Hey everyone.
It's Jack and Clayton.
And this video is about he's pulled away and what do you do?
So, I just want to kind of acknowledge off the bat here that if this is happening to
you right now or has happened to you, it's probably been really painful.
[And] that you may be confused.
You may be doubting yourself.
You may feel kind of anxious about when you might get together or come back into connection.
And also, just in kind of false it's self-disclosure, as a guy, I've definitely done this and I
still do it in my relationship so this is territory that we know from kind of the male
side of the fence.
And so, in this video we're hoping to give you some perspectives about how to orient
to a man when this is happening that might just serve you to feel more empowered, to
feel less in pain and to kind of feel more okay about the relationship.
Yes.
And about where it's going and what might be happening in his mind.
I can tell you hands down that when a man pulls away it doesn't always mean that he
doesn't want anything to do with you anymore.
Totally.
Right?
Or, that he's ghosting you or that he's just disappeared, and he's left you high and dry,
it does not always mean that.
In some cases, it absolutely does.
I think that's what makes this difficult because if you’re feeling anxious, you're probably
trying to work out like, “is this kind of over?
Did I do something wrong?
Or, is he just kind of taken some space?”
And if he hasn't communicated that, which often times as men again I'll take responsibility
because we don't necessarily communicate on the front end.
Like, “I'm taking some space because I need two days of rest.
I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.”
So, you're all a little in the dark about what his actual intentions are.
And it also depends too on the phase of the relationship and the dating of like where
you're at in the timeline.
Is this the beginning stages where perhaps you've had a couple of dates with him and
now you're noticing he's pulling away and he's not calling?
And the question that I have there is well, do you have a deep connection or if you have
a connection enough with him that there is actually something that he's pulling away
from?
Or, is it just that the dating has lost momentum for him and he just is not communicating that?
That's a very different scenario than saying being in a relationship with somebody and
there's perhaps love and there's a lot of feelings, maybe there's some volatility, and
then suddenly he pulls away there, right?
There's different ways of handling this in different ways of approaching it, but then
there are some I'd say principles – underlying principles of how to be in this situation
that would ultimately both of them will create anxiety within you, right?
So, it's kind of like how do you manage your anxiety?
How do you enter into this situation to create the best possible result?
Totally.
So, maybe we should get into this.
Let’s do it.
So, the first one is don't take it personally as hard as that is.
Which is to say that it might be much more about him than it is about you.
That he actually has a need for some space, for some autonomy.
You know we were talking the other day and went out for dinner and you were saying there's
you know there's a reason we have a man cave.
That’s like across all sorts of like a culture stereo type that a man needs a man cave.
It’s kind of like he needs to cave up.
He wants to get kind of silent, kind of empty himself, be free of distractions.
And that's one of his ways of recharging because again the main masculine x`dynamic is action
and rest.
Go out into the world then retreat to the man cave.
So, it might be that he's withdrawn just to rest.
So, the invitation not to take it personally which we sometimes call like be cool.
Like kind of be cool with him.
Like don't criticize, blame, judge, kind of be non-judgmental and actually be curious.
So, before you create a story that this is about you, or it's about a thing that you've
done, or it's about something that's wrong in the relationship, actually be curious about
his experience and it may be the you have to wait to actually find out the answers to
that.
And maybe that you have to wait out a little bit of time for him to be available to become
back into connection to even talk to you about that.
Yes.
Definitely.
And that's another key point too is that if there's gonna be any conversation about this,
it's not that you have to put up or tolerate it.
If there's a lack of communication on his part, if there is more planning that you would
like, if there's more communication in terms of what's happening before, he's taking space
and you need that, wait until he comes back and then have a conversation about the impact
that it had on you.
Some place of owning it and letting him know how he felt.
And I'll tell you here's the wild thing, as being a guy on this side of the fence, I don't
even know sometimes when I'm having a negative impact on somebody.
It is up to my woman to reveal to me when she is feeling a certain thing because I might
be ignorant.
And I'm a relationship coach, right?
And I mean even somebody who is studied this stuff can very well be ignorant about these
nuances about how they come across and the impact they have so being able to communicate
it is incredibly important.
Yes.
And notice that Clayton's talking about he's talking about impact rather than intention.
So you're feeding back what's the impact?
You took some space is the impact on me rather than you have a bad intention because you
took space.
Why are you abandoning me?
You always do this to me.
So, just notice the difference there.
If you can fully own your experience to be like, “Wow that was really hard for me and
you know I felt alone.
I felt anxious.
I wasn't sure what's going on.”
That's so much easier for the guy to hear than I'm in the blame orientation towards
you.
So, it segues nicely to the second one here which is about learning how to make requests
versus making demands.
So, oftentimes when a man does something you don't like, your tendency might be to criticize
him, blame him, cajole him, humiliate him, pressure him.
All sorts of kind of underhand tactics if you will, rather than not cleanly ask for
what is it that you want; which could be, “Hey.
When you take space and we come in back into connection, it would really benefit me if
you could just hold me for five minutes?
That would allow me to feel connected to you again.”
Or, “if you're gonna take space of more than you know one or two days I would love
to know that just in a quick text or call me or whatever works for you.”
And the way that you know that it's a request rather than a demand is that I can say yes
or no to your request.
We might negotiate or we might come to a better compromise or better adjustment but making
a request is he gets to say yes or no to what it is you're asking.
And this is so important because if you don't do this what often happens is you stuff it,
or one will stuff it, and it'll turn into some type of passive aggressive behavior and
resentment.
And it could be that all of a sudden he takes space and then you find yourself thinking
that his intention is somehow to punish you and then you might start to resort to punish
him, which creates this horrible unconscious cycle of passive aggressiveness within the
relationship which doesn't bring the two of you closer.
And then, just further gives him perhaps more of a reason and more energy for wanting to
take more space now because he can't handle it.
So, it just perpetuates as something that you don't want and that's why being able to
clearly express the impact that it's having on you and then being able to make a request
of how you would like him to enter this space differently is super important.
Totally, which is great because that actually brings us into point three.
So, point three has a little bit of a fancy word in it.
So, point three is don't subjectify him.
And what that fancy word subjectify mean is don't imagine that when he does something,
he does it with the same way that you would do that thing, or with the same intention
that you would do that thing.
So, typically as a woman, if you're pulling away from your man it's actually something
different than when a man is pulling away from you because your need for space and autonomy
and rest may be different to his need.
So, it might be that you have a pattern that when someone really upsets you, you create
a little bit of a wall maybe like a stone wall and you withdraw, and you pull away and
that's actually a kind of defense.
And that may or may not be happening with him, so it's almost like don't assume that
you know what's going on.
Get curious and don't imagine that the thing that would be true for you is true for him.
And the way I'll explain this is an example that's often given of if a man and a woman
are in a car and there's no conversation happening, it may be a huge generalization here, but
it may be that different things are going on.
If a man is in a car with you and you're not talking, he may just be in his own world and
taking some space.
And it's actually nothing to do with you.
There's no problem.
There's no issue you.
But if you were taking a car journey with a man and you weren't talking with him, it
might be that you actually had an issue with him or you didn't like him.
Again gross generalization but I'm using it to make the point that the thing he does and
the thing you do, don't necessarily have the same intentions and you've got to dig deeper
to find out what's true.
Absolutely.
And I'm reflecting on my own experience and also of the many men that I've talked to that
are in these situations where they're beginning to date a woman or they're in a relationship
and it's starting to get serious, one of the ways that men will test women is by pulling
away.
And that's like should you be testing your partner?
Well look I can't get into the morality of it but this actually does happen because it's
what allows us sometimes to really get the authentic expression of who that person is.
How do they show up in that situation?
So, I have a friend in particular who admitted to me that and this is a very conscious guy.
And he said he's like, “Yes.
Sometimes when I'm getting to know somebody, I find myself just pulling away because I
need to know whether she's gonna flip out and be in reactivity.
Do I have a right to be in my autonomy?
And I can ask her, “Oh can I be at my own person in this relationship and will you honor
that?” and they can say, “Yes, all day long.”
But how does her emotional system actually show up in that situation?
Soes she freak out?
Does she start blaming?
Does she start punishing?
Does she start withdrawing?
Does she come back and accuse me and try to control?
And all this reveals so much about who you are.
So, who you show up as in the presence of this happening says so much about you to the
guy.
And that's why we want to continue to say it's really important to be cool.
And that doesn't mean minimize your needs, that doesn't mean that you don't have boundaries.
This doesn’t mean that you don't reveal the impact.
It doesn't mean you don't get support maybe elsewhere, like maybe what you support outside
of the relationship.
So, it's not being a martyr but it's also not over personalizing something that could
actually serve you more to take a little less personally.
Well listen, if you enjoy this video.
Yes.
You should spend some more time with us.
I mean you’re probably wondering how could you do that?
Do you have any ideas?
Well we do have a webinar.
We just created it, well actually a little while back but it's called the Three Keys
to Attracting and Keeping a High-Quality Man.
And it's some of the best content that we've put together in the last year I'd say.
It's 90 minutes.
I think we had some people watch it several times actually and continue to get value from
it so the link to register for a time that works for you is below this video.
How much is it?
It's free.
Free.
It's absolutely free.
You give it away for free?
We're giving it away for free.
You know we made start charging money for it at some point but right now it's free.
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You want to take advantage of that.
Go ahead, you click that link, find a time that works for you in your time zone and we
will see you there.
See you there.