Dating Advice for Women – How To Bring Him Back When He Pulls Away
This time of year seems to be the peak time when women are seeking dating advice. Some of the most common questions I get center around what to do if your man is pulling away – or what can I do to make him commit? They may seem to be very different questions, but, if you think about it, they are pretty much the same question. How do I draw my man closer to me?
You may be experiencing the same thing that millions of other women have experienced. Your man is withdrawing, he seems vague, distant or just not as into the relationship as you would like him to be. Maybe he seems angry, maybe not, but something just does not “feel right”.
So – being a woman, you naturally go into attention seeking or “vulnerable” mode, as has been bred into us since time immemorial. You talk, you try to get him to talk, and you ask questions. Maybe you get angry or hurt and you make sure he sees it. Maybe you pout, pick fights, nag him and begin to get clingy and needy.
We will go into how wrong this all is in a minute, so hold on to that thought.
So your boyfriend or husband sees this behavior and freaks out because you are getting clingy and needy. He freaks and withdraws even more, or leaves. And then the cycle continues.
One thing I cannot stress enough to women when they ask for dating advice is that the “needy behavior” does NOT work. You think, in our female logic, that if you display to him, in whatever form, that you need him and that he is hurting you – that he, being a man, will naturally want to “rescue you” and make it all better. Right? That’s the general gist. BUT in REALITY that kind of behavior makes men RUN AWAY.
If he sees that behavior in you, his “NEEDY GIRL” alarms start flashing in his head like a bad strobe light and every fiber of his being will tell him to RUN the other way.
So what CAN a woman do that will make her beau come TOWARD her – toward commitment, to quit withdrawing? Take a moment to imagine a picture with me, and you will see the answer for yourself. Picture two lumberjacks. A HUGE tree. A two man saw. Now, picture the lumberjacks picking up the two man saw, and cutting down the tree. One man pushes, and the other one pulls back. Then the other man pushes and the first man draws back. When one leans toward the other, the other one HAS to pull back. But if you lean back, the other one will come toward you.
So – what can you do to make him quit pulling back? Lean back instead of forward. Quit pushing.
Here is how to “lean back” (by the way, I learned this technique straight from Rori Raye in her fabulous dating advice eBook. You should check it out!) When you find yourself getting worked up about something (let’s say you think he is being distant and uncommunicative tonight) you first have to RECOGNIZE your feelings and what they center on. So whenever you start to feel negative emotion, stop and turn your eye inward for a moment and identify the cause. Is he really being distant, or are you in a bad mood because someone made a snide remark to you at work today?
Second, simply FEEL what you are feeling. Take a deep breath and close your eyes and let it come, really FEEL it. It might hurt, it might be uncomfortable or it might feel good to really let yourself feel your emotion. Don’t judge it, just feel it.
Now, what you will notice is the silence. You have taken a few moments to effectively “ground” yourself, and in those moments, you did not talk, or push him. And perhaps, in those moments, you will have come to SEE him clearly. Maybe you see that he is just a PERSON who is dealing with something that may or may not have anything to do with you.
NOW, try to say something to HIM about what YOU are FEELING. Don’t accuse him of anything – open up to him. Say something like, “I feel very uncomfortable right now, uncomfortable with the silence and I am feeling disconnected from you. Is there anything going on that I should know?”
This kind of communication tells HIM several things – you are mature enough to recognize and understand your OWN feelings, you are also mature enough not to ASSUME you know what HIS feelings are, you are courageous enough to speak up when you feel this way and want to correct it and you respect him enough to tackle it head on instead of using the normal methods most other women use.
From there, you can begin connecting with your man on a deeper level, leaning back to encourage him to lean forward and using words and statements that will pull him into you as a person instead of push him away with emotion. Try this technique from Rori Raye and see how it works for you. Check out her eBook, as well, Have the Relationship You Want, which gives you many more in depth tips and tools to use in order to get the closeness you have always wanted from your partner, whether you are just dating or have been married for 15 years. It works!
Yeah, as soon as you say ‘I feel’ his relationship talk alarm will go off and he will have exactly the same reaction. The best thing to do is go call your girlfriend and tell HER how you feel. Then wait for him to ask. Then tell him less than he wants to know and make him work for the additional information. This is the only time men value information about how you feel. (And then half the time they resent the fact that you feel it at all.)