Two reasons why he walks away from an emotional conversation

Last updated on: November 7, 2017 at 2:08 pm by Shaunti Feldhahn

Two reasons why he walks away from an emotional conversation 2017-11-07T14:08:35-04:00 Shaunti Feldhahn

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Reason #1: His brain needs time to process what just happened, what he thinks about it, and how he can respond well.

Roughly half of the men said essentially the same thing as this representative young man I interviewed in the research: “In the heat of the moment, I can’t even think straight. My fiancé can win any argument, and can tie me in knots. She run circles around me with her words, all while I’m trying to figure out what I think. The only way I can think is to get away. If she’ll just let me be for a while I can figure it out and come back and explain. But whenever she insists on talking it out right then, it is usually her talking and me hardly listening because I don’t know what I think yet.”

That type of comment was very common among the men I interviewed. Because the male brain is specifically wired that way. As women, because our brains are wired with certain types of connections we can process a high degree of emotion and still think clearly. In fact the female brain actually does better at thinking through emotional topics by talking them through. But as my husband, Jeff, puts it, “For most men, emotion furs up the gears.” There are always exceptions, but the male brain usually needs to disengage from an emotional conversation in order to think something through deeply, clearly and productively.

In other words, although there’s certainly a chance that the boyfriend of that reader may indeed be trying to “run” or “escape” in an unhealthy way, since she described him as a great guy I think it is far more likely that he’s just… a guy. With a male brain that is working the way a male brain is designed to work.

We can hope that men will put some effort into how they pull away, so that they don’t make their partner’s concern worse. (Men, see For Men Only for how to do that.) But if we are honoring their wiring – in the same way we want them to honor ours – it is important to avoid ascribing bad motives to their actions without other cause.

Which leads me to Reason #2:

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