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I hear this all the time: “Matthew, they’re wonderful but they won’t let me in. The conversations stay shallow. They deflect when things get real. And no matter how safe I try to make it, they just . . . won’t go there.” Sound familiar?
Here’s the thing: I’ve been on both sides of this. I’ve been the man who shut down, and I’ve been lucky enough to experience the moment that cracked me open. This video is personal. I’m telling you two stories: one where vulnerability went horribly wrong, and one where it literally led to my marriage. If you want to understand what’s really happening when someone won’t open up—and what to do about it—you can’t miss this.
Matthew Hussey:
One of the biggest issues I hear about dating today is the epidemic of emotionally unavailable people flooding the dating market. I particularly hear this from women who say it about men, but it can be gender agnostic. The complaint goes like this. Matthew, I have met a great guy. We are getting on well, but the conversation stay surface level.
I can’t seem to get him to open up or go deeper with his feelings. He can’t even process and register his own emotions until I point them out to him. I just want him to be vulnerable. Why can’t he do it? This video is going to show you exactly what men fear in opening up, and how to increase his chances of becoming more emotionally available and building a long lasting relationship with you.
It’s also a bit of a personal video, because in some ways, I was this guy and I had one experience in my life where opening up completely turned me off to the woman I was seeing, and another, completely different one that drew me in to the point where I eventually married that woman. We’re going to talk about the difference between those two moments today.
If you are new here, I’m Matthew Hussey, and I’ve been helping people find love for almost 20 years. I’ve also written two New York Times bestsellers on this subject. Don’t forget to subscribe and like this video and let’s get right into it. Many years ago, I opened up to a woman about an insecurity I had been bottling up for fear of it making me less attractive to her.
Her response when I finally said it. I find that really unattractive. She actually said that and it hurt so bad. And I had no idea what to do with that hurt because there was no way, now that I was bringing that her up to her. It created this strong association for me, that opening up meant losing my power.
I think that’s what so many of us love about early dating is how bulletproof we get to pretend to be. So that situation went horribly. Flash forward to many years later when I was dating a different person who, in the course of our early dates, mentioned another guy in a way that triggered my jealousy. Looking back, it made me feel threatened and afraid.
But back then all I’ve registered was how dare she still be attracted to this tall, handsome, successful rogue from the past and I knew that this time I would not give up my power by talking about it. And I didn’t want to give this smoldering Flynn Rider or whatever his dumb name was, any power over me. So I did what any smart person would do.
I became moody, quiet, and I ruined lunch. Then, after a couple of hours of gaslighting her about there being absolutely nothing wrong with me. We eventually fall. At which point she told me I was being grossly unfair for how I was treating her. Then I called a friend who I knew would tell me I was right to be mad, and his advice was that shit.
But here was the problem. I couldn’t get out of my head how reasonable she had been. Sure, she told me it was unfair of me to take my feelings out on her in that way. But she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t shaming. And I started to get in my own head, thinking that this was a situation where I might be in danger of sabotaging a good thing.
When we met up again later that night, she said, what’s wrong? Talk to me. This time I shared how her comment actually made me feel. And well, have you ever had a vulnerability hangover instantly where you thought, what the hell have I done? Because that was me. And my response was to go cold all over again, which is embarrassing.
But then when she finally got me to talk, I explained that now that I’ve said these things, it is going to affect how she sees me. And then I got mad all over again. First up, her for compassionately creating a space for my real feelings to come out and then up myself for foolishly falling into the vicious web of her empathy.
But what she said next instantly brought us closer together. And to this day, remains one of the most healing moments in any relationship in my life. She said that she didn’t find me any less sexy. That it doesn’t negate all of those moments when I was strong or in control, and that if anything, it just made her feel closer to me, which she loved.
If you couldn’t tell and you’re still wondering, this person is now my wife. Her name is Audrey. But nothing about that happy ending was a given. Had I not been able to share what was really going on with me, or had she responded to my vulnerability with shame or judgment, we would both have sabotaged our futures that day.
Are you seeing someone right now who’s self-sabotaging because their emotional unavailability is stopping them from fully committing to you? Maybe when it comes to conversations about where it’s going, it’s like pulling teeth. And there is so much resistance to calling it a relationship. I have a free video training download that shows you exactly what you can do in a situation like this.
I had my own mental roadblocks when it came to commitment, but the way that me and Audrey talked about them was responsible for getting me out of my own way. This video is going to walk you through exactly what that conversation looked like. Get you out of situationship limbo with someone and into exclusivity, even if the conversation has gone badly with them.
When you’ve tried to have it before, you can check it out and download it for free at Leavelimbo.com. In hindsight, I never thought I was emotionally unavailable. And yet the things that I shared most of the time was safe and comfortable to me, even if they looked vulnerable from the outside. It’s a bit like when someone who’s made it in business tells you of their rags to riches story.
It’s not really a story of their vulnerability. It’s a hero’s journey story about how awesome they are. Real vulnerability scares the shit out of us because we don’t know if someone’s going to accept us after what we’ve just said. Now, most of this guarded ness isn’t conscious. It’s just part of life. We eat, we breathe, and we keep our scariest thoughts to ourselves where they belong.
This is rife among men who believe that if a woman were to really know them, they wouldn’t be accepted at all, let alone adored. So they keep lifting weights, climbing status ladders, and using stoicism as an excuse not to have feelings about things. These men have decided that while women may say they want an emotionally available man, they simply do not have the capacity to receive one.
In one Reddit post, someone asked, how often has opening up to your girlfriend or partner actually ended badly? Many of the responses said every time one response read. Many women I’ve dated in the past have received it with hostility, or straight up told me that they couldn’t see me as a man anymore. This was in response to him opening up about his issues around depression and anxiety.
If you’re a man and you’re watching this, please know that the right relationship is one that allows you to open up and be vulnerable with your partner without them losing their attraction for you. And this doesn’t mean that we go into every day of our relationship being an emotional burden to our partner. Women want to feel that they’re with someone who is resilient and strong and can lead and be decisive and take charge in life when the timing calls for it.
Ironically, though, one of the most attractive and counterintuitive things we can do as men is actually own our vulnerability. That means instead of letting it wound you when someone fails you in a moment of vulnerability, use it as a moment to stand up for yourself. Tell them, hey, that sucked for me. The other day when I shared that with you and you reacted how you did.
I’m a strong person, but I have to be able to share myself with you, especially when I need support. I’m there for you in those moments. I deserve for you to be there for me too. If you, as a man watching this, find yourself being closed off with a partner. It can either be assigned to work on accepting more of yourself, which ironically, will make you more attractive to the person you’re with.
Or it could be a sign that you’re in a relationship where you can’t be your true self because it’s not welcome and accepted, in which case it’s not worth it for the women watching, a gentle way to receive vulnerability is to understand where that comes from for him, rather than simply judging it on the surface level. When I look back in my life that people I judged when I dated them, I often think, oh, they weren’t crazy.
They had been through something in their life, and in some cases I realized, oh, they weren’t acting jealously. In early dating. I was a shitty person to date whose behavior didn’t make them feel secure. You once shared the rat Queen story, but that’s actually a pretty big thing, so I get that. That is what she kept. Rats as pets, and I, for whatever reason at the time, was just a bit like, oh, I don’t think this is for me.
That’s not petty. That’s like, I mean, it was a bit it was very judgmental. It’s just mental. Not a day goes by when I don’t think we could have worked. He says to his six month pregnant wife, it’s one of the things that is incredibly healing for a man to hear is that it’s okay to be many things.
You love the leader in him. You love the primal caveman. He can be in the bedroom. You love the way he makes you feel safe in life, but you also love the part of him that struggles sometimes or felt insecure about something today, or who feels anxious about life right now. And one doesn’t negate the other. Now, if you’re a woman who’s watching this and you’re thinking, I want a man who’s emotionally open, I can’t be his only source of emotional intimacy.
It makes me feel like his therapist or his mom, and it kills attraction for me. Here’s what I’d say. If he goes to insecure, anxious, or depressed state so regularly that it’s affecting your relationship or even your attraction for him. Frame the conversation in terms of what you need. In other words, you don’t say this depressed, anxious state.
You keep going to his week and it turns me off. You say, hey, I’m also a person who gets tired and scared and anxious sometimes and needs support. And I need my man. Most importantly, I need you to take a break from those states sometimes because I need my team mate today, or this week or this year. Here’s what’s special about this language.
It doesn’t position you above him as a person who’s got it all figured out and is looking down on his pathetic state. It positions you as team mates. It is much more motivating for a man to hear that he’s being a bad teammate than he’s being an unattractive man. One makes him want to shut up and be there for his woman.
The other makes him feel he’s not enough for his woman. None of this means that someone who’s struggling in an ongoing way shouldn’t seek therapy or coaching. And if the ongoing burden of the relationship is continuously weighted towards you, there is no shame in accepting that you need to move on. Just remember, someone who appears confident all the time may be alluring in early dating, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have role parts.
They might just be too afraid to accept those parts in themselves, which is why I say encouragement and acceptance of vulnerability matters. And be. If you’re lucky enough to find a man who’s already vulnerable in the right way, it might be worth considering how much time and energy that man has already saved you. How much more honest it is, and ultimately, how much more intimate that relationship may turn out to be long term.
Let me know in the comments if you have struggled to receive vulnerability in the past, how you’ve changed or evolved today. And if you’re watching as a man how women have reacted to your vulnerability in the past. I’m really looking forward to reading your comments. I’m looking forward to responding to your comments. I’ve been investing a lot of time this year, and being in the comment section with you guys and being part of the conversation, which I’m loving, and I’m looking forward to seeing what conversations sprout out of today’s video.
I’ll see you in there.
*This transcript was whipped up with the help of AI. While it does a pretty impressive job, it may have the occasional typo, mix-up, or moment of creative interpretation. If you spot anything that looks a little . . . adventurous . . . thanks for your patience (and your sense of humor).*
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