As someone who hasn’t had that experience, I’m having such a hard time wrapping my head around this and how that previous status quo was at all healthy.
So it was the illusion of strength and stability that propped up trust in the relationship? How does crying destroy trust? There had to be more to it than just that.
> So it was the illusion of strength and stability that propped up trust in the relationship? How does crying destroy trust? There had to be more to it than just that.
If you were projecting social competence and emotional stability in the idiom of your culture and then you start acting like an upper middle class Californian your spouse may want to join you in that. Or they may view it as some combination of a huge red flag and an utter betrayal. Imagine if a (secular, orthodox or religious) Jewish Israeli told his wife he was a Muslim now. That’s what abandoning the cultural scripts a relationship was built on is like. If you’re not actually the person they thought they were in a relationship with they may be willing to try and make it work. Or not.
You're not wrong. She thought he's a proper orthodox Jew, he probably wasn't for a long time if ever, that definitely qualifies as an illusion. If hypothetical she were to leave, perhaps his illusion might have been that she'd not leave, but accept his decision and find a way to make it work regardless. Is she leaving because he kept his doubts a secret? I'd get that, can't have a working relationship without honesty. But if not: It's not like that sort of thing working out is completely unheard of, and while the HN audience tends to be dismissive of anything that doesn't feel simplistically rational, love is a pretty powerful thing that has overcome worse obstacles time and again.
The fraction of women who, consciously or unconsciously, see emotional vulnerability in men as repulsive is larger than most people would admit. That doesn't mean it isn't worth looking for one who doesn't. It may limit your dating pool a bit but I promise at the end of the day it's one hundred percent worth the effort.
If someone only trusts you because you act like an emotionless robot, they're not worth hanging out with. You want to hang out with people who accept your whole self, weaknesses and strengths included.
At some point in your life you might need support to go through dark and difficult times - you want people who are there for you throughout those periods.
I agree, but I think most people model others in their head quite crudely so whenever someone breaks outside of their box of expectations, that someone is no longer serving the same role in the relationship, and risks being shunned or replaced. Purely conjecture though.
On the flip side, now closer to an emotionless robot due to such experiences, I find people relying on me for my emotionless roboticism.
