Relationship Advice

He Loves You – But He Does Not Want to Be Committed – Dating Advice from Christian Carter on Commitment

How many times in your dating life have you heard this – “I love you, but I don’t want to be committed”…”Its not you, its me”…”You are a great girl, but I don’t want to be tied down”??  Five?  Ten?  A MILLION?  Believe me ladies, we have ALL been there.  And it really stinks because you have no idea what he is REALLY saying.  How can he “love” you, but not want to be committed?  Christian Carter of Catch Him and Keep Him has some pretty good ideas on this subject.

First, though, I want to share a recent question I got from one of my readers that inspired me to write this article…

“I met a guy and we became friends for about three months.  Then he asked me to be his girlfriend and I accepted.  Three weeks Later he said he loves me but does not want to be committed. What does he mean by, “I LOVE YOU BUT DONT WANT TO BE COMMITED?”

First of all, and before I answer, when you read her question, what do YOU think?  What d you think is happening in this relationship that has caused it to go off track so quickly?

Did she get needy?  Did he meet someone else?  Did he maybe never really love her in the first place?

Its hard to tell – because of course, we don’t know the whole story.  But let me review this – first, they were friends for several months.  This probably means that she REALLY liked him, and he was on the fence about it.  Why?  My first guess is the mechanics of attraction.

According to Christian Carter of Catch Him and Keep Him, attraction is “not a choice”.  There are, however, some very fundamental elements to attraction – one of which, for men, is DO NOT CHASE HIM.  What do we do, as women, when we are attracted to a guy and he is not showing any real interest in us?  We chase.  We try to lure him in.  We overdo.  We put ourselves in his path, knowing that if he would just SEE how good we are, he could not help but love us.  And ladies, I am not being condescending or poking fun – because I HAVE BEEN THERE.  I have done all these things.

As women, we WANT to nurture.  That means we want to take care of him, and everyone, and this means that usually, we overextend this virtue by overdoing.   We go out of our way to do little things and think he will be SO appreciative.

But you know what?  He’s not.  And that does not mean he is a rude person.  It means he is a man.  Truthfully, Christian Carter says, most men do not WANT to be waited on, or have things done for them because it makes them feel OBLIGATED to do things in return.  No one likes to feel obligated.  It kills attraction.

So by overdoing, we are killing the attraction.  By chasing him, we are killing the attraction.  By being consistently available to him, we are …. Guess what?  Killing the attraction!

So what DO we do?  Well, if you want to PROMOTE attraction the Catch Him and Keep Him way (which works!) you will make yourself an IN DEMAND COMMODITY.  I’m not saying go sell yourself on a street corner here, either.  I am saying that you need to make HIM chase you. And how do you do that?  You make yourself less available.  You go have fun with your friends.  You make a date with YOURSELF and do something YOU want to do and don’t invite him.  So him that you are in control of your own life and that you are HAPPY and CONTENT, and while you may love to have him IN your life, he is NOT your life.

So, my advice to this reader is that I don’t know what happened, but I can GUESS that somehow, you chased him and it ended up killing the attraction.  So for the next guy that comes along, try doing things a little different, and don’t chase him.  In this way, according to Christian Carter, you WILL catch him and keep him.

Catch Him and Keep Him eBook

What Christian Carter Calls the “Danger of a Connection”

I received a request for dating advice from a reader in my inbox the other day, and really felt the urge to share this woman’s situation with my readers, because so many of us fall into this emotional trap when we begin to date a guy.  Christian Carter of Catch Him and Keep Him calls this the “danger of a connection”, and it’s all about letting ourselves as women get overwhelmed by the emotion of a new relationship.

Here is the letter from my reader:

Hey Sarah –

Thanks for your letters, they actually have given me insight, however I have got a question about my boyfriend I just met 3 weeks ago. He only calls me at night and sometimes skips a day without calling. I felt so in love with him the first week and when I saw the bad signals that he may not be interested anymore I’m keeping that distance and I don’t know what to say to him because he is playing it silently it’s like a closed book that you can’t read every time I have to evaluate whether he loves me or not and its killing me inside. I want to ask him how he feel about me now but I don’t want to spoil it or looks like I m needy. How do I make him feel the same way I feel for him. Please help me I really need a serious commitment and really want to know if he is for me and if not how to move on, thanks again Sarah.

In need of dating advice,

Anonymous

Here is my answer to this struggling woman:

Dear Anonymous –

Thank you for writing to me with your dating problem.  I am going to give it to you straight here, because I believe that is what you need, and what people value about my dating advice.  Let’s examine what you have said here.

First of all, you have been dating this man for only three weeks, yet you fell “in love” with him in the first week.  That is a HUGE red flag here for several reasons.  First of all, if you are falling in love with someone that quickly, it is 9 times out of 10 lust and not love (or attraction) – which is not the basis for a lasting relationship.  You cannot possibly know this man (as you said, you don’t know what to say to him or how to read what he is thinking) so you cannot genuinely be in love with him.  So for your own good, let’s take a step back here and really try to evaluate what is happening.

I want to talk to you, specifically, about what Christian Carter says in his Catch Him and Keep Him eBook on page 55.  He titles this section “The Danger of a Connection”, and this is EXACTLY what is happening to you.   Christian Carter writes, “You’d be crazy to take the close relationship and love you want to find and gamble it away by betting on a guy whose greatest qualification is that he makes you feel attracted to him….For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard women talk about something they call “chemistry” or a “connection.” Women use these words to describe a feeling they have and then choose to attach their own meaning to it, without making sure the man feels the same way”.

This, it seems, is exactly what is happening to you.  You said “when I saw the bad signals that he may not be interested anymore I’m keeping that distance and I don’t know what to say to him because he is playing it silently it’s like a closed book that you can’t read every time I have to evaluate whether he loves me or not and its killing me inside”.

So, you are feeling like you are in a relationship (and after only a couple weeks, that is what is called an “instant relationship”, which not really a relationship at all, but a pseudo-relationship based on feelings of attraction and chemistry).  You don’t know if he is feeling the same way – which means in reality that he is NOT feeling the same way.

Christian carter says “The wiring men have inside doesn’t necessarily tie together that physical and chemical attraction with deeper long-term bonding elements the way it does so quickly for women.  Men have a range of responses with women they’re attracted to. Women are generally great at reading these attraction signals. Unfortunately, women aren’t good with two important skills:

1)  Identifying if he’s truly a quality future mate (above and beyond the “connection”)

2) Deciphering whether or not the energy, interactions, conversations, behaviors, and the mutual interests between the man and women can develop into a foundation for a strong relationship”.

So, there is a huge commonality in failed relationships – and that is that the “connection” or “chemistry” was the only thing the coupled shared in common.  Another way of saying this is that the “chemistry” you felt with him is no indicator of your relationship’s ability to survive, as it does not involve common interest, values, or even the ability to communicate well.

Don’t get me wrong, you DO have to have a good connection with a future mate.  HOWEVER, that connection MUST led to a keen ability to communicate with each other in a respectful and loving way – and already your relationship is showing evidence of a lack of communicative ability.

So – to recap – do not mistake your chemistry connection for a real relationship – it isn’t one.  Make sure you are not falling in the love with the IDEA of who he is, according to Christian Carter, instead of who he REALLY is – because you DO NOT know who he REALLY is after only a few weeks.  I think you need to step back from this relationship and take a good look inside YOURSELF and discover what it is you really want, and whether or not you are really ready for a relationship if you are falling for a guy so quickly.  You need to make sure that YOU are getting what YOU need in a relationship – love, understanding, commitment, respect and support.  You are worth waiting for those things, and you will be much happier in the end if you are choosy about the relationships you enter into.

All the best,

Sarah

Catch Him and Keep Him eBook

Overfunctioning Can Be Ruining Your Relationship According to Rori Raye

A key aspect in the success of a relationship, according to Rori Raye, is the balance of the feminine and masculine energy.  One way that we, as women, drive a relationship into imbalance is by overfunctioning within the relationship.  Put very simply, overfunctioning is doing too much.  Rori Raye talks about this in the Have the Relationship You Want eBook, and I would like to share some key insights with you here today.

First, let’s define overfunctioning.  Overfunctioning is a term coined by Rori Raye, and it basically means doing more than your fair share.  Its “doing other family members’ work, and helping where no

help is needed. It’s stepping in when you know you could do a better job, stepping up to rescue someone, jumping in to save the situation” (Rori Raye, p 116).  Doing this, doing too much, will actually deprive your MAN of his ability to be the masculine partner, because surprisingly, the nurturing in the relationship is a masculine energy, and not a feminine energy.

By taking all these things on, we make it actually unrewarding for men to act like men, and

they become lazy and complacent and vaguely resentful and then, they quit trying to make us happy. “They opt out of Masculinity, hand it over to us, and let us do it all” (Rori Raye, p 117).  And how many of us, as women, FEEL like we are doing it all and WISH that the man in our lives would step up and take some of the burden?  Well, more than likely, we created this situation by essentially emasculating our men by over-doing and overfunctioning.

The real eye opener for me, though, was learning how nurturing is actually a masculine energy.  It seems counterintuitive, right?  I mean, really, we as women – moms, wives, girlfriends – we live to give love, to grow our children and help out.  But, nurturing is about DOING things, giving things, and literally giving your energy away.  And as we know from previous discussions (see my blog if you did not read them), when you give energy out, that is a masculine action.

“Feeling compassion, connection, love, sensual delight in the way your baby feels to your touch, excitement at the way your lover feels to your touch – is completely different from reaching over and picking the baby up when it cries, from driving the kids to school, from reaching over and massaging your husband or boyfriend’s back when he never massages yours, from starting the conversation with a man you’ve never met because he seems too shy to take the first step, from soothing a man when his feelings are hurt by you or anyone else” (Rori Raye, p 117).  But feeling things is completely different from doing things.  And, allow me to say that there is nothing inherently wrong with doing because we are all a MIXTURE of the female and male energies is a relationship.  Where the trouble lies is when we, as women, who should be in the feminine energy, take OVER the masculine energy by doing TOO MUCH.

Do you understand what I am saying?  When we are functioning in a balanced way, we have the fluidity of movement between masculine and feminine energies.  But, when we overfunction, we get literally STUCK in the masculine energy.  And that leads to overbalance, and leads your man to have no recourse because you have taken HIS role in the relationship.

Let’s not get confused here, though, because we cannot confuse being loving with nurturing.  “We completely miss the joy of loving our men by experiencing them.   Experiencing men, like experiencing a sunset, or a walk in the forest, or a work of art, or childbirth, or rain, or sex requires that we let go of the urge to Do” (Rori Raye, p 117).  EXEPERIENCING these things is different than DOING these things, like taking pictures of the sunset is different than simply experiencing it.   Taking a hike in the forest for exercise is different than simply EXPERIENCING what the forest has to offer you.

So try simply experiencing things – take a small moment and go outside, sit in the sunshine and experience the day.  Feel the sun on your skin, the breeze in your hair, notice the smells and the sounds and the experience of it all.  Don’t analyze it, judge it, assimilate it, just FEEL it.  Do that until you get GOOD at it.  Then start trying to do this in your relationship.  Just EXPERIENCE it at times instead of fixing it.

When you are directing your masculine energy of nurturing toward your man, you may be making him feel like you are mothering him, and men don’t like that or want that.  That makes you seem judgmental and apart from them.  Instead, give him some attention and love, but don’t treat him like something that needs fixed.  So stop overfunctioning – stop doing everything and give him the room to take it over.  Instead, step back and start being cherished for what you are. This is what your husband or boyfriend wants – to love you for who and what you are.