If you met Kyla at a social event, you might see her as standoffish.
It takes a lot before she lets down her guard or starts to smile.
What you wouldn’t know is that this isn’t really who she is.
Around her friends, Kyla is a different person. Silly, warm and caring.
But she won’t let just anyone in. She’s been burned too many times.
She decided, long ago, that her problem was that she was too open.
She’d allow a guy to see how much she liked him… and then he’d treat her like she was nothing.
She’d fall for a guy, have a wonderful few months with him… and then he’d break it off.
Once she healed her broken heart and learned to live without him… he’d pop back into her life acting like nothing ever happened.
If life taught her anything, it was this:
The key to attracting men is showing how little you actually care.
Was she right?
The “Like” Switch
Kyla’s experience resonates with the stories I’ve heard from so many other women.
They tell me it’s like night and day.
When a guy knows that you like him—how much you really, REALLY like him—he acts like you’ve got “girl cooties.” (Their term, not mine!)
When a guy believes you could care less about him, suddenly he’s all interested.
Is it like that for you?
Kyla even found she could get her ex-boyfriends back this way.
She acted cool and aloof. She pretended she was “above” them. It didn’t take long before they were texting her, wanting to hang out.
Kyla explained to me that men love the chase. That’s why she never showed any feelings; she became a challenge they couldn’t resist.
But was this making her happy?
When I saw Kyla relaxed and laughing, I couldn’t help but wish she felt free to be herself all the time.
I could understand why she’d chosen not to share this side of herself with men, but I wondered what would happen if she tried opening up—this time, with a new strategy.
Why He Gets Turned Off by Your Interest
There’s a really easy answer as to why liking a man seems to turn him off.
It’s because your behavior changes.
When you’re around a guy you like a lot, you act differently.
It’s instinctive. You want to impress him. You want to convince him to ask you out.
That puts pressure on men.
Suddenly, instead of simply enjoying your company, he feels the weight of your feelings. Any little thing he says or does either makes you light up and makes you feel crushed. It’s all too much. It’s stressful.
Relationships flourish when they unfold at their own pace and in their own time.
The quickest way to suffocate a relationship is to see it as a means to an end. Instead of spending time with him because you enjoy him, you’re spending time with him to try and convince him to be with you.
Any time a person wants us to do something—even if it’s something we might ordinarily like to do—we feel resistance.
(Which is why the best way to get anyone to do something is to make them think it was their idea!)
Some men even feel that they’re used by women. They say that women only want to be with them if they think a relationship is on the cards. They feel that they’re not given the chance to make up their own minds.
Luckily, that only describes a minority of men. But it points to one truth about relationships, which is the fact that we all want our free will respected.
None of us want to be a means to an end.
We want people to take the time to get to know us, understand us, and see our bad side as well as our good side… before concluding they want to be part of our lives.
Give Him This
One of the very best gifts you can give a man is not jumping to conclusions about him.
Withhold your judgment until you’ve spent enough time together.
Yes, he may seem like the perfect guy, but chances are he has annoying habits that could drive you crazy.
If you’re interested in a man, channel your interest into enjoying his company for what it is.
It’s not time to think about a relationship yet.
A man has to pass one test before he can even be considered relationship material, and that’s this:
He has to like the REAL you.
And he will never know the answer unless you give him an opportunity to experience the “you” that all your friends know and love.
P.S. If you want to unlock your happiest self and let it guide you toward a more enjoyable romantic journey, you owe it to yourself to check out The Pleasure Principle book created by my friend, Amy Waterman.
It’s the kind of relationship guide that can change your life forever after reading it just once. Some ideas, once you’ve been exposed to them, change everything. Go here to get it.
I asked support whether the Hero Instinct method is appropriate for the scenario where a new love interest pulls away, but they told me to look in this blog for the comments. There are no comments, so maybe JB will answer mine.
I met a man about 8 months ago and developed a crush on him but never pursued him. It turned out to be a good thing I thought, because he’d been sabotaging his deep desire for a LTR by letting two FWBs tresspass his stated boundaries about ending the sex and just being friends with them both. He and I connected and talked openly and directly about what we both wanted. He said he’d had a crush on me as well for about as long as we’d known each other but wanted to “see what happened” and so didn’t initiate. He stopped sleeping with his former FWBs, after another slip up in which he was caught by one of them and exposed for lying to all three of us. We all got tested, he finally put himself first and broke off his sexual relationships with them.
We saw each other for maybe a couple of weeks afterward, and then…he pulled away, grew distant, stopped coming to my house (which he’d been doing everyday), stopped initiating four wheeler rides with me (which had been very fun for both of us), stopped radio’ing me on the Baofeng, etc. I went through hormonal attachment hell, but I did not reach out to him during this time at all; I allowed him his space and worked on feeling better. He radio’d me twice during that time to invite me over for dinner at his place with him and his roommate. I hung out as this blog post seems to be saying I should have (that’s cool I suppose, right?), and I went home at a decent hour both times. It felt platonic except for some comments he made both times about my attractiveness and a clearly friendly and smiling exchange in general.
I found the Hero Instinct material about that time. After reading the ebook and listening to the audio, making a lot of notes, I sent my first HI signal to him via text. He replied that he was “down” to help me (with cohosting my podcast, which we’d agreed we wanted to do together previously) but did not set a day and time to make it happen. He also stopped by my house, twice in one day, the first time by himself when I was in town getting coffee and blissing out as a form of self-care, and the second time with a buddy of his for about 20 minutes. We all joked and chatted as usual with no initiation on his part for anything further.
I tried my second HI signal via text sometime afterward, thinking he seems to still be somewhat interested in me if he is stopping by to talk with me and also bringing along his buddy, whom he told me previously he informed that he likes me. I chose a different angle after spending more time with the HI material, realizing that my podcast isn’t aligned with his desires (other than generally wishing to be a provider/hero to someone), this time using an X-Ray Signal. We do not have adequate wifi out where we live (he is in my neighborhood) so I don’t worry about the length of time between texts. He replied with exactly what the X-Ray Signal is intended to do, and I learned that he values freedom (he even stated that it boiled down to one word without any further X-Ray questions needed from me) and time in the wild until it gets cold.
I feel like I’m walking a balance beam, between being bummed out about the truth hiding behind the fact that he pulled away in the first place (he’s lost interest and isn’t that into me like we both throught he was, right?) and being hopeful because of the promise of the HI material.
What I want to understand is whether (and how?!) this ebook can work with a situation like this, that so many women have experienced, where a man pulls away after initially acting like a worthy investment? All I have to go on is the example of the super-attractive lady in JB’s office who broke up with her BF for a new man whom she then had to use the X-Ray Signal on in order to draw him back. But I am diagnosed with PTSD and so am not good at modifying the provided examples/scenarios to fit mine. Please help! Thanks!