You’re Holding It All Together. He’s Still Figuring Himself Out.

Let me tell you something I don’t say out loud ….there have been times that I’ve wanted to scream Why can’t he just get it together?!

I don’t mean that in a cruel way. I mean it in the way someone says when they’re so tired of the same conversation, they just stop having it.

When you love someone deeply, but you’re drowning in the gap between who they are and who they could be.

I’ve been there. Maybe you have too.

You see him freeze when it's time to make a decision.

Watch him talk circles around what he wants, but never actually do the thing.You feel him drift emotionally, procrastinate or disappear behind long pauses and half-finished promises and still, he says he loves you.

Is this just who he is? Or… is there something deeper going on?

Here’s what no one tells you in those 5 Signs He’s Emotionally Unavailable articles …

This kind of stuck-ness? It started decades ago.

Before he was a man who pulled away, procrastinates or emotionally shut down, he was a little boy who adored his father.

Even if his Dad wasn’t great. Even if he was cold, unpredictable, or never fully there.Even if he was a great provider for the family but prioritized work or golf.Even if Dad was addicted, critical or shut down by depression.

All little boys still want to be seen, told they’re good, feel acknowledged.To be accepted, just as they are.

But when that doesn’t happen, when his Dad can’t see him, doesn’t soften, doesn’t say I’m proud of you, son.

When Dad leads with criticism, expectations, and emotional distance, a boy doesn’t stop needing his father, he just starts questioning his own worth.Sadly this tends to becomes the scaffolding of his entire life.

Now he lives in the in-between place. Not because he’s unwilling, but because somewhere along the way, he sensed safety in what he knew than reaching and falling short.

And maybe you’ve seen this up close?

He hesitates. He second-guesses. He holds back even when you’re reaching toward him with everything you’ve got.

It’s not that he doesn’t want your love. Its more that somewhere, a long time ago, love and approval got tangled with pressure, criticism and unpredictability.

So he plays small. He overthinks. He waits for the moment he feels ready enough to be fully seen. But that moment keeps forward momentum just out of reach.

And here’s where it gets messy…you didn’t end up with him by mistake.

There’s a reason you’re the one holding it all.

The plans. The energy. The hope it will change. The emotional labor.

Maybe you grew up learning to read the room before you even knew how to read.Maybe someone you loved was inconsistent, and you became the consistent one.Maybe you learned, somewhere early, that love meant staying strong for someone who wasn’t.

So when he came along, your nervous system said, Yes. I know how to do this. This is so familiar.

The truth is maybe you do know how, but you shouldn’t have to carry it all.

I used to think if I just loved harder, tried more, stayed patient enough, he’d change.

He’d see himself the way I saw him. I kept making space for the version of him that hadn’t arrived. I stayed loyal to his potential, even when it left me lonely.

But no matter what I gave, it made things worse, the resentment built and the distance between us grew.

There were wounds in him I could feel, but couldn’t fix and they started long before me.

It was connected to his father who didn’t know how to love fully. A house where tenderness was accused of being a weakness. His parents’ marriage that modeled shut down, protection, and emotional distance became the blueprint he carried into ours. Passed down like an invisible inheritance, quiet, heavy, and never questioned.

What looked like his struggle was actually ours.

It lived in the silence between us, the space shaped by everything we’d both carried in.

The way we learned to love. The way we learned to protect ourselves when conflict would surface.

I can’t speak to his experience but I noticed something significant shift when he realized that his father’s absence wasn’t about him.

That the criticism wasn’t truth, it was pain, passed down like a family secret no one knew how to name.That’s when he started choosing himself instead of waiting, second-guessing.And that’s when I stopped carrying it all.

Not perfectly. Not like in the movies. All wrapped up neatly in a bow within 90 minutes. But in a way that felt real day to day in our connection.

It felt like we lived in a new relationship with him walking beside me, choosing our love on purpose.

Because real love isn’t built on potential. It’s built on presence. Two people who’ve done their own work, and still say yes to each other, again and again.

Not because they need each other to be whole, but because they finally are.