Drowning In The Sea Of Love
Dear Coach Fabulous
At the beginning of a relationship the guy is always more into me than I’m into him but then suddenly the balance changes and I feel like I am having to chase him around? How can keep a healthy balance?
Incurable Romantic
Dear Incurable Romantic
I suspect the change is not as sudden as you might think. I know that you find it bewildering, but the truth is that when you enter a new relationship you are often at your most vulnerable in terms of your self-worth. On the surface, it’s all rose-coloured glasses and loved-up bliss, but underneath, the parts of you that have experienced rejection and pain before are keeping a careful watch to ensure it doesn’t happen again or trying to maintain the relationship at all costs. This hyper-vigilance can lead to a couple of approaches that may result in your partner withdrawing from you: guardedness and neediness. Either way, these are both issues of self-worth.
In the guarded approach, you’re not trusting your own judgement enough to relax fully into the relationship, so you keep a tight rein on your emotions, making it difficult for your new amour to get to know you. He may pull back from you if he senses this, as his own fear of rejection rises up. What you then have is a stalemate between two people who are both frightened of being hurt. Only you can know if you are pushing someone away through a fear of what might happen if you really connect. If this feels like your situation, the way forward is through intimacy and communication. Be willing to be just a little more vulnerable and take a risk to let your lover know how you really feel.
The other – and quite probably more likely – scenario is that as soon as the relationship gets beyond the early stages, your unresolved lack of self-worth arises in the form of neediness. It goes something like this: in the beginning, the balance of power seems equal, but as you begin to invest yourself more into it, you plunge in headlong, desperately wanting to hold on to the relationship. Neediness is a deeply unattractive energy, as we all know. Think back to any relationship you’ve had where the other person wanted it much more than you did and remember just how off-putting that was. It’s repellent to us because, deep down, we all know that neediness is not genuinely about someone wanting us as a partner, but it’s about them using us to fill a gaping emotional hole in themselves.
People are incredibly intuitive, whether they acknowledge it or not. If the men in your life are pulling away from you, there’s more than likely a neediness-inspired ‘push-pull’ dynamic at work. The more you push towards them, the more they withdraw. That you feel you have to do the chasing is in itself an issue. Genuinely healthy self-esteem is about accepting yourself, knowing that you’re fine (alone or in relationship) and only wanting to develop relationships with people who can love and appreciate you. Neediness is always going to arise, because we all have unresolved painful issues in life, but it’s a matter of catching it when it does and being aware of what you’re doing. With that awareness, you can choose to work on your own self-worth until the question becomes ‘Is he the right person for me’, rather than ‘Why doesn’t he want me?’
There may also be something you need to look at around a pattern of choosing men who are emotionally unavailable. We tend to replicate the emotional patterns we encountered in our early years. If we have not had a lot of emotional support or closeness, that feels familiar to us, which explains the pull of attraction when another emotionally-closed partner shows up. Again, the way forward comes through being really honest with yourself about what’s going on and refraining from self-attack. Forget fretting about why he doesn’t want to be close to you and start asking yourself ‘Why would I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me?’
It may feel like there’s a sudden turnaround from both being equally enamoured to you feeling unwanted, but believe me the signs are there from day one. Pay attention to the feelings that are coming up for you. Don’t push down or deny the uncomfortable ones and don’t fall into the ‘all men are bastards’ trap of parcelling out the blame. We are complicit in how we let people treat us. If there’s a pattern going on, you’re the common factor in each of those cases. Don’t use that to attack yourself, but to realise that you have the power of choice here. A loving, balanced relationship is what you want and is absolutely what you will have if you are willing to do the inner work necessary to build up your own sense of self-esteem. There is nothing more attractive than a woman who knows her own value.
Finally, I am going to admit a guilty secret. As much as I truly and whole-heartedly loathe the game-playing inherent in dating strategies like The Rules, I have to admit that they have hit upon a fundamental truth – it is never good to chase a man. It just doesn’t work. Decades of feminism and equality have not eroded the historic basic tenet of male-female relationships: they like to be the ones to do the chasing. We may not like it, but that's the way it is. So, get smart and remember that it’s allure that is most attractive, not total availability.
Coach Fabulous
If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter
At the beginning of a relationship the guy is always more into me than I’m into him but then suddenly the balance changes and I feel like I am having to chase him around? How can keep a healthy balance?
Incurable Romantic
Dear Incurable Romantic
I suspect the change is not as sudden as you might think. I know that you find it bewildering, but the truth is that when you enter a new relationship you are often at your most vulnerable in terms of your self-worth. On the surface, it’s all rose-coloured glasses and loved-up bliss, but underneath, the parts of you that have experienced rejection and pain before are keeping a careful watch to ensure it doesn’t happen again or trying to maintain the relationship at all costs. This hyper-vigilance can lead to a couple of approaches that may result in your partner withdrawing from you: guardedness and neediness. Either way, these are both issues of self-worth.
In the guarded approach, you’re not trusting your own judgement enough to relax fully into the relationship, so you keep a tight rein on your emotions, making it difficult for your new amour to get to know you. He may pull back from you if he senses this, as his own fear of rejection rises up. What you then have is a stalemate between two people who are both frightened of being hurt. Only you can know if you are pushing someone away through a fear of what might happen if you really connect. If this feels like your situation, the way forward is through intimacy and communication. Be willing to be just a little more vulnerable and take a risk to let your lover know how you really feel.
The other – and quite probably more likely – scenario is that as soon as the relationship gets beyond the early stages, your unresolved lack of self-worth arises in the form of neediness. It goes something like this: in the beginning, the balance of power seems equal, but as you begin to invest yourself more into it, you plunge in headlong, desperately wanting to hold on to the relationship. Neediness is a deeply unattractive energy, as we all know. Think back to any relationship you’ve had where the other person wanted it much more than you did and remember just how off-putting that was. It’s repellent to us because, deep down, we all know that neediness is not genuinely about someone wanting us as a partner, but it’s about them using us to fill a gaping emotional hole in themselves.
People are incredibly intuitive, whether they acknowledge it or not. If the men in your life are pulling away from you, there’s more than likely a neediness-inspired ‘push-pull’ dynamic at work. The more you push towards them, the more they withdraw. That you feel you have to do the chasing is in itself an issue. Genuinely healthy self-esteem is about accepting yourself, knowing that you’re fine (alone or in relationship) and only wanting to develop relationships with people who can love and appreciate you. Neediness is always going to arise, because we all have unresolved painful issues in life, but it’s a matter of catching it when it does and being aware of what you’re doing. With that awareness, you can choose to work on your own self-worth until the question becomes ‘Is he the right person for me’, rather than ‘Why doesn’t he want me?’
There may also be something you need to look at around a pattern of choosing men who are emotionally unavailable. We tend to replicate the emotional patterns we encountered in our early years. If we have not had a lot of emotional support or closeness, that feels familiar to us, which explains the pull of attraction when another emotionally-closed partner shows up. Again, the way forward comes through being really honest with yourself about what’s going on and refraining from self-attack. Forget fretting about why he doesn’t want to be close to you and start asking yourself ‘Why would I want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me?’
It may feel like there’s a sudden turnaround from both being equally enamoured to you feeling unwanted, but believe me the signs are there from day one. Pay attention to the feelings that are coming up for you. Don’t push down or deny the uncomfortable ones and don’t fall into the ‘all men are bastards’ trap of parcelling out the blame. We are complicit in how we let people treat us. If there’s a pattern going on, you’re the common factor in each of those cases. Don’t use that to attack yourself, but to realise that you have the power of choice here. A loving, balanced relationship is what you want and is absolutely what you will have if you are willing to do the inner work necessary to build up your own sense of self-esteem. There is nothing more attractive than a woman who knows her own value.
Finally, I am going to admit a guilty secret. As much as I truly and whole-heartedly loathe the game-playing inherent in dating strategies like The Rules, I have to admit that they have hit upon a fundamental truth – it is never good to chase a man. It just doesn’t work. Decades of feminism and equality have not eroded the historic basic tenet of male-female relationships: they like to be the ones to do the chasing. We may not like it, but that's the way it is. So, get smart and remember that it’s allure that is most attractive, not total availability.
Coach Fabulous
If you have an issue you’d like guidance on, need some help finding direction or could just do with a bit of inspiration, email CoachFabulousCo@aol.com and a little cyber-coaching will appear, as if by magic. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent). All material © 2006 Alison Porter
posted by Coach Fabulous at 3:44 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home