18 Jan 2016 · 7 min
Matthew Hussey explains why men pull away early in relationships: the romantic phase moves too fast, couples spend all their time together, and men feel trapped and lose their personal space. He advises women to slow the pace intentionally, encourage their partners to see friends, and schedule time apart so both people actually want to be together.
Matthew Hussie here with Love Life. I have a question for you. When you think about going after the things you want most in life, how do you feel? Excited? Inspired? Capable of doing anything you put your mind to? Or do you feel overwhelmed, discouraged, like you're facing an insurmountable obstacle? If your answer is overwhelmed, you're not alone. Most people feel the same way. And the reason is this. Most people think that in order to achieve their biggest goals they have to take big monumental actions and that makes them give up before they even begin. But the truth is the key to achieving our goals is consistency. Small actions done regularly. Consistency can make all the difference between achieving your dreams and staying stuck and unfulfilled where you are. So let's set you up for success. I'll do my part by showing up every few days with a new episode filled with advice to help you live your best life. Think of listening to my show as your one small action you can do consistently. Here's your first assignment. Go to iTunes and click the Subscribe button. This will make sure that you get the latest episode as soon as it's released. Ready to get started? Let's go. 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. 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? To what extent should I be ignoring my friends or my family in order 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 and it's extraordinarily dangerous. The reason is because men especially, especially will get to a point where they suddenly freak out at the amount of change that has happened in their lives. They freak out because their guy friend starts saying to them, you're never around anymore. 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 that 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. Most guys won't do that in that very mature adult way. Most guys will simply start ignoring texts, 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 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. Encourage, like, you one night a week, you should absolutely go out with your friends. And if you don't feel comfortable just 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 a 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're already past 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 gonna make the situation worse. It doesn't mean the end of the relationship. It just means that things are finding their balance. That's okay. You need to find your balance also. I'm sure there are times with your friends that you've missed or people that you need to catch up with that you've not caught up with because you've been in your love nest. So look, here's the big conclusion. 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. 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 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/CoachMatthewHussey to 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. Thanks for listening and making me part of your weekly ritual toward achieving your dreams. Now, if you're getting a lot out of these episodes, please do me a favor and help me spread the word so that other women like you can find and enjoy the show. In the iTunes app or on your desktop, just look up the show Click on Ratings and Reviews and then click Write a Review. Thank you so much and have a fantastic week. I'll speak to you soon.
