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Wow, Lina, that is quite a story!
It’s like you found a perfect connection with someone, but the timing was just bad because of his life situation. He believes he has to be on a mission to achieve something and make something of himself, and he feels he cannot simultaneously invest in a relationship with you.
That’s a typical male perception. His desire to be in a relationship with you does not seem to be the problem. Rather, it’s his perception that he would not be able to provide for you in the ways you would expect him to provide as a boyfriend/lover. We need to change that.
We need to get him thinking about you as the biggest supporter of his dreams. The person who has his back. The woman who can enrich and enhance his life even while he pursues the busy and difficult work he must put into his business.
Of course, this is only something you can do so long as you still have propinquity with him (the opportunity to interact with him, trigger his love instincts, and communicate with him).
So right now, your main job is to keep the communication lines open and find opportunities to show up in his life in person if possible. Asking for help was a good decision. Don’t give up just because it didn’t work on the first try. Be creative and invite him to take on the hero role in your life in small ways at first.
Will you respond with a list of seven requests you could send him that would trigger his hero instinct? It will be hard to come up with a list of seven. Do it anyway. The excellent coaches here in the forum will help guide your thinking and decision-making process as you move forward.
By the way, it’s okay to explore new relationships even while you continue to be open to reviving this longer-term relationship. Just be honest with this new guy to he really understands you are interested in several people and not making any kind of exclusive commitment to him at this point while you get to know him better. Just have fun one day at a time. Don’t let your future hopes and desires ruin the opportunity to be fully and richly present with the people around you. It’s okay that your heart is still longing for someone else.
Ugh…that is a painful situation. Do you feel the chemistry just isn’t there anymore? I mean, I know it’s still there for you, but do you sense that it’s really gone for him? Or do you think he feels chemistry (more than just friendship love) for you but is trying to suppress it or ignore it for some reason?
That’s great advice, Heidi. And I agree with her, Mavis. A simple gesture of caring is all it takes right now to send the right message.
It sounds like you’ve made a good effort to explore your feelings about what needs to happen next. You decided to be honest with yourself and him about your current situation. That was the right thing to do, regardless of his reaction to it.
In fact, it’s possible that by facing this honestly, you may have caused him to realize things were getting too serious. Maybe he was more interested in the thrill of pursuing you than in long-term commitment. The thought that you might be ready to leave your husband (perhaps received through office gossip) may have forced him to face his own truth about what he was ready to ask for.
Regardless, honest is the best policy.
Hi Scarlet. It seems there are many beautiful things about the relationship you share with this man despite the frustrating fact that his affections are divided between two people.
I sometimes wonder if the love we feel is like a pie they gets divided up between people. The more one person gets, the smaller portion is left over for the other. It doesn’t seem to work that way in real life when it comes to love. It’s as if each person can draw out feelings of love from an endless storehouse. Our capacity to love is a wonderful and amazing thing.
Still, I understand why it frustrates you. Romantic love is a possessive sort of love. We don’t want to share our partner with someone else.
As I read through your posts here, I find myself wondering if he knows that. I mean, it seems obvious, right? But still, I find myself wondering if it’s obvious to him. Do you think it might help if you made it clear to him that your happiness is dependent on forming an exclusive, possessive romance with him?
It seems like that is the goal you have right now. Please correct me if I am wrong.
It’s amazing to me how often people can have what they want if they merely work up the courage to ask for it. It’s not a 100% foolproof method, but as they say, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
I also find myself wondering if you have recently triggered his hero instinct on purpose. Sometimes, the mere act of showing someone that your happiness is impacted by specific choices they make can activate the hero instinct. It would be lovely if he began to see it as one of his missions in life to make you happy by being a fantastic partner.
Hi Joseline. Thanks for giving our relationship course and private forum a try. I’ll send a request to our customer support team to refund your purchases.
Wishing you the best,
James
Those are good questions. I like them because it shows you are mentally projecting yourself into the future so that you can be prepared for various possibilities that may unfold. This allows you to use the best of your insight and self-discipline as you reach for a deeper connection with this man.
One of your questions was about how to maintain a strong, independent, dream girl position in his mind if you let him ignore you and distance himself from you without repercussion.
It’s a good question. First I want to echo something Kanya said above. Just because you feel frustrated at him does not necessarily mean he intended to frustrate you. Much of this could be his way of doing relationships. It’s so easy to get caught up in our own thinking and to forget that each of us lives in our own world of thoughts, assumptions, and interpretations. The feelings you are having come from your own interpretation of events, which may not exactly match his perception of what’s going on between the two of you.
For that reason, I want to encourage you to consider your own feelings as things that you need to communicate to him, not in anger, but as an explanation. Because this gives him the opportunity to respond or adjust his behavior if he doesn’t like the emotional reaction he’s creating in you.
However, bringing that to him as evidence of his failure will only make him angry. He won’t respond the way you want him to. So instead, your job is to enhance his understanding without doing any blaming. How can you do that without giving up the strong dream girl stance?
Here’s something to consider. Act like you’re doing him a favor. After all, you don’t have to tell him how you feel. You could just pick some other guy. But you see him as a person who has enough potential that you’re willing to invest in him by giving him feedback about what’s working and what’s not.
Just make sure you frame it as education. Something you wouldn’t expect them to know unless you told him. Frame your feedback as, “the times I felt closest to you have been the times when you are doing…X” Here you might replace “x” with something along the lines of, “when I hear your voice on the phone or when we spend time together in person.”
And here’s the key to do this well. You have to first get grounded emotionally yourself. You have to accept the possibility that he won’t respond the way you hope.
Don’t let anger become the dominant emotion. Instead, let’s hope be your dominant emotion. Hope that with just a little prompting he may learn how to be a better friend/partner/confidant in your life.
What do you do if he invites you to spend time with him? In short, don’t “let him have it.” Instead, extend a hand to him and ask if he is interested in feedback that will allow the two of you to build toward something more. Tell him you’d like to spend some time with him, but only if he is interested in that kind of feedback and wants to work on it actively together so you can build something beautiful.
James
Hey Deborah. Congratulations on making the very wise decision to seek marriage counseling. You’ve invested a lot in this relationship over the past 25 years, so it makes sense to get expert help from someone who can aid you both with the process of negotiating the kind of life that would maximize both his happiness and yours.
And I should mention that it’s very difficult to get men to go to marriage counseling. The fact that he has agreed to attend with you does seem to suggest there may be a chance of some real progress.
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to review any of the material I’ve written in my Endless Honeymoon relationship course, but it has one simple premise. Life is more fun when you’re working toward each other’s happiness on purpose. It can create the effect of an endless honeymoon.
So my hope for you is this. I hope you can spark his hero instinct in a way that makes him excited about the challenge of seeing his relationship with you as an opportunity to truly invest in the life of someone else and make her happy. Embracing that challenge brings great meaning and purpose to our lives. It makes us bigger then just one person living life for ourselves while trying to maximize our own happiness.
For right now, the best phrases you can use are really questions. Questions that get him talking about what would make life feel exciting and vibrant for him again. Not necessarily questions about the relationship. Starting with open conversations about what he really wants will give you insight. It opens the door to future conversations about how the two of you might pursue those desires together, as a couple.
I encourage you to also talk about what you want. Make sure he knows what you want more of so that you can feel happier than you do right now. He needs to see that there is still a challenge available to him in this relationship he shares with you. Hopefully, that will ignite the hero instinct within him, thereby overcoming the midlife crisis that seems to be driving him to seek some other life situation.
I thought of two articles that might be somewhat useful to you as you go through this chapter of your life and prepare for the next chapter.
One from my own blog that talks about the pain of letting go: https://blog.beirresistible.com/the-pain-of-letting-go/
And one from my friend and mentor, Tony Robbins: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/mind-meaning/let-go-past/
Ah, I see. Thanks for sharing.
Go to page 63 of your his secret Obsession course where there is a section titled, “hesitant to Commit.” Actually, you might want to start at page 60 to read about “the Prince stage,” because it appears your guy is just entering the Prince stage, which explains a lot of why he’s reacting this way to you.
Regarding your question on the advertising for “Why Men Shot Women Out,” that’s the free bonus given away on the BeIrresistible.com website, but it’s not one of our courses. It’s really like a primer (a preview really) for a relationship course by Slade Shaw.
But go read about the way guys get all frustrated and confused when they want to be on a “mission”and come to the false conclusion that that means they have to leave romance behind. It’s in your His Secret Obsession book.
It sounds like this is a situation where you want to give him some time before using some of the techniques to trigger his hero instinct and gradually draw him back toward more frequent interaction. But in the meantime, it could help if you understand how his hero instinct is causing him to think he must leave you behind in order to make something of himself. You must have a very powerful effect on his emotions.
Hey, thanks for your question. I’d love to help you find ways to apply the concept you’re asking about to your own unique relationship situation. To help me with that, please tell me which of my courses you purchased. Sometimes my copywriters (the guys who create the sales messages) use little catch phrases like “3 harmless questions” and I lose track of which part of my relationship course they were talking about. But if you let me know which product it is I’ll be able to zero in and help you use the technique.
It would also help if you introduced yourself and gave me a bit of background info about the state of your current relationship. Looking forward to your response!
Hi Sheena.
Reading your message, I’m struck by how brave you were. This was a huge step in the direction of exploring relationships and gaining some experience with dating. I think you should feel proud of yourself for taking this big step forward regardless of how this particular relationship turns out.
Because the truth is, no one can predict whether two people will click. But if you never try, you’ll never find someone that really makes you happy. So my opinion is that trying to find someone you click with is a success, even if this particular relationship is just a passing moment that builds your experience with men and helps you to feel more natural and confident about dating.
Now about this guy you met. It does seem like there are some warning signs that suggest he was really focused on getting physical too fast. But you responded to that exactly as you should. You were kind and yet you communicated your boundaries in a gentle way that invited him to continue building the relationship.
After receiving your communication, it’s up to him to then decide whether that matches his desires. He can either move on, or he can recognize the value of moving at someone else’s pace and building a more lasting romance based on deeper understanding and less on the instant physical attraction.
In my opinion, you’ve done very well. He has yet to reveal to us whether or not he’s the kind of man you want to be with. But if it turns out that he pushes you away because of setting a boundary on physical intimacy, then you have done the right thing. It doesn’t mean you messed something up or that you need to analyze what’s wrong with yourself. Rather, it means he just wasn’t the right match for you. And that’s okay.
It’s great to see you on the forum. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to support you in your relationship journey.
James
Hi Arlene. If I understood your message correctly, it sounds like you began receiving emails from me, but you don’t recall ever subscribing to my emails. Of course, we are glad to have you as a reader, but if you have access to this private forum it means you (or someone with access to your information) signed you up and paid to get you access to this forum. If that was not your intention, please let our customer support reps know so they can cancel the subscription and quickly refund you.
I suppose there is a chance that some person subscribed on your behalf, but I don’t know why they would do so without telling you. Thanks for sending us the alert about the scammer, if that’s what it was. We’ll be on the look out to make sure others are not experiencing the same thing.
James
Hi Cherise. It’s nice to see you posting in here on the private forum.
I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to try to communicate in a situation like the one you have described.
Here are some questions to help us better understand the sitaiton.
1. Is he argumentative with everyone, or only with you?
2. Do his nonverbal actions suggest he loves you and cares about your well being?
3. What have you already tried (for improving communication) that did not work?
4. Have the two of you ever had an open discussion about the fact that you have not been communicating well?
5. Does he acknowledge fault after becoming argumentative or verbally combative? Or does he just act like it’s normal or like it didn’t happen?
6. Does he want control? Is he overly sensitive to being criticized? Or is it something else that seems to trigger arguments? What patterns have you noticed?James
Hi Maja. It’s human nature to lend a helping hand. But for most men, it makes us feel really good when we can be someone’s “hero” and fix a problem (like a car that broke down). It doesn’t necessarily mean his romantic feelings have changed. It’s just the hero instinct pulling him toward you. It’s up to you what to do with that attention. It sounds like you’ve been doing some good work on stabilizing the core foundation of what you want and what you need at this point in your life. Good work!
James
