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 you’re 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 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.
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 who he just DOESN’T FEEL GOOD 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 so you can both feel good together.
Reason #2: Emotional Experience And The Future
For the man in a relationship, the way a woman acts in the “little” situations become indicators of how she’s going to respond when things really are tough 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 for them in the future.
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 stops mattering.
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 and 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 can keep a relationship strong and moving forward.
All the details and some free video sample clips from the program are here:
Natural and Lasting Attraction
Reason #4: The “Neediness” of Codependence
A man wants to be with a woman who brings something better to his life, not takes 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 didn’t hardly ever see 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 are 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 a man will leave a woman because he sees 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 when ever 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 in many cases, a woman will try and get a man to change by showing him how it affects HER, not him.
This is the exact opposite of understanding that people are motivated by the things 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 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.
And I’m not just talking about the spoken words of that make a commitment… but about the “emotional commitment” a man has inside.
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.
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 subscribe to my free newsletter, don’t forget to check it out here:
najwa says
christian
I have a friend that i been seeing for 4mths,he use to be my boss but he left my corperation to go to a bigger site. we are the same age but he’s more a challenge to me, he has much more eduacation than me,sometimes i feel he’s a threat to me and that he not to much interested in me mentally but only sexual it bothers me that i can’t figure him out but he’s real humble and patient when it comes to me sometimes i know he can’t tolerate me too long because we don’t always agree at all time, so i begin to back off for days but i care for him alot maybe my feelings shouldn’t be this way so early but i waited 8mths for him to pursue me i hate to lose him and he makes me feel like i need to get on his level by going back to school.i try to encourage him as much as possible because of his power of authority and his way of encouraging me is work harder, but its embarrassing for me to tell him i honestly don’t have an HS diploma yet i know he knows; with all the degrees he has…i don’t know what do? should i distance myself from him or accept that he has accept it without me sharing it with him, oh yeah by next year i will be enrolling back to school.
Geena says
Hi christian. I am a married woman and have been for 19 years, but somewhere the fire has died. I havent been sexually active with the spouse for 2 years. I am still in the marriage but I was so longing for affection that I wasn’t getting in my marriage that I began having an affair with another man. I don’t know what to do to get the fire back burning between me and my spouse, But it feels so good to be with the other man. Any advice for me?
lisa says
Please HELP ME christian….ok so i have done everything wrong according to your newsletters.
we have been together for over 8 years…always breaking up and getting back…….i always talk about the past and he does too and brings up crap i did in the past before him too, just stuff i told him.
his family does not like me, my family loves him. i never go to their house, been very nice to everyone, they ignore me. he comes to my house and stays in the car. my whole family even extended loves him.
i have had 3 abortions, he forced me to have it, said i was ruining his life and he is not financially ready for that kind of life.
a year or two ago, he wants a family. of course i am too hurt by my past experiences. i dealt with this alone, he never came with me…and there was no money so i had to pay for it. pay for an abortion that i did not want. i know you must be thinking why…well i did not want to be one those women who trap men with a child and i knew if i had the child he would hate me forever. i love him i cant explain that. i have never met anyone like him.
there is no future with him and i think that he is seeing that now…i tell him all the time. so now we are at an impasse.
i wonder christian does it make sense even saving this relationship? i cant eat, sleep, never go out, have lost interest in everything…just till i know we together again, then it happens all over.
i dont want to be one of those women who is defined by her realtionship or man. i feel like this is it, i cannot imagine my life without him, but he always remembers the past arguments and we can never get anywhere.
my past always comes back to haunt me. who will marry me now, abortions, insecurities, now unemployed, early 30s, my past life before.
lisa says
Please HELP ME christian….ok so i have done everything wrong according to your newsletters.
we have been together for over 8 years…always breaking up and getting back…….i always talk about the past and he does too and brings up crap i did in the past before him too, just stuff i told him.
his family does not like me, my family loves him. i never go to their house, been very nice to everyone, they ignore me. he comes to my house and stays in the car. my whole family even extended loves him.
i have had 3 abortions, he forced me to have it, said i was ruining his life and he is not financially ready for that kind of life.
a year or two ago, he wants a family. of course i am too hurt by my past experiences. i dealt with this alone, he never came with me…and there was no money so i had to pay for it. pay for an abortion that i did not want. i know you must be thinking why…well i did not want to be one those women who trap men with a child and i knew if i had the child he would hate me forever. i love him i cant explain that. i have never met anyone like him.
there is no future with him and i think that he is seeing that now…i tell him all the time. so now we are at an impasse.
i wonder christian does it make sense even saving this relationship? i cant eat, sleep, never go out, have lost interest in everything…just till i know we together again, then it happens all over.
i dont want to be one of those women who is defined by her realtionship or man. i feel like this is it, i cannot imagine my life without him, but he always remembers the past arguments and we can never get anywhere.
my past always comes back to haunt me. who will marry me now, abortions, insecurities, now unemployed, early 30s, my past life before.
i sound like a loser
lisa says
srry about the double post