Sometimes there’s literally nothing worse than having your man pull away from you. It can be especially confusing if men pull away when they are falling in love.
Whether your man is falling in love with you, or itâs only the very early stages of a relationship and youâre not sure if he is in love with you, a man pulling away is stressful.
It doesn’t matter how long he pulls away. It still hurts.
…Because we are talking about a man whom you’ve invested your precious time, your energy and your emotions.
And so for him to pull away from you at any moment, it’s painful. As a woman, you would feel that his lack of presence leaves a void that is difficult to fill.
But why do men pull away from the relationship? And how can you deal with it in the best way possible when they do?
How can you deal with it as a feminine yet high value woman?
Let me answer those questions in this article.
- Why do men really pull away
- Your man will pull away at some point (Maybe after getting close to you!)
- How do we show up in a high value way despite the fear?
- Our pain & suffering is dictated by our feminine meaning…
- So what to do if he is pulling away?
- How much time do you give him before you walk away?
- How DO you show him that you are still loyal and high value?
- What if you guys were or are in a committed relationship?
Why do men really pull away
Every day my team and I get questions about the topic of men pulling away.
The reality is that men will pull away and withdraw from you and from the relationship – it’s bound to happen at some point.
I have definitely heard about men who have never pulled away in a relationship.
Yes, thatâs right there are men who donât pull away.
However, that man who never pulls away is a rare exception.
(And is able to be the exception perhaps due to the fact that he is just in the right place in his life when he met you).
It could be due to the myriad of factors in their unique relationship lining up at exactly the right time.
However, often, if a woman says her man never pulls away (which again, is an exception), itâs not necessarily that he doesnât pull away.
Itâs moreso that she (the woman) doesnât perceive that he pulls away.
Either she âgetsâ him, so she doesnât find his actions a threat to her emotional safety.
Or, she has secure attachment (so his absences don’t bother her too much).
It’s also possible that she is more balanced in her masculine and feminine energy.
So of course, there are exceptions to this rule that masculine men pull away from their intimate relationship at some point.
However, whether a man is in love with you or not – there will likely come a time when you feel him pulling away.
And you will feel it in your body, your heart and in your emotions.
Pulling away is simply what masculine men have to do sometimes.
This isn’t about making excuses for men. This is about understanding his equilibrium as a masculine soul.
Men pulling away is part of their masculine instinct.
To prevent them from doing so is like telling the sun not to rise.
(…and of course, us women pull away from relationships too, but most of the time not for the same reasons as men do.)
See⦠the truth is this. Most men can only take being connected deeply to you for a certain amount of time before they need to remove themselves to find their equilibrium again.
They need to re-engage with their identity through their mission, their goals, and their masculine passions.
Even when a man is very much in love â he will get to a stage where he needs to do this.
Here are 5 Unusual Signs He Is Madly In Love With You.
A man who is truly in love with you can usually spend more time with you before he needs to pull away.
Be that as it may, each man is unique and each moment is also unique.
However, having a man pull away doesn’t always mean your man isnât in love with you.
Sometimes the more in love he is, the more he needs to pull away when everything seems to be going well.
This is because at some point he realises that he has a responsibility inside of the relationship to give to you.
And in order to feel capable as a man to give to you – he needs to feel like he is enough.
To feel like he is enough as a man and as a provider, he may pull away and delve into his goals, missions and passions.
Being worthy as a man becomes the priority in that case.
Think about it. If a man didn’t do what it takes to find his equilibrium again, he would never become the man he needs to become.
How good would he feel as a man if he couldn’t build his value in order to provide for you?
Your man will pull away at some point (Maybe after getting close to you!)
It is very common for your man to pull away in the early stages of a relationship.
Of course, this does not always mean that your relationship is doomed â quite the contrary.
When he pulls away, or withdraws from the relationship, is the exact time that you get your âmake-or breakâ moment to show your high value as a woman in the relationship.
Because no man wants to give up his freedom and masculine missions in fear that he has a woman who will restrict him and pull him back.
I only say this because most of us (myself included) have a tendency to respond with fear and neediness when he pulls away.
Look, there are good survival and protective reasons for us doing this.
And thereâs really nothing wrong with becoming needy and fearful when he pulls away.
You just need to be aware that if you act from fear, that can strip value from the “relationship bank”.
Every time you respond in fear; thereâs a chance that youâre stripping value from your man and from the relationship.
This is not something for you to be angry about or even to be scared of⦠this is just something for you to understand and appreciate.
None of this will change the truth of how you feel when he pulls away, though. When he withdraws â it hurts.
The pain is real.
Wouldn’t you agree?
You may not say so out loud. In fact you may act tough by putting on an âI donât careâ face, but deep down, it hurts.
You may get angry.
Sad.
You may feel unloved.
You no longer feel like the princess that perhaps he once treated you as.
Whatever your experiences may have been⦠do not make your feelings wrong.
The difference between a high value, vulnerable woman and a woman who finds it hard to inspire any emotional commitment from men is exactly thisâ¦
Itâs her ability to sink into her deepest emotions beyond her masks of toughness, anger, revenge or punishment.
That’s right⦠Do NOT make your feelings wrong.
If we as women have become attached or connected to a man, or if a man has any value to us, something happens inside of us.
We naturally become irrationally afraid that his withdrawal from the relationship could mean 3 important things.
1: He might sleep with other women and all his resources will go to the other woman.
(Which of course is not always true! It certainly happens. But inside of a relationship, it is usually much less common than what we women tend to think…)
2: That he may never come back, and to a womanâs primitive brain, this could mean that she might not survive.
…And hey, letâs be honest here. If we have truly gotten attached to a man, then sometimes, the intensity of the emotions we may have can make us feel like we might die (thatâs how intense our feelings can become).
So we try to resist the pain and perhaps get angry at him or beg him to stay.
In other words, we are acting out of our own fears.
3: A man pulling away could mean that she has just realised that she had been used.
(Perhaps it was only a casual sex situation or that he got what he wanted and now she will never see the man again).
If you think you might be in this situation, here’s something that will help. You can read this article on the 6 burning signs he doesn’t want a relationship with you.
(If you want to hear my thoughts on casual sex, see my series on The Secret Cost for Women When They Have Casual Sex.)
How do we show up in a high value way despite the fear?
What can we as women do about this?
And how can we show up as a feminine yet high value woman in those fearful moments?
Well before I address that, I want you to consider this firstâ¦
Think about when youâre in a relationship and you feel kind of suffocatedâ¦
Thatâs the stress levels going up from too much closeness.
This âtoo much closenessâ happens much sooner for men than for women when in the context of emotional bonding.
I am talking about emotional bonding here, so keep that in mind.
(This does not mean that us women donât also feel suffocated at times, of course we do!)
What happens is, as men get closer in a relationship and things are going well, the oxytocin levels go up in his body as they start bonding.
Then men will tend to want to pull away in order to rebuild their testosterone levels through their masculine missions.
(As their oxytocin levels go up, their testosterone levels go down and this can cause a lot of stress for men with a strong sense of mission in his life.)
Because let’s think about it from the man’s perspective for a momentâ¦
It is OFTEN through a man’s masculine missions that he is able to provide and bring resources to the table.
That’s how he gets to feel like a man.
Your man pulling away could have real positive intent.
(By they way, on the topic of feminine, click here to find out how feminine you are deep down in your core in my quiz. I’ve carefully designed these 8 questions to show you exactly how much you are living in your feminine energy and what it really means for you.)
The stress of suffocation
Well before I address that, I want you to consider this firstâ¦
Think about when youâre in a relationship and you feel kind of suffocatedâ¦
Thatâs the stress levels going up from too much closeness.
This âtoo much closenessâ happens much sooner for men than for women when in the context of emotional bonding.
I am talking about emotional bonding here, so keep that in mind.
(This does not mean that us women donât also feel suffocated at times. Of course we do!)
What happens is, as men get closer in a relationship and things are going well, the oxytocin levels go up in his body.
Then men will tend to want to pull away in order to rebuild their testosterone levels.
(As their oxytocin levels go up, their testosterone levels go down and this can cause a lot of stress for men with a strong sense of mission in his life.)
Because let’s think about it from the man’s perspective for a moment⦠it is OFTEN through a man’s masculine missions that he is able to provide and bring resources to the table. That’s how he gets to feel like a man.
So him pulling away could have real positive intent. I want you really understand this.
Your man pulling away could have real positive intent.
But for us women, it’s harder to relate to that because our default is to stay in relationship mode.
We are more likely to feel at home in relationship and connecting⦠(At least when we’re living in our feminine energy.)
…So from our feminine perspective, we get confused, and we may ask questions from our own feminine brain like…
âWhy are you pulling away?”
“Why didnât you call?”
“Whatâs going on?â
âDo you not LOVE me anymore?â
The problem here is that men and women are hardwired completely differently.
Sure, we are all human. There are aspects that make all of us human.
But there are also elements that make us completely different.
Like the fact that most of us women see the world through our own feminine filters.
So it’s not easy to understand a man’s masculine behaviour through our own filters.
Because what is intuitive to a man in a relationship is not what is intuitive to a woman.
Most women are naturally more feminine in their core, and most men are naturally masculine in their core.
This creates what I call masculine or feminine biases in behaviour, especially in relationships.
See, as a feminine woman, your natural bias is to move towards some kind of bonding or attachment in a relationship.
You want to fill up, and you find it hard to let go.
Itâs different for a masculine man.
Hereâs a table I made that will briefly help you see the differences between the masculine and feminine energies and biases.
This table will help you understand why the man youâre with may not seem to want to connect or talk all day long.
It’ll help you realize why he may not want to always be with you, attached to you and connected emotionally.
What is intuitive to a man in a relationship is not what is intuitive to a woman
What is intuitive to a man, can be completely foreign to us as women.
I was speaking to my husband David the other week. And, he brought something up that was like an absolute âAh-HAHâ or a breakthrough for him, but to me as a woman, that breakthrough that he had was â¦almost commonsense.
It was something that was obviously intuitive for me as a woman, but it wasnât for him.
I was all like âHaha, have you been living under a rock?!â
Yet, if I was to go to my girlfriends and bring that particular thing up; theyâd get itâ¦in a heartbeat.
Truth is, there are SO many of these little breakthroughs my husband David and I have all the time about each other. About the opposite sex, about love and relationships…
Because we are different creatures. What is intuitive for him can be counterintuitive or even foreign to me.
… And we’ve been obsessively researching evolutionary psychology, picking each others’ brain and teaching this stuff to women for more than a decade!
Our pain & suffering is dictated by our feminine meaning…
A man pulling away from the relationship doesnât have to cause you endless suffering.
It can cause difficult emotions.
Yet, your incessant suffering comes from the meaning you give it when a man withdraws.
The meaning we give an event changes everything.
And a bad meaning can sometimes come from a lack of understanding of men.
We as women can give a man pulling away a different meaning, which would lead to us having a totally different experience.
(Of course, simpler said than done.)
By having a greater understanding of men and their masculine world, then we are able to create better meaning and have the ability to show up with greater self esteem and more intrinsic value.
Remember, the reason why you were probably attracted to that man in the first place was his masculine energy, masculine presence and direction.
If you want to know how high value your man is, read this article on signs he is a high value man.
If you had a feminine man, would you still be attracted to him?
To help you understand why him pulling away is not always a disaster, let me ask you a few questions:
How would you feel if you were around a man who was highly emotional?
For example: he was able to cry at the drop of a hat, and feel all âlovey-doveyâ with you almost every day?
…He is so emotional that he melts like butter. Imagine him being incredibly relaxed and wanting to talk and connect with you all the time.
How would you feel around a man like this?
You may think âoh my goodness â I would LOVE if my man would do this!â
Yes, you may â for a couple of days. Eventually, whether you like it or not â youâll start to lose attraction for him. And you may even be disgusted by him.
In your feminine heart of hearts, you wouldn’t want a man whoâs more emotional than you now, would you?
What I am trying to suggest is that a man needs to pull away in order to be the man you are so attracted to.
If he didnât pull away at some point, your relationship would lose attration and sexual polarity.
Youâd also be much more repelled by him.
(Also, donât forget that the more time you spend together with a man, the more alike you will become, and the less intense the attraction will be over time. But that’s a topic for another day.)
But what if heâs ghosting me or never wanted to commit to me?
You may be wondering if you should take the advice Iâve given here if youâre being ghosted.
You may also wonder if you should still take my advice if he pulls away for more than two weeks.
The general answer is – no!
Ghosting is very different to a man pulling away.
Here are 3 Obvious Reasons Women Usually Get Ghosted by Men.
A man ghosting you means there was never any real connection and attraction between you both in the first place.
It means there was never a real relationship.
It could mean that he was love bombing you.
However, a man pulling away is different.
When men pull away from the relationship, there usually was some connection to begin with.
If you would like to understand more about how to know if he will be sticking around in your life or not, I recommend you read the article 4 Steps To Stay High Value When He Doesnât Text Or Call.
The masculine feminine polarity is why you have attraction in the first place.
Although you get scared or confused when he does suddenly pull away, you also get a chance to see that he is, in fact, a real man.
If he wasn’t living in his masculine core, you’d probably lose attraction for him over time.
Itâs because you wonât be feeling his masculine energy. Itâs because you no longer feel polarized by him and his energy.
So as a result, you may feel like youâre in a relationship with one of your girlfriends! (You donât want your man to be like one of your girlfriends!)
In fact, the reason you were attracted to a man in the first place was largely to do with the masculine energy he gave out.
His presence, his strength, intelligence, his sense of humour, his potential to be a good provider, etc. This is all happening naturally, sometimes without you being aware of it.
We want to be in a relationship with a masculine man, but when a man acts differently than we do, we get all hurt, confused and worried.
Sometimes, a relationship and emotional bonding can feel like a burden to a man.
Note: this doesnât mean that you are a burden. This means that the emotional bonding in a very committed relationship can feel like a burden to a man.
Even if at the same time, it is really the only thing that gives a man that feeling of being alive (a feeling he cannot get when he is alone, without you).
How interesting is that?!
So what to do if he is pulling away?
Here are 2 very important positive things about when a man pulls away.
Instead of seeing your man pull away as a crisis, let’s look at this as an opportunity.
Let’s look at what you can gain from these moments…
When your man pulls away from the relationship, you get an incredible opportunity to:
1: Show your high value as a woman and trigger his attraction for you even more; and
2: Grow as a woman, and appreciate his masculinity.
Because all men want a woman who shows up as high value and all men want a woman who doesn’t judge him for being a man.
But rather, it’s nice for a man to know that she at least tries to understand and appreciate his perspective, struggles and fears.
And as he recognises how amazingly different you are to other women, he will be inspired to reciprocate, wanting to understand you and appreciate you.
I have put together some special resources for how to stay high value when he pulls away – just click here.
So what does your man really want from YOU when he pulls away?
If youâre in a real relationship with a man, then here’s what he wants above all else.
He wants to feel like youâre not taking your resources or loyalty to another man, and that he still has you when he comes back to you.
(Obviously, if you are dating multiple men and he is dating multiple women, he may not care at all if you take your resources elsewhere!)
Unfortunately, a lot of people frown upon the idea of âbeing thereâ when he comes back these days.
Itâs as if this kind of loyalty is mistakenly seen as a sign of weakness.
Well let me tell you, your loyalty to the right man is not weakness.
That is courage. That is character.
This is not to say that you should act like everything was ok and pretend nothing happened while he pulled away.
You should never pretend nothing happened; that would be a lie.
Your needs and emotions are still important.
However, you shouldnât punish him just because you donât feel comfortable being authentically vulnerable.
That would just completely break down the communication and the trust between you both.
You would be stripping value from the relationship bank.
Here’s an infographic that will help you understand the stark contrast between actions you take through fear when he pulls away, and actions taken through understanding.
If a man has given you reason to trust him – if he has ever given him a reason to think that he genuinely wants to get to know you, there’s no need to punish him.
Thereâs no harm in being there still, with a willingness to at least give your give your presence. You don’t have to be a pleaser woman or an approval seeker. This is about being emotionally generous, and cultivating that skill.
If a man has never really invested emotionally in you, and if youâve always felt in your gut that he didnât really âbelongâ to you emotionally, then being there for him indefinitely would not make sense.
Donât you agree?
In that case, you should never wait around.
Donât be afraid to walk away.
See, if you feel in your gut that heâs just âkeeping you aroundâ for sex or for his own convenience, then the last thing you should do it waste your time on him.
However. If you have established trust with this man, and you feel that he has invested in you, the key is to keep your value.
Keep adding value to the relationship basket, rather than using your emotions to punish him, which will strip value from your relationship bank!
The key is to keep your value
So…the key is to keep your high value. In spite the confusion or the fear.
How do you do that? You show that you are still loyal to him when you feel fearful – that you can stick around with an open heart, and be open instead of closed off emotionally.
Unfortunately, most women kind of do the opposite…they don’t show that they will be there emotionally for a man.
Instead, they use their emotions as a weapon against him. They treat the man as if he should have understood the wild emotions she was going through while he was âawayâ.
Punishing a man never strengthened a relationship. It makes you show up low value.
It breaks down yours and a manâs confidence in the relationship and ruins his trust in you.
Staying High Value also means to not shut off to your own deep desire for connection. A lot of women push this down and it causes them to shut off, and close off, and this scares a man deep down inside.
How much time do you give him before you walk away?
You may be wondering, when he pulls away, how much time are you supposed to give him?
The answer isnât so much about calculating how much time you give him.
Itâs about feeling into the void that you feel, and getting the feedback and information you need to make a decision about what to do.
If you are a manâs one and only woman (rather than his one of many woman), at some point, it will become very clear to you whether he intends to invest in you and whether he wants to contact you or not.
I would never recommend that you wait around forever. You have your own reproductive timeline that is different to a manâs.
So you need to take care of yourself and look out for your own interests.
Donât wait around blindly in the hope that he cares (if it turns out that you can indeed feel in your gut that he doesnât care).
And also donât be afraid to walk away when itâs clear that he wasnât committed in any way. Or when itâs clear to you that he never intended to invest in you.
Having the ability to walk away is part of being high value as a woman.
So donât be afraid to walk away.
Just say to yourself âNO!, this is not for me. Iâm going to leave now, and take care of myself. Iâm going to leave and make space in my life for a man who sees me as his one and onlyâ.
If indeed he isnât committed to you, donât despair. It will all be ok. I know it doesnât feel that way now – but it will all be ok.
There are still at least 1,000 men out there whoâd be interested in getting to know you.
NEVER Be A Manâs âOne Of Manyâ Woman Again
What you need from now on is the ability and the awareness to make sure that you NEVER get stuck in the category of the âone of manyâ woman.
Instead, you should always be the one and only to a man. To do that, itâs all about how you show up. I do have a program on that. Feel free to check out âBecoming His One and Only Woman: 5 Secrets to Have Him Fall Deeply in Love With You & BEG You To Be His One & Only.â
Donât Strip Value From The Relationship Bank
Staying high value doesnât mean to act like youâre all happy when and if he comes back to connecting with you.
Staying high value means that you donât strip value from the relationship âbankâ.
It simply means not disconnecting deliberately, threatening your relationship, cutting him out emotionally or pulling yourself away from the relationship.
Youâre allowed to be angry and hurt. But donât use it to punish him or yourself. Simply feel the emotions. Appreciate what they are trying to tell you. Appreciate that they are trying to protect you.
Staying High Value also means to not shut off to your own deep desire for connection. A lot of women push this down and it causes them to shut off, and close off, and this scares a man deep down inside.
Pretending we donât deeply yearn for him only cuts off all the feminine energy we could gift him with.
Remember to always ask yourself – is this adding value to the relationship bank?
Or is this going to strip all the value that Iâve already worked hard to give?
How DO you show him that you are still loyal and high value?
First, leave him be.
Let him do what he needs to do.
You can be sad, and you can miss him, but don’t act out of fear.
Don’t send him messages asking him if you should “let go” of him or move on.
That’s something that you would need to feel out for yourself. It’s not his decision. It’s yours.
Then…
You must get yourself into an emotionally resourceful place before you do ANYTHING at all.
So to get to an emotionally resourceful place the first thing to do is to breathe and keep breathing, and go to a safe place and let your feelings be felt.
When youâre sure that you feel more empty of your hurricane of feelings, and youâre feeling a little more empty of the ocean of emotions…here’s what you can do next.
Perhaps ask yourself a different question, so you can see all of this from a different perspective.
Here’s some questions to ask yourself to help you move forward:
Where is he at? (Not how do YOU feel about what he’s doing, but where is HE at?)
What is he wanting to achieve in his life?
Out of 10, how invested is he in me emotionally? (be honest here).
Stay open to the answers. Try to understand that whatever he is doing, there is a reason for it, even if you donât understand it right now.
He does things for his reasons. You do things for your reasons. So try not to jump the gun and assume that he is always intentionally trying to make you suffer.
Some men really are trying to make you suffer, but most men wonât go out of their way to do such a thing to you!
They are just looking out for their own interests, just like you are.
Before you âlet him beâ, I want you to remember that the point is not to just leave him and thatâs it!
Don’t punish him & shut off to him.
The point is to give him his freedom whilst still loving him and not shutting down or closing off to him.
(Loving him doesnât mean that you over-commit yourself to him blindly. Love is simply a willingness to be open. You can love a teddy bear, a pot plant, a child who is not your own, etc).
This is not to say that you are not allowed to have feelings – of course you are.
Just be ready to own your feelings even if it means you cry when you see him.
If he is not comfortable with your feelings, that is when you need to be the most comfortable with your own feelings first.
If a man seems to not be able to deal with you feeling your feelings, hereâs what you can doâ¦
Tell him it is okay, that you just feel a little sad, and that kind of thing happens from time to time, that he has done nothing wrong, and that all will be okay.
I also need to tell you that you ARE allowed to hate him, miss him, love him, hate yourself, hate all of this, want to give up when he pulls away…all of that.
All of that is simply the vulnerability of your feelings shining through. Allow it to speak to you. Let it speak to your heart and your soul.
It is okay to experience all of that.
Just take the high road, be a high value woman and choose not to blame him or intentionally want to make him feel bad about himself or the relationship.
That is called stripping value from your relationship bank.
What if you guys were or are in a committed relationship?
When and if he does come back to the relationship, receive him openly.
Does that mean pretend nothing happened? Nope.
Does that mean acting happy? Nope.
It means to not be in fear, but to stay connected to him even if he isn’t doing what you want him to do.
It means opening your heart and opening your mind and forming a connection in the moment with him.
This doesnât make you a woman who is being used by her man. It means you care about him enough to give him his freedom, and at the same time, not withdraw your presence.
If something is truly wrong and he is not the right man for you, you are much more likely to find out when you are open to connecting with him than when you are cutting him off.
A good way of successfully completing this step is simply to remind yourself to breathe, and breathe through your fear.
If you ever get too stressed out of your mind…
And if all of this stresses you out beyond your ability to cope, then ask yourself:
âDo I really want to be in a relationship with another woman? Or do I want to be in a relationship with a MAN?â
The more you fear his need for freedom, the more I want you to remember that this is your chance to bring you and your man closer, cultivate more emotional attraction and deepen the connection and commitment.
You see, the truth is that if you show up as a high value woman, and youâre happy giving a man his gift of freedom, then heâs going to truly come back to the relationship stronger with more to offer you.
Does that make sense?
Alright – If you want a deeper understanding (…perhaps step by step guidance) on how you can show up as a high value woman when your man pulls away, then I have the perfect thing for you.
CLick here to learn more insights about how to stay high value when your man pulls away…
OK, that’s all from me. As always, I’m sending you all the love from my heart, wherever you are.
I’ll talk to you soon.
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