Someone with hidden feelings might act hot and cold with you. One minute, they might want to stay up all night texting you, and the next, they don't seem to want to hang out at all. If someone's not sure whether you have feelings for them, they might distance themselves to avoid getting hurt.
The simple truth is that guys are afraid of getting hurt. They may have experienced it in the past and are trying to avoid it in the future. They fear that by showing their feelings too quickly, they will scare away their partners or destroy what they have with them if things don't work out.
They use all means of communication to keep up with you
Instead of being vulnerable, people who hide their feelings get your attention through different platforms, such as social media, face-to-face communication, attending the same events as you, and so on.
Men are often hesitant to express their true emotions, which can lead to serious issues in their lives. They may be viewed as cold or distant. They can even develop mental health issues when attempting to suppress how they truly feel.
If he is struggling to figure out his own emotions
At first, they might come all strong at you, then suddenly disappear. So, why do guys act weird when they like you? It's simple, at this point, he is struggling with the complexities of his emotions and trying to figure out if he genuinely wants you.
Conceal the extent of your feelings for him.
This may make him confess his feelings for you sooner. Give him a chance to miss you or wonder what you're doing. Allow him the opportunity to text or call you first. If he asks you what you're doing over the weekend, be honest, but make your plans sound exciting and rich.
Emotional suppression happens when uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are pushed out of mind. People do this in a variety of ways, from using distraction (i.e. watching TV), or numbing (through drugs and alcohol), to overeating or controlling food intake.
Some people call suppression shutting down. Sometimes this leads to numbing yourself with scrolling on your phone, watching TV, or doing any other activity so you don't have to feel your emotions. This type of behavior can be temporary.
People sometimes suppress their emotions and avoid fully experiencing or responding to them. Suppressed feelings may be channeled or redirected into physical activities. People may mislabel or misinterpret a suppressed emotion to replace the uncomfortable feeling with a more acceptable one.
Minimize calls and texts.
Leave a lot of mystery in your relationship so you don't get too close to each other. Keep your emotional distance by only sharing a few things about yourself. Only talk about your hookups or date plans. If you're casually dating, only text them once or twice a week.
One reason is self-protection. People may think that if they don't feel their emotions, they can't get hurt by them. Other times, people suppress emotions because they think it's what others want them to do. They may have been told not to express certain emotions or that their feelings are invalid.
Suppression is the act of keeping something from happening — like the suppression of your laughter when your best friend passes you a funny note in class. In psychology, suppression is the act of stopping yourself from thinking or feeling something.
People who repress their emotions tend to focus on their physical health and seek physical health solutions for emotional health problems (Abbass, 2005). Just like a physical wound may fester and become infected if left untreated, the accumulation of unaddressed emotions can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression.
Repressed feelings are those that are unconscious. They differ from suppressed emotions, which are feelings you intentionally avoid because you're unsure of how to deal with them. When you suppress things, you know that you're pushing them down.
Repression is often confused with suppression, another type of defense mechanism. Where repression involves unconsciously blocking unwanted thoughts or impulses, suppression is entirely voluntary. Specifically, suppression is deliberately trying to forget or not think about painful or unwanted thoughts.
Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions.
Reticent means either quiet or restrained. If you're reticent about your feelings, you like to keep them to yourself, and you're probably quiet in rowdy groups where everyone is talking over each other. The original meaning of reticent describes someone who doesn't like to talk.
It can also cause us to feel stressed, depressed, or anxious. In some cases, we may even feel deeply angry or rageful and develop feelings of resentment toward others. “There is some evidence that bottling up your emotions can lead to physical stress on the body,” says Dr. Mullen.
Bottling up your emotions means suppressing your innermost feelings. It is when you avoid venting out what you really feel. There is the fear that you may appear weak or just prefer keeping your emotions to yourself, which is common. It's like sweeping the dirt under the rug and keeping the lid of a boiling pot.
It takes men an average of 108 days (about 4 months) to confess love and women an average of around 123 days (about 4 months). Research further indicated that both men and women initially begin to think of confessing their love approximately 2 to 2.5 months before doing so.
Men looking for a fling will not invest their time in you. If a man wants a relationship, he will make plans to meet you and will not ghost you or leave you without any response. If he is interested, you will not have to seek his attention continuously. If you are doing so, it means he is not into you.
Expressive suppression is an emotion regulation strategy that consists of top-down, conscious control of reflexive behavioral expression of emotion (e.g., stifling laughter or crying, or maintaining a neutral facial expression to hide emotions; Gross & John, 2003).
Counting to ten before reacting in anger is another example of suppression that can be useful in daily life. In contrast, Repression involves unconsciously forgetting an idea, incident, or experience.