I was 65 before I found out what had been missing my whole adult life — anyone else relate to this?
For most of my adult life I assumed I was just "not very emotional." I functioned fine. Worked hard, had relationships, raised kids. But there was always this gap between me and other people, between what I felt (not very much) and what I was ‘supposed’ to feel.
I would say "I’m fine" automatically when people asked how I was before I'd even checked. I watched emotional situations but didn't know what to respond. I burned a long-term relationship to the ground, not because I didn't care, but because I genuinely couldn't show up in the way that was needed. And I didn't understand why...
Then in my mid-sixties I read a book (Running On Empty by Jonice Webb) that used the word ‘alexithymia’. I'd never heard the word before, and when I asked my then-therapist about it she suggested it was a professional (i.e. technical) term. But the description — difficulty identifying and describing your own feelings, not suppressing them but genuinely not having access to them — was the first time anything had described my inner life accurately.
Fifty years of confusion started making sense.
The link to childhood emotional neglect came next. Nobody hit me, nothing dramatic happened. But the emotional attunement I needed as a child wasn't there — and I'd spent my whole adult life living with the consequences without knowing it.
I'm 68 now. Still figuring it out. But things are genuinely different — relationships with my kids are better, I reconnected with someone special from my past, and I notice things I used to walk straight past.
I ended up writing a short guide about it — not as a therapist or expert, just as someone who lived it for decades and finally has some language for it. Happy to share if anyone's interested.
I mostly just wanted to ask: does any of this resonate? Particularly for the older men here — I'm curious how many of you recognised this pattern in yourselves later in life.