Andrew Dolan - What Makes Men Emotionally Available: Understanding The Real Reasons Why Men Do And Dont Want To Open Up And Get Involved

What Makes Men EmotionallyAvailable:

Understanding The RealReasons Why Men Do

And Dont Want To Open UpAnd Get Involved

Andrew Dolan

Copyright 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008,1999 by Andrew Dolan

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

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Table Of Contents

Chapter One

How Social Roles ShapeEmotional Availability

Chapter Two

One-Trick Ponies With One-TrackMinds

Chapter Three

Why Grown Men Act Like LittleBoys

Chapter Four

Roles, Social Instincts AndCommitment

Chapter Five

Emotions And Personality

Chapter Six

Male And Female EmotionalSocialization

Chapter Seven

How Men Become Emotionally Available OrUnavailable

Chapter Eight

Problems That Block EmotionalAvailability

Chapter Nine

Meeting Emotionally AvailableMen

Chapter Ten

References

Chapter One

How Social RolesShape

EmotionalAvailability

Emotional availability is anadult psychological capacity related to societys definition ofwhat makes a man or a woman an adult. While the details of whatconstitutes an adult varies from one society to another, one factordoes remain constant across different societies. Moving up frombeing a social adolescent to a social adult means expanding yourrepertoire of social roles from a single social role for a singlesocial audience, such as that of college student dependent on onesparents, to fulfilling multiple social roles for multiple socialaudiences, meaning roles such as worker, spouse, father and otherroles.

Emotionally unavailable menare typically men who cannot bridge the gap and take on themultiple roles that being a true adult requires. They insteadremain frozen in either a single non-adult role, such as that of anemotionlessly monochromatic workaholic, or get sidetracked intonon-adult roles, such as gang member, that preclude the developmentof emotional availability and various other capacities ofpsychological adults. Men who do not take on multiple social rolesare thus incapable of becoming either adults or emotionallyavailable.

A role is whatever youthink, say and do to meet the expectations of a social audience ofone or more people, and most people act out several social roles inthe course of a day. A married man with children who holds down afull-time job while attending college on weekends acts out severalsocial roles for different audiences. Each audience has differentbehavioral expectations for him, and he must tune out someout-of-sight social audiences when engaged in taking on a socialrole for his social audience of the moment. As a weekend collegestudent, he fulfills one social role for his professor: the role ofstudent who meets the professors expectations that he show up forclass, hand in assignments on time and prepare for exams. He takeson a different social role with his wife: the role of spouse andcompanion.

He takes on yet another rolewith his children: the role of playful father. Finally, he takes onyet another social role with his employer: the role of employee,wherein he complies with his employers workplace behaviorexpectations so he can continue to receive paychecks. Each audiencehas little knowledge of, or interest in, whatever other socialroles he might take on for other social audiences. Successfullytaking on a social role usually results in him receiving some sortof benefit or reward, such as a paycheck, in return for acting outa given social role for an audience. These rewards for acting out arole are also known as reinforcements, because they reinforce thelikelihood of such behavior being repeated because they producepayoffs.

Taking on varied social rolestransforms a man into a more socially versatile and psychologicallyintegrated member of a society than a man who focuses his effortson meeting the behavioral expectations of only one social audience,such as a man who lives with his parents. Men who can meet theexpectations of a wide variety of social audiences tend to besuccessful participants in several parts of their societies, andconfident about themselves and their place in society by virtue ofthe social status others confer on them because they successfullytake on varied social roles for other people.

Emotional availability develops as abyproduct of taking on multiple social roles for different socialaudiences with varied behavioral expectations, allowing men todevelop broad-gauged communicative and expressive skills that areuseful in both public roles and private relationships. As men getmore practice at disclosing limited parts of their true selves todifferent social groups, they develop a psychological home basefrom which they can go out and gradually explore greaterself-disclosure and emotional expression in one-on-one intimaterelationships.

Emotional availability meansthat a man is available to freely express his emotions with acompatible woman, in part because he has no exclusionaryrelationships blocking him from forming emotional bonds andengaging in emotional expression. Examples of exclusionaryrelationships that block emotional availability include a maninvolved with another woman and a man whose social conditioningwith other men has rendered him too immature to engage in adultrelationships with women, as happens with men habitually involvedas street gang members. Being a street gang member is a social rolewhose inherent nature requires that a gang member turn his back ontaking on other roles such as that of self-supporting adultemployed in mainstream society.

Taking on multiple socialroles produces multiple forms of psychological satisfaction thatprovide some relief from the stress produced by taking on anysingle social role. One example is when a man who is overwhelmed byhis job dissipates some of his stress after hours by taking on amore relaxed role with one or more companions. Reducing stressenhances the prospects for emotional availability, because reducingstress makes men feel less threatened about opening up andcommunicating how they feel. Multiple-role men are a womans bestgeneral bets for emotional availability, because low stresscombined with the communicative and expressive competenciesacquired as a byproduct of taking on multiple social rolesmaximizes the chances of a man being emotionally available, thoughthey do not guarantee it in and of themselves. This is a necessarycondition for emotional availability, but sufficient in and ofitself.

Any single social rolebrings along with it psychological and pluses and minuses.Paychecks are nice to get, but some aspects of the workplace roleyou have to act out to get those paychecks can induce stress, andstress reduces emotional availability. The net effect is that,should one role produce a downside on any given day, the otherroles you play usually, but not always, produce some countervailingpsychological benefits, such as backpatting-style reinforcement bymembers of the audiences for various role performances. Socialapproval from the audience for one social role will counteract anddilute the stress produced by the downside of another social role.When water pours in from several fountains into yourpsychological-emotional bucket, it is not the end of the world whenone fountain dries up for a spell.

Income does not determineadulthood or emotional availability. A man might earn a low wage asa manual laborer and yet be reasonably psychologically content withhis social status as a gainfully and continuously employed male ofthe species who has been happily married for ten years, owns a homewith his wife, goes fishing regularly, has children learning tobecome adults themselves and enjoys the comradeship of hisco-workers and fellow fishing club members. He fulfills multipleroles with a fair degree of success within the confines of hisworking-class social environment. By contrast, consider the case ofa high-income, unmarried computer programmer who lives and breathesnothing but programming. He has probably suffered a string ofunsuccessful relationships due to his unwillingness to leave behindhis workplace thoughts and adjust his thinking and behavior to fitinto a different frame of reference when attempting to becomeintimate with women. He is a one-role man, meaning a one-trick ponywith a one-track mind. Whatever his financial successes, he isneither psychologically adult nor is he emotionally available. Herefuses to tune out his self-imposed workplace social role behaviorexpectations and fails to tune into what the girlfriend audienceexpects of him when he is with her. Outside of his job, he does nothave much of an adult life. Thinking of himself as a programmerround the clock freezes out his ability to take on other socialroles when he is not programming