Let’s say you’re dating someone. It’s in the very initial stages. As soon as you guys started speaking to each other, there was a lot of chemistry. There was a lot of connection. There’s a lot of interest expressed even from her side. And let’s say something that happens overnight is that she pulls back. All of a sudden, she stops texting you as much and then you start spiraling. You start thinking, did you do something wrong? Did something happen that she changed her mind? Did she move on from you? Or is this the end of the connection?
And what happens is when a person is available to you and suddenly her energy basically shifts, it can leave you feeling confused, triggered and even very anxious or uncertain in these kind of situations. And in most of the cases, these kind of situations once it triggers you brings out your inner insecurities. And what we do unconsciously is engage in behaviors and things that we do from our side that can actually widen the distance much more.
So in this article particularly, I want to address this situation like if someone pulls away in the early stages of dating, so what you should do, what you should not do and the things that you need to do like how to communicate your standards from a place of self respect in these particular situations. So, if you’re new here, I am Akash and I’m a men’s relationship coach and I help men heal their trauma, wounded masculinity, and attachment issues in order for them to pursue meaningful connection with women. So let’s start without any further delays.
How Men React When She Pulls Away?
So when a woman basically pulls away, men fall into these three categories. Your nervous system gets triggered. It goes into flight mode. You unconsciously do things in an attempt to soo yourself, soo your anxiety, and you end up doing and behaving in any of these three manners. The first kind of reaction is that of a needy chaser. These are men who basically start over texting. If you go send her so many texts, if you start calling her all the time, if you go into a social media, if you start doom scrolling just with the hope that hey acknowledge my presence, validate my presence. This is going to push the other person more away. Whatever you chase, you end up pushing that thing away altogether.
The second kind is the shutdown rebel. These are people who basically emotionally shut down when there is distance created in the early stages of dating and they start questioning their own worth. Am I good enough? Is there something wrong with me? Did I do something? And they completely go into a mode of shutdown and they stop even talking to her. So let’s say if she had a busy day and she came back, you go into a stage of emotional shutdown where you start acting very passive and cold with her in an attempt to actually punish her. But this is not a healthy reaction.
The third kind of person is a dismissive avoider. These are people who pretend as if nothing happened. Even though they are feeling discomfort and anxiety, they refuse to bring these things up in front of the woman because they do not want to have any kind of confrontation. In a way, you’re trying to maintain a fake image of yourself, saying there is nothing wrong in what she did and there’s nothing wrong with you because in a way, you’re trying to act pretty cool in front of her, but this is going to backfire eventually and this is going to make you resent her over the long run.
And each of these responses actually disconnects you from your masculine core. Instead of acting with discernment and instead of being careful and analyzing the situation, you start acting from a place of fear and ego. You basically start reacting instead of responding in these kind of situations.
What You Should Not Do When She Pulls Away?
The biggest thing that most of the men actually miss in these kind of situation is to reassess and reaffirm if that connection or if the relationship is the right one for you. Is this the kind of person that you want to keep in your life in the long run?
So before you start chasing, withdrawing or actually ignoring her, take some time and actually ask yourself these questions. Am I attracted to her or am I actually projecting something onto her? Does she bring out the best version of me? Am I attached to her or am I getting attached to her more because she is revoking the anxiety inside me? And this dynamic is something that’s making her look magnetic to me because it feels like she has something that I can’t have a hold on. And the last question you should be asking yourself is, is this a kind of behavior that you want to put up with in the long term?
Sometimes a distance that you feel is not a threat. It is basically an invitation for you to check in with yourself and reassess the connection and think if this is the right person for you after all. Just because someone pulls away and creates distance, that is not an invitation for you to try your level best to bring them close to you, but it’s an invitation for you to actually sit, introspect, and think, is this connection good for you? Is this connection good for your long run as well.
What You Should Do When She Pulls Away?
A strong man is not someone who basically gets lost in her signals. He knows how to bring himself back in the present moment and actually logically analyze the entire situation. Just because she pulls away doesn’t mean that she has something valuable in her. Just because she’s emotionally avoidant doesn’t mean that she is someone who is out of your reach. This is a complete myth that a lot of men tend to live with.
1. Respond Instead of Reacting
The first thing that you do is do not react and learn to respond. So instead of over texting her or calling her again and again, take a moment, ground yourself, assess the situation and intentionally think what your next step should be.
This doesn’t mean avoiding the situation altogether. Try to connect with yourself. Try to connect with your intuition and gut feeling and understand what is it that you want to actually communicate with her. How can you express your standards in these kind of situations?
When you are in a place of emotional reaction, you’re basically putting your worth in her hands. Whereas when you’re responding intentionally to the situation, you are actually leading from a place of emotional maturity.
2. Don’t Chase Her, Call Her In
The second thing you can do in this situation is do not chase her. Instead, call her in. This is very important. Please do not go chase her and you know attack her. Instead, take a moment and ask her calmly whenever she’s available and address the shift in her energy like a man who would do who has self respect because you are not in the wrong here. She is the one who is in the wrong here.
And what you want to see is is she someone who can take accountability for the way she behaved. So you can actually say something like hey I want to have an open honest communication with you. I have sensed there’s been a shift in your energy. I am someone who likes to address things and not, you know, shut down things. And I would like to bring this up as well because I do not want to stay in a dynamic which kind of disrespects me or dishonors me. But if you have anything going on, I’m more than happy to understand you and hold space for you.
This is a very mature thing to say to someone who has pulled away. Instead of asking or attacking her, hey, why did you do that? The way you did things, I did not like it. Let’s have a proper open conversation about it. This is where you can actually judge her character and you can see if is she a woman who has the emotional bandwidth in her to actually take accountability for her actions because you don’t anyways want to be in a long-term relationship with someone who cannot own up what they did.
3. Communicate Your Standards
The third thing you need to focus on in this situation is to have standards and to communicate them. It’s not about controlling her, but it’s about being clear on what exactly do you want and what are you available for.
You can literally say things like, “Hey, I am not looking to chase a woman. I want to be with someone who is willing to have an open, honest conversation even when things get uncomfortable. And if you’re not that person, I completely respect that. But I would like to let you know where is it that I stand in regards of this connection and what my needs are in this connection.”
And this is not some kind of a threat and this is not some kind of an ultimatum. You are basically expressing what your needs are because in a way you should be protecting yourself from getting hurt eventually down the line. Most of the times what men do wrong is they ignore the red flags early on because they like the girl too much and they end up breaking their own heart.
4. Be Willing to Let Her Go
The fourth thing is be willing to let her go. Not out of bitterness but out of self-love for yourself. It’s not that every woman who pulls away is trying to play a game with you. Sometimes she genuinely could be very busy in her work or maybe even things going wrong in her house as well. This is why it’s important to have an open honest conversation instead of going and attacking and blaming the woman in front of you because once you do it in that way, her defenses are going to come up. Once a person’s defenses are up in a conversation, you cannot have a productive communication with that person.
But on the other hand, sometimes a woman is just not that invested into you and that’s not a reflection of your self worth. That’s completely her choice. But at the same time, she does not know how to communicate that with you. And this is an indication of a woman’s emotional maturity. Letting go does not mean giving up. It’s basically you sending yourself and people around you a message that if you are not into this, I’m not going to force this connection. I’m not going to force someone against their wishes if they are not aligned in the very first place.
You want to be with someone who puts in the equal amount of effort that you do. Else it’s not worth it. And this is the biggest thing that men fail to understand. Sometimes you guys have that resentment within you where you want to give her a piece of your mouth. You basically want to tell her how she hurt you. But the best thing you can do is let go of someone with grace in silence without having to prove anything to her. Because these kind of endings are the ones that actually causes the most amount of impact.
And eventually she is going to come to a point where she is going to realize what she lost because of her emotional unavailability. But by that time I hope you would have found someone better for you.
5. Understand What Women Actually Respect
And the last thing you guys need to understand is women want men who they can respect. Not a guy who chases them. Not a guy who ignores them. Not a guy who pretends as if nothing has happened.
Someone who basically has a backbone and is not afraid of her to communicate his needs to her. Women only respect men who respect themselves enough to draw a boundary enough to call out her behavior when she is not in the right place when she is doing something that’s wrong towards you. Not someone who goes with the flow and not someone who basically likes her so much that he is going to try to make this connection worth at the cost of his own peace.
So when you stay calm and grounded instead of reacting and actually expressing your truth in a very calm manner towards her, this is when she’s going to sense your strength as a man. You can be fearful. You can be anxious when saying that. But at least in front of her, be strong enough to express your boundaries and your standards without fearing her.
If she leaves your life after that, she was never the woman for you in the very first place. And if she is the right one, she would work on herself. She would improve herself and rise up to match your standards.
My Final Message
Firstly, reassess and reaffirm your own desires and standards. Second, do not react, but instead respond to the situation. Third, do not chase her. Instead, call her in with clarity and have an open, clear communication with her. Fourth thing is be willing to walk away with grace. And the fifth thing is do anything that you decide to do rooted from a place of self respect and self worth.
Following these things are basically something that makes a man magnetic. It gives you peace in your life and you stop repeating all those painful cycles in your life. And at the end of the day, you don’t need validation from any woman. Once you know your worth, if you know your worth, you are completely fine even being by yourself and actually waiting for someone who is worth investing into. Someone who is equally ready to pour into you the way you are pouring into her as well.
Because when the relationship becomes one-sided, that usually leads to the death of the relationship. And that usually leads to a lot of pain. So let’s save you from these kind of pain by actually reassessing the connection in the initial stages and actually judging the person for their actions and not their words.
So I hope this article was helpful for you. Now I hope you know what you have to do in this situation, I am sure this will definitely help you. So that’s all for today’s article, if anything is still unclear, feel free to ask those questions in the comment section. So thank you so much for reading this article and I’ll see you again in the next article. Thank you!