Why Men Pull Away Right When They're Falling for You | Relationship Advice for Women by Mat Boggs

I'm going to share with you the number one reason that men pull away in probably the most inconvenient time and give you a bit of a confession from my own personal story as well. Now, there are lots of reasons that men will pull away throughout the relationship, but there is one most important time that can be the most confusing in relationships, and that is right when you feel like the relationship is going to go to a much more committed level, like he's going to propose to you or the two of you are going to move in together. And this always comes when you've had a great relationship so far. I'm talking about the kind of relationship where you've been dating for months, you feel close, you've had lots of great experiences, the two of you have talked about being more committed, the two of you share values, you share a common vision for what it is that you would love, and then there's this moment where it's right before the threshold of this new state of being together where you're either going to move in or propose or get married or something like that and you'll feel him pull away. Why does this happen and what is your most powerful move in this moment to keep your own peace of mind and to guide the relationship and give it the greatest chance of ultimately what you would love for the vision of your life and if he's a match for that for the two of you to come together? When I was dating my wife, we were together for about two years and we were talking about our life together, we were talking about the visions that we had, our values lined up, all of it was aligned. And sure enough, everyone in our life, our close friends and family were like, hey, how's it going? So do you feel like this could be the one? Do you feel like you guys could be married one day? What are your plans? And so as that energy was coming my way, as I began to see and really begin to analyze like, are we right together? Is this the one? Those kinds of things, I started to feel the fear rise up in me and it was the fear of uncertainty. Even though this would ultimately be the woman I would marry, even though it would ultimately become the mother of my children, even though it ultimately was the love of my life, even me, a guy who had traveled 12,000 miles interviewing America's greatest marriages to find out what makes love last, I had a blueprint and our relationship was lining up with all of these signs. Even I was having these cold feet. And so I started to pull back and it was very subtle and it was a bit unconscious. I knew I was having some uncertainties, but I didn't actually know to the full degree to which I was pulling back until my girlfriend, my wife now called me out on it. She's like, Hey, so I'm noticing that you used to use phrases like us and we, and you used to talk about plans for next year. And you're not talking about any of that stuff anymore. You're talking about you and using words like me and I, and not we. And I want to know, has something shifted in you? Do you still see us as moving in the same direction? And that's when I had to really reflect in myself. And I went through a very specific process that later I learned is very common, especially for masculine men. If you are dating a masculine man who we all have the same internal mega fear inside, we all go through a very specific process. After I ultimately went through this process, I could pick it out and I began to notice it and see, Oh, wow, this is a very common pattern that a lot of guys go through. One of my best friends actually had this experience where he got right to the doorway of commitment and then really started to get filled with doubts, filled with worry, pull back. Ultimately he leaned in, they committed, they're still married today over 20 years later. And just this last week, I was on a coaching client with one of my clients. She's been dating this guy for eight months, someone she met in the program. And she goes, Matt, everything's going great. We love each other. We have an amazing relationship and just the last couple of weeks, he started to pull back because we've been talking about maybe getting married one day and having our families meet and really moving things forward. And so I want to share with you what the very specific process that the masculine energy goes through when looking at commitment, where the fear comes from, but then also what can you do, the most powerful move you can do to help you ultimately create the relationship that you want. And so here's an important reframe. The more your man is in love with you, the higher the stakes are for him. When it's casual, there's nothing to lose. But when he starts imagining the whole relationship, he starts imagining his life with you, suddenly there's everything to lose. Suddenly it's the dream he had when he was a kid of finding the love of his life, of having a family and hoping that it lasts, hoping that have I thought of everything? Have I covered everything? Is this the kind of relationship that I feel like is going to go the distance? And that's when the fear shows up in a very real way. Fear of it not working out, fear of him getting it wrong, fear of hurting you in the process or losing you down the road. And so he starts to pull away. And most of the time, it's him just managing this fear. Him pulling away isn't necessarily him walking towards the exit. Like that distance that ultimately you feeling panicked about may not actually be evidence that he doesn't care about you. It's evidence that he actually does care about you because this thing matters, which is why there's so much fear. Now, your process is still the same. What you're going to do is still the same, but there's a great reframe that is not about him loving you less. It's about him really feeling the stakes of what he's about to invest in and the moves he's about to make. Because let's unpack that fear of things going wrong for just a moment and really tie it to the masculine energy. Because every human being deep down, when we feel a fear, most of the fears are tied to this core belief of I'm not enough. And if I'm not enough, things aren't going to work out. I'm going to die alone. And so for the masculine man, that fear takes a very specific shape. And his deepest fear as a masculine man is inadequacy, specifically that he won't be able to provide for you in the way that you want, or he won't be able to protect you in a way that helps and makes you feel safe. And it's not an exaggeration to say that a good man is quietly deathly afraid of not being able to do those things for the woman that he loves. And so go back to his wiring for a moment. He is the hunter, right? For tens of thousands of years, our whole identity, our programming was built on being able to provide and to protect. And so today, when a man starts to fear that he can't make you happy, that fear isn't just a small inkling in him. It actually threatens his very sense of who he is. And so here's the mental chain that actually runs underneath. And it's usually without him even being aware of it. And it goes like this. If I can't give her what it is that she wants, then I'm not enough. And if I'm not enough, then eventually she's going to leave me. And so here's an interesting key. That thought is so painful that it almost never reaches his conscious mind. Instead, what happens is he just feels this wave of fear in his body. And so he responds the way fear makes most of us respond, which is that we might get defensive, we might get irritable, or we might go quiet, or we might pull away. All of those signs of him feeling this fear of what if I'm not enough for this relationship to ultimately help it make it go the distance. And so I want to share with you five questions that men will unconsciously work through when deciding whether or not they want to spend their life together. And so he needs to get yeses on all five of these questions before he's ready to fully commit. And the degree to which he gets yeses to these questions are the degree of confidence that he feels in moving forward. And so here are these five questions. The first question that he's asking in terms of whether he wants to commit is, how does he feel about you? Like, does he feel like he loves you? Does he feel like this is a match to the vision that he's holding in his life? Question number two is, how do I feel about myself when I'm around her? So how does he feel when he's around you about him? Does he feel like the king he wants to be? Does he feel confident? Does he feel like he's able to be the version of himself that he's proud of that he wants to be? Number three is, is this what I want at this stage in my life? So as he's looking at his mission-driven life, the masculine loves a mission. Is he at that stage where he can feel like, yeah, I'm ready to be committed? I want to share my life with somebody. Like, I feel like I'm in a place in my life where I want that level of commitment where I can invest in her. I can invest in our life together. Number four is, do I have what it takes to make her happy? And this is a huge one. One of my friends delayed on proposing because he wasn't at a financial place in his life to buy a home for the two of them. It almost broke them up until they actually had a very real conversation where she was like, honey, I don't want a house right away. Like, let's save, let's rent, and then we can buy it later. But what I really want is for us to be together. Let's not delay five years. And it was this weird mental paradigm that he had where he thought that she needed a house to be happy. And because he couldn't do that, he was now not going to propose and going to delay the whole thing. So helping the two of you be really on the same page of what the vision is and what you two want is one of the key pieces. And the last question, number five is, can I be myself with her long-term? Do we share the same vision? Are we headed in the same direction? So those are the five questions and the process that he's going through. The question is, what do you do? And how do you feel empowered in this moment when the man that you love is getting wobbly? I'm going to give you a formula right now that can help you, number one, have peace of mind, stay grounded, and number two, guide the situation so that ultimately creates the highest and best outcome for what it is that you want. There was a friend of mine that was talking about relationships and gave some great advice. And he had been married for 25 years, and he goes, when it comes to being in a relationship, one of you has permission to get crazy at a time. Because if one of you is crazy, the other one could be grounded, and then you can find a solution. But if both of you get crazy, then the chances of success go down dramatically. And so when you notice your man getting wobbly, the thing to do is for you to get resolute and for you to stay really grounded. And these three Cs, I call them three Cs, can really help you. The number one is compassion. And that is to have compassion that it's okay to have fear. It's okay to have uncertainty. And to remind yourself, this is a sign that he cares about ultimately creating something that's good for himself, good for his partner, and has the best chance of succeeding. And so the opposite of compassion is resentment. The opposite of compassion is judgment. He shouldn't be feeling this way if he really loved me. If he was really certain he wouldn't get wobbly. No, no, that's 100% false. All kinds of great relationships had a moment where one or both people got wobbly in their certainty, not because they weren't certain about their love, but because the fear had the louder voice in that moment. And so to stay grounded in compassion that it's okay to be wobbly. The second principle to embody, the second C, is that it is not your job to control him or try to get him to be a certain way, get him to feel better, to be clear on the outcome. Your job is for you to actually be clear in what it is that you want. And so here's an example. For you to be clear and certain that you love him and you would love to have a relationship with him, if that's the case, and you're inviting him into the space of clarity with you, but you're not forcing it. You're not trying to reassure him. You're not trying to overcompensate for his uncertainty because if that's the case, you're never actually letting him do the work to get to his own sense of groundedness. And so he may acquiesce and he may just go along with you, but eventually that uncertainty will come out and he needs to go through his process. So what you do is you are very clear about what you would love in terms of your love for him, your vision for what you want, and then you're inviting him into that space. And that's the third C is to challenge him, challenge him to get clear for himself, challenge him to get clear on what he wants, challenge him to move the relationship forward if you're at that stage. Like it can only be, I coach so many women that have been in this stage of allowing their man to remain in uncertainty if you've already been with your man for close to a year, he already has the clarity that he wants. Now it's about the courage to let himself know what he already knows. And so by you staying very compassionate, by you being very clear about what you want, and by you challenging him to say, hey, here's what I want. Are you willing to join me in this? And I want to know. Take a couple of weeks, sift it out for yourself, but this is where I'm heading. And I hope it's with you. If it's not with you, it'll be with somebody else, but this is what I'm ultimately creating. That's exactly the formula that my wife used. As I got real wobbly, she called it out and I said, I'm just figuring things out. As I stayed in that space after a few weeks, she was like, look, this isn't progressing in the kind of relationship that I want to have. Even this state is like real wobbly. It's not, I'm not feeling reassured that we're moving forward. And I said, I just don't know. What if it's not right? Like, what if I get it wrong? And I was just in this, it felt like a fog of confusion. And she said, that's fine. It was brilliant. She came over to my house and sat down and said, Matt, I love you. I want to be with you, but if you don't want to be with me, I will understand and I will be okay. But I am going to create an amazing marriage with somebody. I love you. I hope it's with you, but if it's not with you, that's okay. But I want to know. You have three days to figure it out. Now, you don't have to propose at the end of these three days, but if you do want to be with me, I want to know we're at least on the path that has the trajectory of one day being married. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and she left the apartment. I was like, holy crap, I got three days. But what it did for me was it actually caused me to go very deep to the place in me that said, look, is it okay to trust the love that I feel and still have some uncertainties? Is it okay to trust the experience and the history that we've had over these last two years? Because the truth is there is no guarantee in life. There is always risk, but what you have, are you willing to risk for it? Is it that level of quality? And when I got to that awareness, a hundred percent, I was like, man, I love what we have. I love this relationship. I love her and I'm willing to risk. Maybe it doesn't work out, the pain that that might cause down the road for the chance that it just might work out. And I called her back three days later. I said, I'm in, let's move forward in this trajectory. And it was about a few months later that I was on one knee proposing to her and we got to start our committed life together. So if your man is in this wobbly state, have compassion. It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It means that the stakes are high because he does love you. So have compassion, but don't try to rescue him, save him, or move his energy. Invite him to do that for himself by you staying very certain and very clear, and then challenging him to join you in that vision. My question for you is when you've experienced a guy pulling away after you've been together for a while, what's been the method that served you the most? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Here is to you creating the amazing relationship that you deserve. I appreciate you. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon.