Matthew Hussey explains why new couples rush through milestones like moving in and saying I love you, then panic when it threatens their independence. Men especially tend to withdraw when things accelerate too fast. The fix: talk about it directly, schedule regular time apart with friends, and remember that space should make you want each other more, not less.
Matthew Hussey here from Love Life. You want to know something interesting? One of the most dangerous parts of an entire relationship is the romantic phase. Is the phase where you feel completely crazy about someone and they feel completely crazy about you. Allow me to explain. When we feel this way about someone, when we feel this crazy burst of passion, we want to see them as much as possible. There's almost no limit to the amount of time that we could spend with them. And it not get old. We feel like we just want more and more and more. And so what we do is we begin to try and rush through the early stages of a relationship. We try and spend every day and night with them. We blow things off in order to see them. We even try and speed things up. When it gets to the stage of what we say to each other. Do I say I love you? Do I say I like you? How much of myself should I be giving to you? How much of my life should I be changing for you? To what extent should I be ignoring my friends or my family in order to see you? To what extent should I be ignoring my work commitments to see you? We even then can rush the moving in together stages, bringing stuff to each other's houses and so on and so on. These stages, we feel this urge to speed up because of these chemicals racing through our body, because of all the things that we, you know, it's this thing, isn't it? It's moderation. We don't want to do moderation. We want to do everything. We want to just rush through. And it's extraordinarily dangerous. The reason is because men especially will get to a point where they suddenly freak out at the amount of change that has happened in their lives. Now, don't get me wrong, the men aren't innocent because I know they encourage these changes as well. They're just as bad as you are. We all do it. We just start to rush. But guys will often get to a point where they freak out. They freak out because their guy friends start saying to them, you're never around anymore. You don't really care. You're just off with. Or they'll say things like, you're whipped. And of course, that has a very negative connotation for a guy. He starts getting scared. He sees a lot of stuff at his house that isn't his. He worries about that and what the next step is. In other words, a guy freaks out because he feels like there's a situation that he now cannot reverse. So here's what happens. He starts to either do what an adult does, which is communicate to you. Excuse me. You know, I'm so into you and I'm so crazy about you. But I'm also afraid that if we rush through everything, we're not going to enjoy it, and I'm going to lose a lot of different parts of me that I enjoy right now. And I just want to make sure we go at this at a pace that's sustainable so that it doesn't suddenly crash and burn. So, you know, can we just, you know, a couple of times a week, I need to see my friends or I'm going to go crazy. I need to do this, I need to do that, you know, And I'm sure you need to do the same. By the way, how many guys in your entire life have ever had a conversation like that with you? Probably none. Most guys won't do that in that very mature, adult way. Most guys will simply start ignoring text, ignoring phone calls. They'll stay out late with their friends and just not tell you what they're doing, even though they kind of said they would see you that night. They will just start breaking rules because it's their way of rebelling against the situation. That, of course, leads you to think that something is wrong. You thinking something is wrong leads you to become more neurotic or more aggressive or more angry. You take that on him, he starts freaking out even more. And we have a relationship that is already beginning to end before it has begun. So what do we do? Firstly, slow him down in the beginning. Preempt this whole situation. When he tries to move things really quickly, encourage him to slow down a little. Look, I like you, you like me. But of course, we don't want to burn out on each other and we don't want to rush all these phases. Let's enjoy them. You also have to still see your friends. I want you to see your friends. I want you to go and spend time with the people you care about. Encourage him to do that one night a week. You should absolutely go out with your friends, encourage him to do that. And if you don't feel comfortable, just encourage him. Encouraging him to do that because you're worried that it might come off. Like, you want him to just go away. Just every once or once a week, Once in a fortnight, arrange a girly night with your friends. Say, look, me and my friends are having a girly night that night. I can't do anything that night that will encourage him to use that evening to go and spend time with the other parts of his life that he needs to keep spending time with. Now, if you already passed this stage and he's in the stage of backing off a little bit, don't panic, don't freak out. You freaking out is going to make the situation worse. It doesn't mean the end of the relationship. It just means that things are finding their balance. You need to show him that he has nothing to rebel against. You need to show him that you're in the same place as he is when he does come to you for space. Encourage it. Tell him he absolutely should take more time for himself or his friends. Here's the big conclusion. It's really tricky to know the balance between creating too much distance or spending too much time together. How do you know you don't want to play a game? I know that. Here's my rule. Whatever you're doing, whether it's spending time with the guy or spending time away from the guy, everything you do should make you want to spend more time together. If you understand that rule and follow it, everything will work out. Because if you spend more time together, it's because you know you're in a phase where spending more time together is making you want to spend more time together. An example of that would be, you know, going on holiday with someone where you know you're going to come back from that holiday even closer to that person than when you left. Your bond is going to be deeper. But you'll also know when to take time away. Because I need to spend a little bit of time away from you. For our attraction to increase and for us to. To spend time thinking about each other, with each other, not present, whatever you do together or apart should increase the desire to spend time together. So here's the bottom line. Whenever your guy comes to you for space, whenever you feel that it's too intense or you need to slow things down, remember, it's not that the car is stopping, it's just that you need to take your foot off the pedal for a minute. Thank you, my friends. This is Matthew Hussey from Love Life. Go to facebook.com coachmathewhuss Go and check out all of the videos and articles and discussions we have. It's extraordinarily lively and interesting. I promise you'll see when you get there. And I will see you soon. Take care.
