We have not been taught how to connect with emotions and feelings.  Women have, and they are damn good at it.  Not us men.  And, unlike women who have friends who listen with empathy and compassion, men are hesitant to explore these emotions with other men, and even therapists.  

Here is an example of what we do.  Let’s take a situation where your ex-spouse is seeking more child support from you.  A man might say, “I feel she is out to get me and pay me back in some way”.  This is not understanding the emotion.  This is a statement of what he thinks.  It’s a projection that can lead to a story we create in our mind.  The emotion is totally different.  The emotion may be “I feel scared that I won’t be able to afford things”. Or, “I feel angry that she keeps relying on me financially.”

Being able to identify with an emotion is a critical step.  Once we identify with what we are feeling – scared, angry, resentful, frustrated, embarrassed, ashamed, guilty – we have a starting point for self-discovery.

I find automatic writing is a perfect strategy to help connect with an emotion’s root.  Automatic writing is a method of letting the pen flow without judging what is put on paper.   When I say let the pen flow, you let it flow.  Write and write and don’t stop to think, or ponder, or even correct grammar.  Just write!  Remember, emotions are our body’s way of saying “hey, look at this”, which can also imply emotions are the way our spirit, or soul, speaks to us.  So, when we tap into that through automatic writing, we create a conduit for self-awareness and understanding to rise to the surface.  

Automatic Writing Example

Try automatic writing in a quiet place around these three questions the next time you are able to clearly identify the emotion.

• Why is this <state emotion> here?
• What am I meant to learn from this <state situation or conflict>?
• How can I see it differently?

What should come out is some level of awareness.  For example, I was able to discover that the same recycled struggles with my ex-wife have been present since I was a child.  The anger and frustration were from me not standing in my power long ago, and choosing to act out of obligation towards my career, kids, and marriage.  

I was angry that I did so little for me and my dreams.  The years of suppression just kept building.  Had I not taken time to connect, the same pattern might have continued.  Now, I can recognize the pattern when my ex-wife acts in a way that triggers the emotion.  This simple awareness helps me to respond differently and get out of the pattern of festering over the event for a period of time until it is suppressed.   

Strategies like this are not second nature.  This is where coaching becomes a vital resource.  If you are having trouble understanding emotions, I invite you to schedule a free consultation.