Gay Men, Vulnerability and Intimacy
Many gay men are very good at talking about their emotions. We can explain why we are angry. We can analyse why a relationship is struggling. We can describe what our partner did that upset us. We might even understand how our childhood, coming-out experiences, previous relationships or fears of rejection influence the way we behave today.
Yet, for some gay men, there can be an important distinction between explaining an emotion and expressing or inhabiting an emotion.
You may be highly articulate about why you feel hurt, anxious, rejected, angry or disappointed, while still finding it difficult to let your partner experience something of what you are feeling.
Talking about feelings is not always the same as expressing them.
Explaining an Emotion
In my work with gay couples, I have noticed how easily partners can fall into explaining what they are feeling rather than expressing the feeling itself.
This often takes place at a cognitive level. One person explains what happened, why it was upsetting and what they think it means, assuming their partner will understand their emotional experience from the explanation. They may be able to identify the cause, construct a coherent narrative, analyse the difficulty and present their understanding of the issue without revealing much of what they are feeling.
What can follow is a competitive intellectual discussion with possibly point scoring without necessarily experiencing the other, what feelings being expressed or how each other is feeling.
Being able to reflect on and understand our emotional responses are important. However, explanation can also allow us to remain relatively protected from the vulnerability of the feeling itself.
Expressing an Emotion
Expressing an emotion involves allowing something of our lived experience to become present between two people. Rather than only describing the situation, we begin to reveal something of ourselves within it.
Instead of: “You didn’t message me all evening, and this is something you always do when you’re out with your friends.” We might move towards: “When I didn’t hear from you, I felt upset and anxious wondering what was happening and that you didn’t care or respect me enough to let me. Do I matter to you?
The second response exposes more of the self. There may be longing, uncertainty and relational risk. Rather than simply telling your partner about an emotion, expressing it allows your partner to encounter something of your emotional experience.
When emotions are primarily explained, a couple may communicate extensively and yet still experience emotional distance. One partner might think: “We talk about everything, so why don’t I feel close to him?”. What may be missing is the experience of vulnerability
Why Might Vulnerability Be Difficult for Gay Couples?
Each person comes into relationships carrying different histories, families, cultures and experiences of their sexuality. However, many gay men have learned, at some point in their lives, to carefully monitor what they reveal about themselves.
Minority stress, experiences of shame or rejection, expectations around masculinity and the experience of concealing one’s sexuality can all contribute to powerful forms of self-protection.
Before coming out, some men may have spent years observing other people’s reactions, concealing aspects of themselves or quietly wondering: “is it safe for people to know who I really am?”
Experiences of rejection, shame, bullying or discrimination can reinforce the message that revealing who we are, can carry consequences.
You may be proud of being gay today while still carrying past protective responses developed during times when being different, did not feel safe. These experiences can influence how we later approach emotional intimacy.
Being Emotionally Known
Intimacy requires more than knowing information about another person, including their thoughts, values, beliefs, history and what matters to them. It also involves the experience of being emotionally known.
To be emotionally known means allowing another person to encounter our tenderness, fears, desires, uncertainties and vulnerabilities. It means gradually allowing them to discover our sensitive places: what hurts us, what reassures us, what makes us feel loved and how we want to matter in their world.
This creates an important paradox. The intimate relationship may be precisely where a man most desires acceptance and, at the same time, where emotional exposure feels most dangerous.
Intimate relationships can be particularly significant because they involve many of the experiences, we may have previously learned to protect ourselves from: dependency, vulnerability, being known and the possibility of rejection.
At the heart of intimacy lies an uncomfortable uncertainty: I can reveal myself to you, but I cannot control what you will do with what I reveal.
To express rather than merely explain an emotion requires us to tolerate some uncertainty. I have to allow you to see something of me before I know whether you will understand it, accept it, dismiss it, reject it or move closer.
A partner being quiet, angry, distracted or emotionally unavailable may therefore evoke something beyond the immediate interaction. It may touch older experiences of not feeling safe, wanted, accepted or important.
When Explaining Becomes a Form of Protection
Being able to analyse our emotions can be valuable. Self-understanding matters. But sometimes analysis also creates distance from what we are experiencing.
Instead of saying: “I’m frightened you might leave me,” we talk extensively about our partner’s behaviour.
Instead of: “I need reassurance from you,” we become angry that our partner isn’t communicating properly.
Instead of: “I felt hurt when you didn’t want sex,” we withdraw, become critical or convince ourselves that we don’t care.
Sometimes it feels safer to understand vulnerability than to experience it in front of another person.
We may not fully understand why we react as we do. We may simply know that something feels uncomfortable and find ourselves becoming defensive, argumentative, analytical or withdrawn rather than telling the person sitting opposite us what is happening inside.
This uncertainty is part of intimacy. Perhaps this is also why explaining our emotions can sometimes feel safer than expressing them. Explanation allows us to maintain some control. Vulnerability asks us to relinquish some of it.
From Explaining to Expressing
Developing emotional intimacy doesn’t mean abandoning thought or analysis. Nor does it mean disclosing everything we feel whenever we feel it.
It means becoming curious about what might exist underneath our explanations. It is about allowing ourselves to become more emotionally visible to another person.
That involves moving from: “Let me explain why I feel this way.” towards: “Let me show you something of what this feels like for me.”
There is vulnerability in that movement, but there is also possibility.
When we allow another person to encounter our fear, longing, tenderness, uncertainty and desire; not merely our explanation of these experiences, we create the possibility of something different happening between us. We create the possibility of being met.
Perhaps one of the most important distinctions we can make in our intimate relationships is this: Explaining my emotions tells my partner about me. Expressing my emotions allows my partner to encounter my emotional experience.
It is in taking the risk of that encounter and allowing ourselves to be seen without knowing exactly how we will be received that deeper intimacy can begin.
