3 Mistakes Women Make When Men Pull Away

Hey there, all you beautiful ladies. Before we get to the pod, as you know, we don't run any weird ads on this podcast. We want to deliver as much value as possible. So all we ask in return is, if you enjoy the podcast, be sure to go ahead and send it to a friend. I'm sure she could use a little bit of help in our love life. Go ahead and share it and just tell one of your friends because that's probably how you heard about this. All right, let's get to the podcast. If I hadn't heard from her all week and I was traveling a lot, I would come back missing the heck out of her because that space existed, and then come back even stronger. And so rather than her running away or her chasing, she just stayed as is. Then guess what? That's going to deepen the connection, deepen the emotional bond, deepen the attraction, deepen that spark, and it's a wonderful thing. It's great. Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast, where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy, and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam Lodolce, professional dating coach and founder of Love Strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy the three mistakes that women make when men pull away. They go into the pull away panic. Right, Gary?

Panic.

Pull away panic. I want to open this up by telling just a quick story. This happened probably 15 years ago. This is a while back, but I remember I was dating a woman. It was not long, it was like maybe two or three weeks, but I liked her. It was going well, you know, we weren't quite exclusive, but it was working in that direction. And I remember it was right around the time of orientation season for colleges. And at the time I was, I was lecturing at a lot of colleges on dating and relationships. So I would like go on tour. I remember I had a week long of like seven back to back speeches all around the country. It's like you go from North Dakota to New York to Florida. It was chaos. And I told her I was doing this, like I was going to be extremely busy for the next week. We were texting every day, like when I was at the airport and things like that. But I was relatively quiet just due to my schedule. Then I remember was something like day four or day five. And she's like, is everything okay? I'm like, yeah, everything's great. The speeches are going really well. I thought she was asking about, like, how my life was going. And I'm like, yeah, it's going great. She's like, no, no, no. Like, I just feel like you've been really distant lately. And I'm like, distant? Do you have any idea? Yes, we are distant geographically as a starting point. Distant. It's been four days, and I've just. I've been really, really busy. And I remember that was just the beginning of the end, you know? And it wasn't just that moment that I was like, oh, I'm gonna move on. But this created that overthinking mentality for her. Like, oh, I feel like he's finally pulling away. This isn't really going to be a thing. He must be meeting other women. I don't know. Like, just that warrior over. Warrior overthinker mentality just completely kicked in. And I'm sure if I could go back in time, I would give that woman some grace at the moment, knowing what I know now, but I can't. And I just remember that was it. They really slowly kind of just unraveled from there.

Well, I think that's important, right? Because from the guy's perspective, from. From what, where you were sitting in that relationship, you didn't know why she was asking you that. It was hard to kind of figure out that, oh, because I haven't been around. She's had the time in the space to let her mind just run wild with possibility. And most of those possibilities were terrible, awful, horrible things that have caused her to worry a whole bunch. And now she's got to check in. And it's really so funny. I didn't know you were going to share this story to start this podcast, but literally last night on one of our Mastermind sessions, I had one of our clients describe something just like this, except for from the female perspective. He said he had a major project at work in the next two weeks, and he. He said he was going to be really busy and just wouldn't be able to communicate as much. But he's not communicating now. What should I do? And she's like, I'm wondering, like, is he really doing this? Is he really doing that? Like, no. Well, you know, has everything else been fine? And there were. There was really, you know, from an objective, outside perspective, really not much to worry about. But her overthinking just Was kind of getting the best of her, and she took something that was really benign and just conjured up these images and thoughts and possibilities and made it seem really, really bad in her head.

The human brain is a fascinating thing, isn't it? It can just. It, like, builds on itself. It's like, oh, everything's good. He texted me, and then I didn't hear from him for three hours. Oh, everything must be bad. Well, what could he be doing if he's traveling well, he could be doing this, and, oh, my God, he's doing this. And. And then before, like, this man is wrong for me, he's pulling away.

It's distant.

It is over. And it's like, it's been. It's been five hours. And I just want to say, like, women aren't the only people of gender that do this. Men very much so do this as well. I have done this a number of times in my life where your brain just gets ahead of you in many areas of our life. So this is not just a women versus men thing. Everyone does this. But of course, our audience is 99.9% female, so that's why we're addressing it here. So let's dive into it.

You know, pulling away. I mean, I think the cases we just described were cases where it seemed like somebody was pulling away, but they really weren't. But, you know, in any relationship, there is going to be time periods where your partner legitimately does pull away. And I think the most common one is the situation where you've been dating for a few months. Everything's great. Everything's actually amazing. Amazing start. You've defined the relationship. You guys are exclusive, everything. And you feel like, yes, this is it. I've arrived. This is the relationship I've always wanted, and this is what I'm looking for. You're exactly where you want to be. And then all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, his behaviors start to change.

Yes, it does.

Things settle down. It's not as exciting. He's not attentive. And you're like, oh, he's pulling away. And in your head, all you can hear is danger, danger, danger. This is a big deal. What am I going to do? And all of a sudden, you went from not worrying about anything to spinning out and doing the overthinking, over worrying thing. And we're here to talk about today. Yeah, he's changed. And, you know, we're going to talk about, is this typical? Is this common? How to deal with it? Because there is a very. There's a couple of really easy solutions to deal with this stuff well.

And I think especially when you get to what we call little love step number six, that means you're an exclusive, committed relationship. But it's new. This is the moment where if you've been dating a lot over the past few months or past year or even longer, it can suddenly feel like you're going from 100 miles an hour to 5 miles an hour once you're in an exclusive relationship. Because now all the focus is just on each other. You're not getting the dopamine hits from the dating apps. You're not getting this attention from multiple different guys. It's just him. And so it's very, very easy to get to this stage and be like, oh, my God, this isn't enough. This isn't enough for me. And also to just compound this, when men get to little love step number six, they tend to get back to focusing on connecting with old friends. They start focusing on work again, which can be a very good thing. Because he's like, I'm in a relationship now. Things might get serious here. Like, I need to buckle down. I need to be able to provide. And all of these things can just lead us, especially at little love step number six, to just be like, the world is crumbling down. Everything is changing. This is wrong for me. And then we run away.

Yeah. I think it's important to look at this through the guy's eyes in the sense that a lot of guys kind of deal with things in their life in terms of what's on the most on fire. Like what. What are the things I have to worry about the most and where the things I have to worry about the most, I'm going to spend a lot of time and attention on. I'm going to prioritize those things. But then the things that aren't on fire and the things are just, you know, kind of cruising along. I can dial back. I don't have to be as attentive. And so a lot of times that pulling away that you're sensing, particularly after things have been going so well and you're like, oh, crap, he's pulling away. He's running, he's running, he's running. No, no. It's actually a compliment. It's a sign of stability and certainty in the relationship where he's like, I don't have to worry about this as much. And so now I can turn my attention to the other things that I actually had not been paying nearly enough attention to over the past couple Months. And so it's a shifting of priorities, a subtle shifting of priorities, which actually is a compliment to your current relationship situation.

Exactly. So when this happens, and the scenario that we're describing is very important because sometimes people do pull away, and then it's a sign of the end of a relationship. I don't want to confuse you, but we presented it this way with this type of a scenario, because typically in this scenario, it's actually not a major concern. And so there's a number of mistakes that we've seen over the years that people make when they get to this phase. So why don't we jump into the first one? Gary, do you want to lead us off?

Yeah. I think, you know, just to put this in context, the biggest problem that the overthinkers and over worriers make is they're just not able to stay in the present. Right. And so all these mistakes kind of center around that theme of not being able to stay presently focused. And so the first mistake is allowing the future to ruin the present. And so this is what I call the world's worst relationship game. It's the game of what if, right? So you play the what if game. What if this is the beginning of the end? What if he realized this is a mistake? What if he's falling out of love? What if he met somebody else? What if he's having regrets? What if he's having second thoughts? Oh, my gosh, isn't that fun? Isn't it fun to just sit and play the what if game and just conjure up all these things? Because you're smart, you're creative, you can think of a lot of things. You've seen reality tv. You've seen a full, you know, Hallmark. There's all kinds of bad information out there of, like, worry about this. Worry, worry. So you can come up with some stuff when you're playing the what if game.

And I feel like, especially when we have a good thing, like when things are going really well, that's when wh. Ifs come in really strong. Especially like when everything is falling apart. You're not even thinking about the future. Just like, whatever. Like, there's no what ifs. It's when you're like, oh, things are clicking, and this could be in any area of your life, then you start to think, well, what could go wrong? What could ruin this? And. And then you start to think about a million different things. I know. I go through this all the time. I'm. I'm an ultimate, like, what ifer? Gary you probably know this and I'm is one of those things you have to just be like, no, just stay in the present, enjoy this moment and realize that humans are not very good at predicting the future. You can't predict the future, so the best thing you got is the present and enjoying it when and understanding that there's always going to be ebbs and flows in life and that's okay. And deal with it when it comes. Are you ready to dive deep into the male mind and understand why it is we do what we, we actually do? Well, if so, I have a free training that's going to really help you understand men. Get out there and attract a high value guy that meets your needs. If you're ready for that, head on over to the lovesteps.com we have a virtual training there. It's going to walk you through this exact process that's worked for over 10,000 women worldwide. Again, head on over to TheLovesSteps.com and yeah, check it out. We'll get back to the podcast now.

Yeah, I mean, I think what key is don't be so suspicious of success. Yeah, right. It's like you've done the work. You're, you're, you know what you're doing. This is intentional. You're following a process. You're, you're going through. You know, maybe you've been coached or not, but like you know what you're doing. So when you get success, of course you had success. You followed a good, smart, reliable process and so just trust that success. And I think the point you just made about us not being very good at predicting the future, I'd like to underline that we're horrible at it. And the problem is we think we're good at it. We don't know what we're going to do in a month. If everyone listening to this, think back a year ago, a year ago, could you have predicted where you're at in your life right now? And in many cases you cannot yet today and we sort of peer off into the future a year we feel pretty good about some of the guesses we're making and we have no right to feel so good about those guesses because we really just don't know. And a lot of the what if game, it's all about bad things. And frankly, most of those things just can't possibly happen. Right. And so you're just, you're overdoing it. And so the key strategy here is harness. What have been your powers for over worrying? Harness those Powers for good and start thinking of creative reasons why things could go right. So I call this seeing. You know, just simply seeing both sides. Instead of saying, you know, is this the beginning of the end? How is this the beginning of our real future together? Like, is this a new reality? Ask yourself, what if nothing is wrong? Ask yourself, what if I'm overreacting? What if I'm missing some other explanation? Use your creativity for good. What are all of the things that could go right? So if you want to. He's pulling away. What? Why is this a bad thing? Okay, come up with a couple reasons. Fine. Now you must come up with as many good reasons.

What if he's focusing on his work because he sees such a strong future between the two of us and he's saving up for a ring?

Right.

What if he is connecting with old friends because he can't wait for you to meet them? What ifs? You can always reframe a what if in your favor. And the reality is, the point is, you can't tell the future, so you might as well be optimistic about it. You know, if you're pessimistic about everything, then you're actually going to get. I think there's a saying. I heard this the other day. I might butcher it a little bit, but if you're a pessimistic person, you're going to be hurt twice. One is when you're pessimistic about it twice, when the negative things happen. If you're an optimistic person, you only get hurt once because you're optimistic about everything. And then if it falls to crap, then, okay, you get hurt once. Am I butchering that? Have you heard that before?

No, that was. I. I actually had the exact same thought, and I was almost gonna. I'm like, I don't. There is a more precise wording of it, but what you described is exactly.

What I was gonna do. You're saying. I'm not being concise, Gary.

No, no, no. I'm saying. I was going to say myself. Like, there is a better way to word this. But essentially, when you're pessimistic, you get hurt twice because you're. You're bummed out the first time, and then things happen. You know exactly what you said.

Definitely. I'm just giving you a hard time, Gary.

Come on.

We got to spend all weekend together. Gary and I had a lot of man time together. It was really fun, surrounded by a lot of women. We had an event this past weekend, so I don't know about you, but spending an Entire weekend with women. When I left, I'm like, I need to go do something manly. I don't know what it is. Like, I need to go chop wood. I live in the city, so I can't do that. But I need to go do something that just gets me back into the masculine.

It's really funny. It's so funny that you said that, because as I drove home from Boston, so five hours in the car, I came in, unpacked, and I said to my wife, said, I'm taking the dog for a walk, for a hike. We went hiking. And, like, no offense, but just him and me. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, it's so funny. I got home, and Jess just wanted to talk about it, and, like, she wanted to connect because we haven't really hung out all weekend. I'm like, jess, I don't have. I don't have the emotional capacity for this. I need to, like. So she might be like, well, he's pulling away. I'm like, no, it's not you, Jess. It's me. I'm emotionally drained. Oh, my gosh. All right. It's too funny. All right. Mistake number two, when he's pulling away is allowing the past to ruin the present. This is allowing. This is conjuring up all those past scenarios when perhaps a guy was pulling away and it ended. Or those bad experiences that you've had with dating, those awful, awful breakups. And it's really easy for bad experiences to infect your current relationship. My past boyfriend, he did X, Y, and Z, and he said he had to work a lot, and really, he was sleeping with his admin assistant. I knew it was a sign of trouble. You're like. You're thinking back this moment. I knew it at the time, but I didn't do anything about it. The reality is, in a new relationship, as hard as this is to do, we need to be incredibly intentional about not letting our current partner have to fight the battles of the previous person. Like, don't let your current partner have to be the one who's fighting all these battles, all these experiences of your previous bad relationship. It's really, really important. I always like to say, your past just doesn't equal your future. It doesn't. And you got to allow yourself to take that step back and realize that this is a new human being that's in front of you, and you're going to have new experiences together. Some are going to be positive, some are going to be negative. But let's go into it with a clean slate.

Yeah. I mean, this goes back to the original larger point is what's important is right now, the partner you have, now who you have because the other partner didn't work out. And so this new partner, you've probably learned some things from that previous relationship that that's why you pick this new person. And so give, give them and give yourself a little bit of credit. I'd also say, you know, once you know that the person you're with, you know, you've kind of done everything you can to de, escalate the risk. Like you know who they are, you spent a lot of time together, there comes a point where they just deserve the benefit of the doubt, a little trust. Because again, we don't want to over worry about things. But I think, you know, if the past, to counteract this idea of the past ruining the present, the strategy here is just realizing your past doesn't equal your future. We do evolve, we do change, particularly if we're thinking strategically and thoughtfully and intentionally about our relationships. I also think it's really important to point out that too much focus on your past relationships and your ex and hating on your ex is just another subtle way of holding on to them. Whereas if they're really not important, we just, we just let them go. Like, like don't hold on to the hurt. Feel it, examine it, understand it, learn from it, all those things, but then let it go.

Just right, let it go, let it go. When it comes to X's, I know we didn't have this in our notes, but I think it's worth mentioning is that there's this well known psychological bias known as hindsight bias. Right. Gary, when we look back in scenarios in our life and we like in that example of he had to work a lot, but he was actually sleeping with his admin, you might think that you knew it all along, but that's actually really leaning into this bias that we think we, that we all, we all succumb to this, that it's like with hindsight we think we knew it at the time and you didn't, you really didn't. You know, you might have had suspicions and things like that, but in hindsight it's really easy to look back and be like, oh yeah, I figured this out and then you bring that bias to your current relationships. Gary, you're a resident psychologist. Am I explaining this correctly?

Yeah, it's, you know, hindsight bias. I, the new it, I knew it all along effect. What I think is really important about this kind of way of thinking is it's it's another subtle way that we blame ourselves. Right, Right. And sometimes bad things happen and there was nothing we could do. And in that case, that example you just gave, you know, is it possible there were no signs? Yeah, it's entirely possible there were no signs. Right. And if that's the case, don't try to blame yourself. Say, you should have known, you should have seen, you should have. You, you, you. No, no, that. That person doing that isn't a you problem. That's them. They were the bad actor in that situation and you weren't. And so sometimes that's just how it is, and sometimes that's how it goes. And we don't always have to look for ways to put more responsibility on ourselves. And that's something, you know, quite frankly, we tend to do is kind of over claim responsibility when other people do bad things to us. Sometimes it's really just as simple as they're not a great person, they did something terrible, you just happened to be the one that they did it to.

Yeah. And if we allow ourselves to constantly succumb to hindsight bias, then suddenly in new relationships, we're going to be looking for every little tiny sign that we thought we overlooked in the last one for this new situation. And it might be totally unwarranted. So just these biases are something that are fascinating to me because it just shows how flawed the human brain is. We all are guilty of bias. But if you can notice them as you're dating, and there's a number of different ones, I believe we've discussed them on other podcasts. Then suddenly it empowers you to be like, oh, that way of thinking actually might not be in tune with reality. And that's good. Sets you up for success. So, Gary, why don't you. You lead us off with the final mistake.

Awesome. I love this one. So mistake number three is the feeling that I have to do something. You feel them pulling away. You feel a little bit of distant. It's kind of what you let off with your story. You know, she started texting like, what's wrong? What's wrong? Like, I have to do something. And I like this one because this is literally the default solution. That really doesn't actually help. It's really not a solution. And so what happens is when people start feeling things slip, right? They start feeling somebody pull away. There's two main reactions they have. The first one is chase. The other one is run away. And so chasing is he's pulling away, and you see him going, and you Just have this impulse. I need to get him back.

Bring him back. Come on, bring him back into my life.

Come back. And so you go after him, right? You go after him, and you're almost trying to force some closeness. And so this doesn't work for the most obvious reason of all is if you've ever tried to chase a kid, right, Or a dog who got loose, they'll be just standing there. And as soon as you start chasing after them, what do they always do?

Yeah, they run.

They run, right. All of a sudden, like, they're standing there. You know, your dog gets out and he's standing there like, hey, man, come back. Just stands there. Like, then you start going near him. Every step you take near him. I had a dog when I was a kid that did this all the time. You take a step, he take a step away, and then you start running after him. He's a lot faster. He takes off now. And so when you chase after something, that thing for whatever tends to run away. And so the exact same thing happens in relationships, right?

Yeah. I was just gonna say, like, allowing space to exist in a relationship, like, you stay in the same place, allowing that space to exist, it's a superpower. And by allowing that space to exist at, like, relationships, there's always going to be ebbs and flows. There's always going to be times where there's a little bit more distance, a little bit more space than other times. And someone who talks a lot about this is Esther Perel. She talks about, you know, healthy relationships are where you miss each other a little bit, allowing for healthy space to exist. Like, that is where the spice of that's how you build the spark. Like, it's a great thing. It's one of those things. Like in the opening story, if I hadn't heard from her all week and I was traveling a lot, I would come back missing the heck out of her because that space existed. And then it would come back even stronger. And so rather than her running away or her chasing, she just stayed as is. Then guess what? That's going to deepen the connection, deepen the emotional bond, deepen the attraction, deepen that spark, and it's a wonderful thing. It's great.

Yeah. And I think, you know, chasing is obviously a problem. I do think there is that other way that people go, which is I'm not going to chase after him as he's pulling away, but now that I see him pulling away, I'm going to start putting up those walls, and I'm essentially going to run away. Right. I'm going to just start pulling back myself. So now you have, he feels like he's pulling away, you pull away and you're just making what isn't really a problem. Now you are making a problem because now you're pulling away for seemingly no reason, just as a defensive mechanism which just isn't productive. And so, you know, as you alluded to, the strategy here really is don't chase, don't run away. And it, in some, some ways is the hardest thing to do is just stay still. Stay still. Like don't freak out, don't worry so much, don't overthink it. I like to say to clients all the time, be where your feet are. Just be right here. Be where your feet are. Just go do something else. And ideally something else that gives you just a bigger picture perspective. I'm a huge fan of going hiking, a walk in nature. It could be as simple as, you know, staring up at the stars, some just something awe inspiring, if at all possible just to kind of give yourself a little bit of perspective about is he really wrong? You know, you're never really sure. Stay still.

Stay still and hang out with friends. Hey, be social. Hang out with friends. And please, dear God, don't tell your friends about the scenario and be like, oh, this guy's starting to pull away. Because guess what, they're gonna say you deserve better. You, you shouldn't be with this guy. You should be dating other people. They're going to encourage you to run away. Right? That's what, that's what a good girlfriend does in that scenario. And I understand it's good hearted advice that can lead to bad outcomes. Now sometimes the advice is to run away, but girlfriends always default to, he's not worthy of you, he doesn't deserve you. He's not leaning in. Goodbye. And they don't necessarily take into account the nuance of this situation. They don't know, they don't know everything that we're talking about today. So I think it's worth mentioning. Gary, how many times have we had clients? Come on, they're like, well, I talked to my girlfriend this past weekend. She said, and we're like, your divorce. Your girlfriend has been divorced three times and is still single for the past 10 years. That one.

Ironically, those girlfriends are making mistake number two. They're allowing the past to ruin the present. Right, right. They're all just, they're going by their past bad experiences and are there bad terrible guys? Yes, absolutely. And so the friends, it's well intentioned. It's slightly misinformed, but I think here's, here's the key and something we say a lot in a lot of different contexts about relationships. Instead of jumping to conclusions, be curious. Yeah, he's pulling away. You're wondering why you're coming up all these reasons and that's, you know, the what if game and all that stuff. Instead of doing all that, the next time you're together, have a conversation about it. This is what relationships are about. Every relationship problem starts with the same solution. Communication. Have a talk, what's going on, how, how is work, you know, I know you know, and just kind of get in, get into that conversation. And I would. Just one last thing. Anybody that's ever been a manager or has had any responsibility in any kind of job, when you're kind of, you're tasked with dealing with problems, what you learn in those positions is some problems need immediate action and a lot of problems do not. Like, you don't want to overreact to problems and just launch into I'm going to save the world mode. Because some things, it's just a matter of don't answer that email right away. Give that, give that one a couple of hours. Some things will resolve themselves. You just, you don't want to be reactive to things. And staying still gives you the benefit of gathering more information. And a lot of times when we're unsure about what's going on, all we really need is more information to make.

A better decision and just drafting off this idea of management. A lot of times professionally, when someone is struggling, usually it has to do with something going on in their personal lives. Usually something's going on. So rather than jumping down their throat, be like, you didn't do this TPS report or whatever it is. How could you miss this? The next time you see them, just be like, how's everything going? Like, how's your trip? How is time with your family? Is everything going well? Been sleeping well, eating well, you've been sticking to your goals, all is that good? And usually it's something going on there. And I think the same, the reason why I'm saying that is I think the same thing applies with this. It's like if the next time I saw that woman and we're sitting across from each other, she's like, how was it? I'm like, it was great. It was exhausting. I didn't even have a second. I missed you. Like, I, I just, I haven't even had a moment to, to get. She doesn't have to talk about the relationship. She's just ask about me, how I'm doing. She'll get all the information in the world and feel totally comfortable in the situation. And so I think all of those are really worth thinking about when you're in that moment of the pull away panic and to just not just run right in or run right away. Stay, stay, stay, stay and stay curious. So good stuff, Gary. That was fun.

Thanks, Adam.

So now you've reached the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. And because you have proven that you are serious about attracting love, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't feel that way. What I'd love for you to do is go to loveapply.com where you can apply for a complimentary love strategy session where a professional love strategist on my team is going to speak with you directly and be able to see whether or not our executive love coaching programs can be transformational for you and your love life. There's absolutely no fee whatsoever. All you got to do is head on over to loveapply.com schedule that session, and you could be speaking with someone on my team over the next couple days. All right, thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Bye.

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