I Don't Want to Scare Her Away!

All right, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story or question to deardso.com. That's deardso.com. And if it's a good one, I will create a video of it for the whole world to see. And this one comes from Aussie Man, and Aussie Man says, after a 20-year relationship including 3 children, we split after wife had an emotional affair that I believe if not had been discovered, would have been physical. It took 2 years after our separation to finally call it quits. In that 2 years, I did date another woman. Interesting. She was nice, a very loving woman, but my heart at the time was with the ex-wife. Fast forward 4 months from any contact with the ex-wife, I have met another woman. A lossy man does not like to be alone. She ticks a lot of the boxes. Problem is, is that she lives a 5-hour round trip away. Unfortunately, I do have to be in that city each week. Well, that's convenient. It's too early to meet her kids, who they're living at home, ages 24 and 16. I like this lady. We have very strong chemistry. I could quite easily fall head over heels for her. I have a feeling you already have. The problem is that I am now starting to get anxious when I don't hear from her. When I expect to. We either message or talk every single day, often multiple times. She has done nothing to raise my suspicions. I even just recently got introduced to her closest friend. We haven't dropped the L word yet, but I could. But it's only been 4 weeks. Oof. Uh, after being blindsided, after being cheated on, I'm trying hard not to get anxious and insecure. I like where this could go, "But I'm just worried that I'm going to muck it up by being needy and jealous. Thanks, Ralph Brewer," he says. Oh, Aussie Man. Yeah, you've fallen for a gal. And I've, you know, my little snotty comment in the middle of that saying, "Looks like Aussie Man doesn't like to be alone too much." Would you say that's a fair assessment? I mean, during separation with wife who cheated on you, you got with some other gal, but you're like, "Eh, I can't do this 'cause I still love my ex-wife." the one who cheated on you, and then you separated. And, you know, not long after no contact with the ex, 4 months, you're with a new one. And you've only been with this new one for a month on a very part-time basis because she's quite literally 2.5 hours away from you. It sounds like 5-hour round trip if I'm doing the math correctly. And you're saying, I can see me falling head over heels for her. I haven't said the L word, love, yet, but I can see me doing that. In other words, you really fell hard and fast for this gal, Mr. Aussie Man. Is that something that you have done in the past? Can you see some similarities with your relationship with the ex-wife, the one who cheated on you? Were you the one to fall head over heels and say I love you super fast? You definitely have some anxious tendencies, but what little you shared here, you know, you're like, she hasn't texted me back, and, and, uh, fall in love with this gal. I haven't said the L word yet. I met her best friend. Um, none of these are big deals necessarily, but it's, uh, yeah, meeting her best friend, not a big deal. That's something that plenty of people do. Let me introduce you to this guy that I'm seeing. Not quite sure what I think about him yet. What do you think, best friend? And then, no, you haven't met her kids yet. You know, please don't for a while. I say give that a year, a year of dating before meeting children, simply because you'll know whether or not you're a a good match. What the kids don't need, I know they're older, but what they don't need is a revolving door of men coming in and out of mom's life. Like this is boyfriend this month and this is boyfriend that month. They start losing respect for mother and it causes all kinds of chaos in the relationship. So hold off on that. If I were with you, dude, I would just say, "Dude, time out, man. You need to go hang out with some dudes some more. Give this gal some space. So what, she didn't reply to you right away like she used to or whatever. Who knows what's going on, dude." It could be something as silly as just work stuff, personal stuff, and you guys aren't married. She doesn't need to be texting you all day, every day. Let the leash go a little bit. Don't be so on her and smothering her with your neediness. Yes, you're pretty needy and pretty anxious. So your thought is you're worried that you're gonna be scaring her away with all this neediness. That's a very real concern. Now here's the thing. You will scare her away if she's in fact a secure individual. Secure individuals are very turned off by neediness, by somebody who's always like, why didn't you call me? What are you doing? Who's that man you just looked at? Why did you say it that way? Is something wrong with you? I look at you, look like you're upset. And when am I going to meet your kids? I love you. Very needy, clingy, over-the-top, smothering, anxious type stuff is extremely unattractive to secure people. Who it's very attractive to are very insecure people who need all that validation constantly. And you probably, with some hindsight, will say that was probably the dynamic between you and your ex-wife, the one who cheated on you. Maybe she— I'm inferring a lot here, I could be way off base— but maybe she's the type that needed consistent attention to feel good about herself. And maybe you, by virtue of normal life stuff, you know, couldn't pay attention to her 24/7. So she went and got the attention elsewhere. That's who you're setting yourself up to be in a relationship with again. I often tell guys, if you don't fix what's going on up here, you're going to repeat the same mistakes you made in previous relationships. You just do it all over again. So many men I talk to say, like, holy crap, I have— I'm dating my ex-wife all over again. Not literally their ex-wife, meaning like the new person they are dating has so many qualities and personality traits that is so similar to ex-wife that it's scary. And I say, yeah, dude, you've got a type. And some of that type, some of those personality traits are not so healthy. You need to have a lot of introspection and work on yourself to figure out what is it about me that attracts those type of people, and why are they attracted to me? Why do we seem to be, you know, like a moth to a flame kind of thing? What's going on here? You may be seeing some of that yourself, Mr. Aussie Man. Cool it. Time out. There's a school of thought that you need to jump into relationships and do it, you know, half a dozen times, get your heart broken until you kind of get numb to it, so to speak, and then you're not so needy and not so clingy. And when, you know, having coffee with a gal and she says, I don't think this is going to work out anymore, instead of going home and crying for the next year, you You just say, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld style. I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan, but there's an episode where the woman says, I don't think this is working out. And he just sips his coffee and goes, eh, okay. Eventually maybe you'll get to that point, but you're not there yet, obviously, Mr. Aussie Man. So what does it take to get there? Have you worked on your neediness, your anxious attachment and so forth with a therapist? Are you hanging out with a lot of men? Are you, um, I know that you're a member of our group in the HFM Brotherhood, and for those that are wondering what I'm talking about, go to help4men.com. We have a private community just for men, of which Aussie Man is a member, and we get together for private discussions and discussion forums that are, you know, private. The rest of the world can't see what we're talking about. And then we have private Zoom meetings, several of those every single week. We record all the Zoom meetings We have my books, all my books in audiobook format as well as PDF format at no extra charge. We have discounts on coaching courses and all kinds of cool stuff. So check it out at help4men.com. But maybe open up more to the group and talk to them more and share more of your stories and you'll get more of, hey, been there, done that, and this is what I did. Here's some thoughts for you. Or I'm in your neck of the woods in Australia. We have a lot of guys in Australia in the group and they may say, let's get together for a beer. Let's hang out. Let's talk this through. And you will feel better. To commiserate with guys, guys who have been there, done that, kind of like mentors, if you will, it really helps. It really helps expedite the healing process, if you will, of what you went through with this trauma with the ex. A lot of it, as you know, you know, being in our group and hearing me talk about this nonstop, a lot of guys in our group have what's— they're what we call neurodivergent. In other words, they have things such as ADHD, they're on the autism spectrum and so forth, and they tend to fall very fast and very hard for people, and they tend to take rejection really, really, really bad, really hard, and more so than the neurotypical person. So maybe, is there some of that in you? I don't know if maybe you've been formally diagnosed. Maybe I'm way off base. I'm not a psychologist. I don't know. But that may be something to explore, and there may be certain, you know, treatments that may help with that. Don't know. All kinds of things to explore. All those things are separate from a relationship with a gal that maybe you're not quite ready for. And that's very difficult to hear because she makes you feel like a million bucks. And that's probably something you haven't felt in a long time. It's Mother Nature doing its thing, man. They want you two to get together and make babies. Please don't do that, by the way. But that's, that's in essence what Mother Nature is doing. It's making you fall in love and making you obsessed with her. And, uh, that limerence feeling, the honeymoon phase, is very, very potent, very strong stuff, and it makes men and women do some not-so-smart things. So just cool it, take a step back, assess what's going on here. Don't jump into the deep end. And the irony is, is going back to your question of your situation of, I don't want to scare this woman off— actually, if you do scare this woman off with your anxious behavior, that's a good thing. Because it shows you got a secure one, you got a smart one, and she knows Aussie Man ain't ready yet. That would actually be a good thing. And then maybe you can reattach later on down the line. Um, who knows? But stay strong, buddy. I know what you're going through. Been there, done that. All right, so stay in touch. Would love to chat with you one-on-one if you'd like to. Go to coaching, you know where to find me on the Help for Men website. And, uh, thanks for submitting your story, Mr. Aussie Man.