Oh, this one. This one lands right in the center of the work I do every single day.
Let me tell you what I think is actually happening when your partner dismisses your emotions. Because from the outside, it looks like they don’t care. It looks cold. It looks like a wall. And that story, that your feelings don’t matter to them, that you don’t matter to them, is one of the most painful stories a person can carry in a relationship.
But here’s what I’ve seen over and over again in twenty years of sitting in the room with couples.
That wall? It is not indifference. It is overwhelm wearing the mask of indifference.
When your partner shuts down or dismisses what you’re feeling, their nervous system is flooded. They are not thinking “your emotions don’t matter.” They are thinking, somewhere underneath all that stillness, “I am failing you and I do not know how to fix it and if I stay in this moment it is going to confirm my worst fear about myself.” The question running on a loop inside them is “am I enough for you?” And when your emotions rise, their nervous system reads that as evidence that the answer is no.
So they go somewhere else. They shut the door. They minimize. They problem-solve. They say “you’re overreacting.” Not because your pain is irrelevant to them. But because your pain is, in a terrible way, everything to them. It’s too much to hold.
Now. I want to be honest with you here, because I also want to hold your experience.
That does not make it okay. Being dismissed when you are hurting is its own wound. Your emotions deserve to be witnessed. Not fixed. Not managed. Not explained away. Witnessed. When someone tries to shut your feelings down or redirect you out of them, they are stepping on something sacred. The youngest, most tender part of you has a right to exist in that relationship without being told it’s too much. That right is real.
What I want you to start seeing is that the two of you are caught in what I call the Waltz of Pain. You reach out with your feelings. They feel like a failure for not knowing what to do with them. They pull back or dismiss. You feel abandoned and uncared for. You reach harder or louder. They pull back more. And both of you go to bed convinced the other one doesn’t love you enough.
You’re not dealing with a partner who is against you. You are dealing with a partner who is terrified of disappointing you, and that terror has them doing the exact thing that disappoints you most.
The path forward is not for you to feel less. It is for both of you to understand this cycle well enough to stop blaming each other for it and start facing it together. You’re not too much. And they’re not heartless. You’re both just scared, and you haven’t had a map yet.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
