Softened Resistance
He grew up with the understanding that expressing emotions was a dangerous thing. It wasn’t anger or tears that were wrong, but the belief that emotion itself could open a door he might not be able to close once it was unlocked. So he learned to keep things quiet, to hold them in, to downplay what he felt. Over time, that silence became habit, a form of protection that still echoes in his life today.
As a husband and father, he notices it in the way his children’s emotions can sometimes unsettle him, how their open expressions feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. “I often find my children’s emotional expressions to be very uncomfortable,” he admits. “It’s something that I must work through intentionally.”
To him, intimacy means vulnerability, allowing oneself to be seen without a mask, to be known without defense. He believes that a lack of intimacy is what leaves many men restless, angry, and unfulfilled. Beneath the surface of so much frustration and control lies a deep longing for connection.
Culture, too, shaped him. His parents’ generation came from a world where emotions were not shared, where silence was respect, and speaking of the heart was rarely seen as honorable. “There were many things you simply did not talk about because that’s just how things were,” he reflects.
But the cost of silence has been high. Over the years, he’s realized that unspoken emotion finds its way out, through behavior, through tension, through distance. “Unwillingness to express emotion often leads to behavior that’s indirectly influenced by suppressed emotion,” he writes. Learning this truth has reshaped how he approaches relationships, teaching him that communication is not a weakness, but a form of healing.
For him, emotional honesty doesn’t mean saying everything he feels. It means discerning what is true. “Some of my emotional thoughts may not be true,” he explains. “Emotions are not the truth. They are simply facts. The truth must always take precedence.” This awareness has brought both humility and wisdom — an understanding that control can coexist with grace when filtered through truth.
In moments of heightened emotion, gentleness grounds him. “A soft word or a gentle touch brings me back into the moment,” he says. “My wife has been blessed with a kind and gentle spirit, and I’m grateful for the ways she allows me to see another perspective.” Her patience, he notes, is one of the ways God teaches him how to stay present when his thoughts grow loud.
Faith, for him, is a quiet discipline, not the absence of emotion, but the alignment of it. The stillness that once served as armor has become a measure of peace, a reminder that strength is not found in silence alone, but in truth held before God.
Psalm 51:6 (AMP)
“Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part [of my heart] You will make me know wisdom.”
What he shared about suppressed emotion rings deeply true. “Unwillingness to express emotion often leads to behavior that is indirectly influenced by the suppressed emotion.” That truth echoes in many of the men I’ve known, especially those I once loved or hoped to understand. When emotions rose to the surface, many would step back, creating distance as if silence could settle what was stirring within. They returned when the noise inside them grew quiet but rarely revisited what caused the disruption in the first place. The moment passed, but the root remained.
Avoidance can look like peace, but it’s really postponement, a temporary stillness that keeps the heart untouched. I’ve seen how unspoken emotion shapes cycles of withdrawal and return, not out of malice, I suppose, but because many men were never taught that resolution requires presence. Healing doesn’t come through silence or distractions, but through the courage to stay when everything inside wants to flee.
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