Hello Michelle,

I read your post three or four times and my heart goes out to you and to your crush. I’m experiencing over a 20 year marriage the same response. I guess I have been for quite some time and I feel it’s taken away a treasured piece of myself that I don’t want to let go. I’m talking about that piece of me you so aptly described when you wrote, “because I’m an open book, and would love to be vulnerable and happy.”

I love my crush so very much. And his inability to open up his heart to his true feelings and emotions has broken my heart. I once felt bad about this because I say only what I was needing from him and what I was losing of myself. Not only did I overshare, keep my heart on my sleeve and stay true to myself, I learned during arguments that he hated this part of me — deeply and to keep his love, I had to be somewhat more stoic around him. I’ve also learned that my shutting down has taken from him a piece of me that, although he may sometimes hate, he feels he’s lost a part of me he very much wants back.

When I look at his upbringing in a large family who share the attitude that emotions are for wimps and losers; he was never allowed to express any emotions, nor were his brothers and sisters. The kids all became just surface people, small-talkers, good for chit-chat but unemotional, nearly cold of heart to those closest to them. None are brave enough to say, hey I’m scared. Wow that hurt me. They just can’t do it.

I didn’t see this when we met and fell in love, when we married. He is a little different toward me than he is toward the rest. There’s a lot going on under that surface that I know he desperately needs to crash through. And sometimes, just now and then, he’s learned to come to me when he’s hurting or worried or terrified. Not often enough, but I think he’s learned that being with me.

I know now I need a person more like me, more like you, more like my brothers and parents. We are a messy emotional bunch, but we always know where one another stands and how they feel about what’s going on. We’re always ready to talk through the deeper, intense situations we’ve found ourselves facing. How I miss that.

Now I’m living a bit of a lie quite often, cause he’ll ask what’s up with me or why am I seemingly blue. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what to do with my answers and so I get a kind of lecture about ignoring my feelings. Very tiresome.

I don’t know if you’re in love with your crush, or how long you’ve been together or if you’ve experienced this with other crushes. You need to consider whether the two of you can work this through and if it’s worth it to you.

I’m an older woman now, and many times when younger I sought to leave. It would have been easier then, I think anyway. The fact is though, I do love and admire this man. I’m now on a journey to connect with the kind of people who are more like me, more spiritual and expressive and curious about others. That’s helped me, that’s how I landed here. It’s another thing I won’t confide to him.

But Michelle, if I could have foreseen how isolated and changed I’d become over the years, I’d have run run run away before I fell in love (whatever that is). Sometimes I think long-term love and marriage probably weren’t for me.

Enough of me, I’d love to hear more from you if you’d like. Mostly I wanted you to know I was touched by what you wrote and hoped my experience in likewise shutting down over a long period might give you the chance to value the parts of yourself that you’re refusing yourself now. All of you is what you want to give to your beloved, and have that cherished by both of you, in my humble, long-overdue insight.

Best to you Michelle, you are so worth it.