Now let’s talk about the reasons why men often leave relationships…
***COMMENT***
Christian,
I have been seeing my boyfriend for a year and a half and we have a great relationship on all levels (intellectually, physically, etc). However unfortunately we have been ‘head-bashing’ over a certain problem that keeps resurfacing in our relationship and now it has literally come to a point where he wants “time out”. I have a problem trusting him and want to always control situations. I have constantly been giving him nonsense when he socialises with his female friends, and have an insecurity that he will leave me. It has been very strenuous on him and he actually told me this morning that he wants to be with me but he no longer knows what to do and wants time out of this relationship…
I finally did something right this morning when speaking to him (after reading your last email on control), I just listened and said that I understood. He said we will discuss it further this evening. I am SO LOST! I don’t know what to do to fix this now, and am not sure if this is ‘fixable’. I REALLY LOVE him and he loves me, but it has been carrying on for so long he doesn’t want to hear excuses anymore.
PLEASE HELP me. What can I do to make this work?
I will be forever grateful for your response!
L.J.
>>>My Response
Ok, I’m going to have to pull out the hammer here because you’re doing the worst of all things-
Using your fear and neediness to justify hurting yourself and pushing your guy away.
Here’s what I want you to do…
Please go to the nearest mirror, look yourself dead in the eyes, and then slap yourself hard across the cheek.
Oh, and make sure your boyfriend is watching too, so you can then turn to him, freak out and cry, and then blame him for “making you do it.”
And when he responds by saying, “But you just slapped yourself”…
I want you to freak out even more until he starts to think that something is going really and truly wrong with you in the head.
AND THEN… I want you to get even more upset because now he thinks your crazy… and act even more crazy and emotional as you wonder, “What did I ever do to make him not want to be around me and doubt our future together?”
Once you do all this, then you should be able to recognize that this has roughly the same effect with your boyfriend as your current thinking and behavior.
Follow me here?
Good. Now let’s get down to it.
I want you to understand that your fear and jealousy is NOT going to go away, EVER, until you decide to get this part of your life handled.
The reality right now is that no matter how good your relationship with a man might be, or how much reassurance you scream and cry to try and get him to give you… it will NEVER be enough for you because your mind will find a way to freak you out and ruin things for you.
These same insecure, needy, negative feelings that drive men away are going to keep coming up over and over in place after place until you are ALONE again.
Here are a few important questions you need to consider right now:
How do you think all your negative emotional fears and frustrations are affecting the man in your life?
And how do these make him think and feel about you and your relationship?
And what would he tell you and ask you for if he wasn’t afraid of freaking you out, and was open and honest?
*Hint- learning to listen and understand a man’s feelings is also a huge part of creating a strong relationship that meets BOTH of your needs.
If you want to learn how to get a man to listen to you better, understand what you’re going through without getting frustrated or angry, and commit to working through it with you and opening up, then I suggest you check out my “From Casual To Committed” CD/DVD program.
It’s literally packed with amazing tips, ideas, exercises and strategies to help you move past RESISTANCE to growth and understanding with men in relationships and become closer than you ever thought was possible.
If you haven’t recognized it yet, men commonly have a kind of RESISTANCE to working through intense emotional situations in relationships.
And it’s often these same few areas of RESISTANCE that cause conflict in relationships and lead to men to pulling away or leaving.
My “From Casual To Committed” program covers the common points of male “resistance” that come up in relationships that keep you from growing closer and more committed on a physical and emotional level.
Go here for all the details and learn how to help a man address his greatest challenges to a lasting, committed relationship with you.
Now back to it.
The good news is that your situation isn’t hopeless or “unfixable.”
But first, I want you to realize a few important truths about men and the common reasons why they leave relationships with women they like or love…
Reason #1: The “Pleasure Principle”
Men, and women, generally want to FEEL GOOD in their lives.
And they want to have the people around them be a source of pleasure and comfort and support.
Yourself included.
When you are constantly freaking out on a man for what it is about him that freaks you out, you quickly turn into one of the people that it DOESN’T FEEL GOOD to be around.
And this has a huge impact on whether or not he wants to invest more time, effort, and energy in you and your relationship.
Or if he will decide to give up on trying to fix what’s going on with you so you can both feel good together.
Reason #2: Emotional Experience And The Future
For a man in a relationship, the ways a woman acts in the “little” situations become indicators of how she’s going to respond when things really are tough and in the future.
So if a woman is consistently negative and emotional… and can’t get herself together even when a man tries to explain things and comfort her… then a man isn’t going to think that things could be any better in the future together.
Reason #3: Lost Feelings Of Attraction
Love can be important to a man.
But just like a woman, if he doesn’t also keep experiencing the exciting and addictive feelings of CONNECTION and ATTRACTION with the woman he loves… then eventually EVERYTHING ELSE starts to not matter.
When a man doesn’t FEEL that deep level of connection with a woman, at least every so often to remind him of why he’s with her, then he’ll forget why… and the relationship will become just a whole bunch of “work” to him.
Whenever he thinks of his girlfriend, he’ll think of all the problems, frustrations, and negative emotions and experiences… and he’ll see a future and a commitment as something that will make him LESS SATISFIED in his life.
Often times when women are feeling distance or trouble in a relationship, they’ll try to “talk” to a man and work on “the relationship.”
Big mistake if you want to turn things around.
For a man, he wants to do things together (not talk) to know his relationship is working.
Creating a deep level of connection and sharing the attraction you have is one of the most powerful and important keys to giving a man his own reason for wanting to be with you, no matter what.
If you want to learn the secrets to easily creating or recapturing the intense attraction that will have a man asking you for more attention, then check out my “Natural & Lasting Attraction” CD/DVD program.
It will show you exactly how to get back to sharing intense Physical and Emotional Attraction, and give you the 6 keys to the kind of deep lasting attraction that will keep your relationship moving forward and strong.
All the details and some free video sample clips from the program are here:
Natural and Lasting Attraction
Reason #4: The “Neediness” of Co-dependence
A man wants to be with a woman that brings something better to his life, not take away his time, energy, and emotional “stability.”
So when a woman doesn’t have much going on for herself in her own life a few things happen.
First, she focuses on her relationship too much as her source of happiness or unhappiness.
You can tell when you’ve done this in your relationships in the past when you’ve said things like:
“I can’t believe how I hardly ever saw any of my friends while we were together.”
…or
“I can’t believe I let him control me that way.”
…or
“I feel so stupid for wasting so much of my time on our relationship, when I could have been doing things for me and my life.”
The reality is that no man and no relationship is capable of being everything to a woman.
And no relationship requires that you sacrifice all your time, life, and energy for it… no matter how much it seems that way.
But our relationships can “trick” us into believing that they need all of our time and attention just to survive.
Not true.
In fact, the way this works is completely COUNTERINTUITIVE.
Often times men leave a woman because they see that she depends too much on him and has lost her own sources of happiness… and this not only looks and feels “needy” to a man, but it keeps the woman from having much to bring into the
relationship and add to their lives together.
Reason #5: “She’s Trying To Fix Me…”
Every few weeks or months I come across someone who says or alludes to the idea that “people don’t change.”
Wrong.
People often change their state of mind in an instant.
Especially from happy to sad.
Of course, changing perspectives, opinions, or beliefs can take a bit longer… but these change quickly, too.
A man can and will “change” and compromise for a woman.
It’s a fact.
I see it all the time where men let go of their “bachelor lifestyles” for one special woman, and change a ton about their social lives.
But this only happens when a man has HIS OWN REASONS to change.
It NEVER works, or lasts, if a man simply tries to change for a woman, or for the sake of the relationship.
There’s a rule I like to use in my life whenever I come to a situation where I’m trying to align my own desires or goals with someone else’s:
“All motivation is self-interest.”
In other words, if you’re trying to create a great situation with a man, you’re going to need to understand what HIS REASONS are going to be for doing the work on his end to make it happen.
But lots of women try and get a man to change by showing a man how it affects THEM, not him.
This is the exact opposite of understanding that people are motivated by the things that THEY WANT, and not what others feel and want.
It takes some maturity to accept that other people (men) have their own unique way of seeing things and wanting what they want (to stay and work things out, or not).
But once you learn to accept these things and start to work with them instead of against them, life gets a whole lot easier.
And a whole lot more fun. So those are 5 of the most common reasons and situations about why men leave women and relationships.
One of the most important things underlying all these 5 reasons is the EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE that you create with a man.
I think of the emotional experience that you share with a man in your relationship as the door through which your relationship will either open up and move forward…
Or on the other hand, as the barrier that causes a relationship to stay shut and go nowhere.
And I look at COMMITMENT as a man and a woman agreeing to open the door together and walk through it.
But the truth is that men don’t COMMIT for the same reasons most women do.
They don’t think about, talk about, or want to walk through the door the same way most women do.
That’s why the “process” by which most men commit is different.
For most women, there’s often a kind of tension and resistance built into moving forward in a relationship with a man.
And I’m not just talking about the spoken words of that make a commitment… but about the “emotional commitment” a man has inside with you.
If a man is deeply committed to you and your relationship on an emotional level, then any “issues” you run into are just going to be “bumps in the road” to him. And he’ll be confident, comfortable, open, and secure with you in working them out.
But if a man ISN’T “emotionally committed” to you, then each and every little problem is going to cause him to get irritated, frustrated, and have him wanting to blame you and withdraw.
Which is, in turn, going to make things much less CERTAIN for you.
To learn exactly how the commitment process works with a man and create and deepen the “emotional commitment” you have with a man that will bring a new level of CONFIDENCE and CERTAINTY into your relationship, then check out my “From Casual To Committed” CD/DVD program.
All the details and sample video clips from a few of the best parts of the program are at the link below.
And here’s something special I’ll do for you…
Let me know you’re interested and I’ll ship you a free copy of this program and let you work with all the ideas, concepts, strategies, and exercises for a full 30 days… completely at my own risk.
Just go to the link below to order your copy of the program, and then take an entire month to work with the materials in it.
I want you to see how it moves your love life forward, and helps the man in your life start to move forward with you on his own.
If you don’t like the program for any reason, or get more results than you expected, simple send the program back to me before 30 days and you won’t pay a thing. No questions asked.
If you like it (and I’m 100% confident that you will) then go ahead and keep it and I’ll bill you in a few easy small monthly payments.
So go here and get your copy of this program now, and be on your way to the committed, secure, lasting relationship you know is possible with the man in your life:
I’ll talk to you again soon, and best of luck in life and love.
Your Friend,
Christian Carter
P.S. And if you haven’t downloaded my eBook, “Catch Him & Keep Him” yet, then I strongly suggest you do so today.
It’s more than 260 pages of real-world tips and advice on everything from how to spot men who aren’t ready for a real relationship (and may never be), how to spark attraction, how to get him to commit, and when to know it’s the “right” time to get physical with a man.
I would like to comment on LJ’s question or need for guidance. I was once a young and beautiful woman who never once thought any man could do her wrong. Not once did I feel insecurity or jealousy; but when my first husband left me a few months after my first child was born and he gave me the reason that I was going through PPD and he could not handle it, I felt very bad about myself. We then got back together 4 years later and I had my son. This time we broke up again for good. I never had PPD, he was putting things in my head so that he can fool around and then come back when he was done. I felt very insecure and ugly and could not have a healthy relationship with men for several years; until I met my present husband. He took the time to listen to my insecurities, made me feel special everyday and when I was having a jealousy tantrum he would stop me and let me know that he was going to go ahead and do what he had to do, and if my feelings were being hurt it was because I was being silly and insecure. (He works installing alarms in homes, and sometimes when he had to go to female’s home I would beg him not to); but then he would return and reasure me that it is only I who he loves. We are now going on to 15 years married and I feel so much better. You need a strong, loving man. Who will understand your feelings and at the same time will not allow your feelings to get out of hand. But most of all you need to love yourself. No one can take your man away from you. If he is going to cheat he will do it no matter what you look like. don’t let a man tell you he has cheated because you caused it. If he is no longer in love, then he should walk. And you should let him go, if he regrets it he will be back.
No matter how much you feel like pulling your hair because of not being able to control the relationship, stop! We females do not like to be controlled, men don’t either. If you feel you have to control a man; then you don’t want a man, you want a boy or a monkey. Give your man his space and respect him. If he loves you he will show you his gratitude by working hard for you, coming home every night and showing you his love in every smile, kiss and touch. Try it. Good luck to you. (Remember, love starts with you)
I love this! Recently my relationship ended VERY suddenly. I absolutley did not see it coming. We talked about the future together and so on. Now I need a few years to heal. The thought of being with another man makes me feel sick to my stomach. I have some major trust issues now. I just can’t seem to picture myself with anyone else. I thought he was the one and now I feel like someone knocked me flat on my face. But I do know that I need to start loving myself and getting my own life together before I am able to try another relationship again. I just feel overwhelming sadness everyday. :(