What Is Alexithymia? Why Some Marriages Fail Without Ever Understanding Each Other

Thursday, July 13, 2023. Revised and updated Sunday, January 25, 2026.

Alexithymia is a trait characterized by difficulty identifying, differentiating, and verbally expressing one’s internal emotional states—despite having emotional experiences.

It is not a lack of feeling.
It is a lack of access.

Emotion happens. But it arrives without labels, contours, or usable language. The experience is real; the translation is not.

Alexithymia appears with notable frequency in neurodiverse populations and is most commonly observed in men within heterosexual neurodiverse marriages. Not as pathology. Not as malice. As wiring.

And wiring shapes marriages.

In neurodiverse relationships, alexithymia quietly becomes the fault line where two radically different emotional operating systems attempt to share a life.

Emotional Awareness: The Neurotypical Advantage No One Names

Neurotypical emotional awareness is not simply “having feelings.”
It is an internal literacy system.

For a neurotypical partner, emotion arrives as a layered signal:

• bodily sensation.

• affective tone.

• contextual meaning.

• immediate linguistic access.

A racing heart is not just a racing heart.
It is anticipation, dread, hurt, longing, grief—and the distinction matters.

Neurotypical adults do not merely feel emotion; they read it. They extract information from physiology. They discriminate between adjacent states: irritation versus resentment, anxiety versus excitement, sorrow versus despair.

Language comes easily because emotion arrives already categorized.

This is not emotional intelligence as virtue.
It is emotional fluency as infrastructure.

Where the Systems Break Inside Marriage

For a partner with alexithymia, this internal process does not occur automatically.

Emotion may register only at the extremes:

• fine / not fine.

• calm / overwhelmed.

• good / bad.

Nuance collapses. Vocabulary thins.

The internal experience exists, but without relational usefulness.

This becomes destabilizing when paired with a partner whose emotional world is dense, expressive, and metaphor-rich. The neurotypical spouse—often the wife—experiences emotional deprivation and tries to explain it.

She assumes language will bridge the gap.

Why Metaphor Fails So Spectacularly

When the neurotypical partner speaks, she does not speak literally.

She says:

• “I feel like I’m drowning.”

• “I’m walking on eggshells.”

• “I’m starving for affection.”

• “I feel erased.”

To another neurotypical listener, these are not exaggerations.
They are compressed emotional data.

Metaphor is how complex affect travels quickly between similar nervous systems.

But for a concrete thinker with alexithymia, metaphor is not compression.
It is distortion.

No one is drowning.
No one is bleeding.
No one is imprisoned.

The language is flagged as inaccurate—and therefore suspect.

What she intends as translation, he receives as falsehood.

When Metaphor Is Replaced With Translation

Here is the shift most couples never make.

Metaphor (often fails):

“I feel like I’m drowning and you don’t even notice.”

Translated language (often works better):

“When we go more than two days without physical affection or checking in, my anxiety increases and I feel disconnected from you.”

This is not less emotional.
It is more usable.

For neurodiverse couples, clarity must come before resonance.

Emotion as Data, Not Accusation

In successful neurodiverse therapy, emotion is reframed.

Not as indictment.
Not as verdict.
As data.

Feelings become information streams about:

• safety.

• connection.

• predictability.

• loss.

When emotion is treated as data, it no longer functions as a weapon. It becomes something both partners can examine together.

Without this reframing, every emotional disclosure risks being misread as blame.

The Cassandra Problem (Contained)

The neurotypical partner escalates clarity.
More explanation. More examples. More affect.

From her perspective, empathy should arrive once the data is vivid enough.

From his perspective, the situation becomes confusing, hostile, and exhausting.

He may respond with withdrawal, blank acknowledgment, irritation, or defensiveness. He hears accusation where none was intended and sees anger where there is grief.

This dynamic is sometimes referred to in the neurodiverse relationship literature as Cassandra Syndrome—not a diagnosis, but a shorthand description for repeated emotional warnings that go unrecognized until collapse is imminent.

The issue is not drama.
It is translation failure.

When Emotion Becomes the Enemy

Over time, a dangerous inversion occurs.

Because intense emotional moments precede conflict, emotion itself becomes identified as the problem.

Feelings are reframed as:

• irrational.

• destabilizing.

• manipulative.

• excessive.

The alexithymic partner begins to believe that if emotion disappeared, the marriage would stabilize.

The neurotypical partner begins to feel that her interior life is unwelcome.

This is where contempt grows quietly—on both sides.

Why Good Intentions Don’t Fix This

Promises to “do better” fail because effort alone does not create access.

This is not about caring more.
It is about redesigning the relational interface.

Without intervention, the marriage returns again and again to emotional gridlock. Recognition often arrives only at the brink of loss—by which point exhaustion has already hardened into character judgments.

Why Therapy Helps When It’s Done Correctly

Effective therapy for neurodiverse couples does not ask one partner to “be more emotional” or the other to “be less sensitive.”

Instead, it helps couples:

• migrate away from metaphor.

• develop shared, literal emotional language.

• externalize emotion as data rather than accusation.

• rebuild trust in emotional communication.

This is not about fixing a person.
It is about creating a shared language where none existed.

And yes—it works. Not always. But often enough to change outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is alexithymia the same as emotional immaturity?
No. Emotional immaturity is developmental. Alexithymia is structural. One involves growth delays; the other involves access limitations.

Can someone with alexithymia learn emotional language?
Partially. With structured translation tools and motivation, many people can expand functional emotional vocabulary even if full intuitive access remains limited.

Does alexithymia mean someone lacks empathy?
No. Empathy access and empathy capacity are not the same. Many alexithymic individuals care deeply but struggle to recognize emotional cues in real time.

Final Thoughts

Alexithymia is not a moral failure.
Metaphor is not manipulation.
And love does not fail because people don’t care enough.

It fails because they cannot read the same signals.

With the right structure, the right language, and the right guide, couples can learn to translate instead of collide.

That is the work.

Most days—it works pretty well.

Therapist’s Note
If you recognize yourselves in this dynamic, stop trying to explain harder. That isn’t the problem.
Neurodiverse couples don’t need more emotion—they need better translation.
This is precisely the work I do.

Be Well. Stay Kind, and Godspeed.