For those who can hold themselves at bay emotionally

May 20, 2007

I just posted about a guy I've been seeing who I believe is being honest when he says he deliberately prevents himself from caring about me too much for fear of being hurt, etc.

What I want to know is how do you hold back like this? I must be missing this gene because no matter how much my head might tell me to go slow or hold back, etc., if my heart gets engaged, I am unable to stop myself from developing feelings. The only time I don't develop feelings is when I don't feel anything! I've never been able to say, gee, I am liking this guy too much, I need to back off. Or rather, I can say it, but I can't do]/b] it.

So my question is to those of you who can do it: How do you do it? What does it feel like exactly? From the other side of the fence, it feels as though the person has no feelings for you at all, or very minimal ones. But the expression of fear and occasional glimpses into the soul suggest otherwise. What exactly is going on inside in this case?

May 20, 2007

You do it by thinking through your feelings. I am very good at pulling away. It's a conscious action to take your feelings and think about why you feel the way you do.

I don't just use it in relationships but for everything, from fears and insecurities to happiness and joy.

You can teach yourself how to pull away emotionally and think about things rationally. I did it. I use to be highly emotional. And then I started making sense of things and it all became clearer.

I totally prefer being laid back now rather than high-strung like I was as a teenager or in my early twenties.

I believe your BF too when he says he's not getting too attached on purpose. He's not jumping in solely on emotions alone. To me that means he smartened up from being burned before. Which I think is better than making the same mistake twice. Definitely.

How long have you been seeing each other?

May 20, 2007

Thanks, AG. We've been seeing each other for about 5 months. It's been confusing to me because at one point he sought closeness and then suddenly shut it off. I liken it to me being a car going a steady 30mph while he alternates speeds of 75 with times of being parked (or in reverse!). I find this very difficult to deal with. I don't jump into things based on emotion but if things are going well in my current r/s, I don't put up stop signs simply because the last time I was close to someone it didn't end well. It's very difficult for me to relate to this. We will spend a day where we are incredibly close and I will think we are moving forward... only to learn that the extra closeness spooked him and now he's going to shut down for a while. If I am willing to wait it out, he cycles back, but I am not sure I want to wait this out over and over. I don't see an end in sight and, frankly, it hurts to be in this position. I feel that I am very consistent -- happy to see him, affectionate, etc. I don't feel it is unreasonable to want the same.

May 20, 2007

I feel that I am very consistent -- happy to see him, affectionate, etc. I don't feel it is unreasonable to want the same.

It's not unreasonable to want that at all. But if you want it with this guy then unfortunately you are going to have to wait it out.

My guy of just about a year FINALLY has made an effort to open up to me completely. Throughout the relationship I'd have to pull back a little and re-think things and allow him space to do the same. And we still like having each other in our lives.

It is confusing. It's like a conflict between the heart and the mind. I totally understand what you're saying.

But it's your life. You need to figure out if this guy is worth waiting it out for. Time seems to be the only true test of his trust in you.

Are you wasting your time? Only you know the answer to that one.

May 20, 2007

I don't know if this will help.. but here is my take.

I am seperated from my wife... getting divorced.. Started seeing this woman about 2 weeks ago.. (not long I know)

I at first thought I would be able to have a relationship... she is funny, good looking, smart, has her sh*t together... (a good resume')

But the more I have seen her... mainly initiated by her... the more I am pulling away...

I have already told her...I am not ready for a relationship... and am not looking for one... she paused.. and then asked when can she see me again.

I am backing away... she is pursuing.. I told myself... I would see how I felt after this weekend... and see if anything had changed. She came over last night.. and I had a good time with her... but, I don't have the slightest feeling for her... other than liking her.

I know she is developing feelings for me... The way she breaths.. the way she has those big sighs.... the way she grooms me..(playing with my hair, playing with my shirt straightening it)...

I am now feeling bad that I don't have any feelings for her... cause she is really a great lady...

I don't think it is fair on her.. or me... to keep seeing her.

I could string her along.. because of her feelings... but... I don't play those games.

I thought I was ready... but.. I guess I am not... Just got used to being alone.. and learning how to entertain myself...

I also think of my ex.. and that is a killer... for me.

The point of all this really after I guess hijacking your thread... and venting is this...

I have a emotional wall built up... that has kept me from breaking down.. for going on a year... It is going to take a particularly special woman... at the right time and right place... to open me up...

Until then... I'm gonna stay being me... a pretty good catch... that no woman can..

I hope this helped in some small way...

May 20, 2007

Thanks, ilmw. Part of my problem is that I am so confused at this point that I no longer know what helps and what doesn't. At first I read your response and thought, ok, this could be what my guy is going through. But then a second set of thoughts bounced around -- those where he's told me that I'm "where his heart is" and initiating the exclusivity conversation, etc. So I end up just not knowing.

ilmw - i love my wife???

May 20, 2007

Thanks, ilmw. Part of my problem is that I am so confused at this point that I no longer know what helps and what doesn't. At first I read your response and thought, ok, this could be what my guy is going through. But then a second set of thoughts bounced around -- those where he's told me that I'm "where his heart is" and initiating the exclusivity conversation, etc. So I end up just not knowing.

ilmw - i love my wife???

Sounds like you have a real pickle there... You have been seeing this guy for 5 months... that should be long enough.. to develop feelings... and have a sense if a relationship is going somewhere.

and Yes you are correct... your the second one to guess (ilmw)

May 20, 2007

I think if I were in your shoes, I'd ask myself what's important to me in a relationship or in my life. To me, it's important that the person I am friends with, or dating (the important people) act consistently and with honesty. Sporadic, inconsistent messages creates distrust in me.

If what you want is someone to share some good times with, but you're not looking for the security, consistency of actions. Then stick with it. You aren't really losing anything at that point.

However, if you think you can wait out his fear and one day it will just go away, then I think you're fooling yourself. He has to tackle that one on his own. I believe he fears rejection by you. So he leaves first in an attempt to prevent you from leaving him. And since he feels he's not worth-while enough for you to actually want to be with him for who he is, then he keeps his distance in order to keep you. Self rewarding proposition at that point. If he never opens up, you'll never see the bad stuff, and you'll never leave him. When he does feel he opened up too much, he pulls away to create distance so when you leave (he believes you will once you see who he is) then it won't hurt so badly.

So basically, you can't fix him. That's all I'm saying. He either figures out that people aren't rejecting him because he's a bad person, but because not everyone is compatible... or he cacoons himself into a nice safe little life where he has little jaunts out to experience affection and attention but never risks having his fragile ego damaged if someone decides they don't want to be in his life anymore.

I personally think you'd be better off telling him that when he's ready to face his fears, and grow as a person, then come look you up... until that point, he needs to work on himself first before he'll ever be a good partner for someone else.

May 20, 2007

I think if I were in your shoes, I'd ask myself what's important to me in a relationship or in my life. To me, it's important that the person I am friends with, or dating (the important people) act consistently and with honesty. Sporadic, inconsistent messages creates distrust in me.

If what you want is someone to share some good times with, but you're not looking for the security, consistency of actions. Then stick with it. You aren't really losing anything at that point.

However, if you think you can wait out his fear and one day it will just go away, then I think you're fooling yourself. He has to tackle that one on his own. I believe he fears rejection by you. So he leaves first in an attempt to prevent you from leaving him. And since he feels he's not worth-while enough for you to actually want to be with him for who he is, then he keeps his distance in order to keep you. Self rewarding proposition at that point. If he never opens up, you'll never see the bad stuff, and you'll never leave him. When he does feel he opened up too much, he pulls away to create distance so when you leave (he believes you will once you see who he is) then it won't hurt so badly.

So basically, you can't fix him. That's all I'm saying. He either figures out that people aren't rejecting him because he's a bad person, but because not everyone is compatible... or he cacoons himself into a nice safe little life where he has little jaunts out to experience affection and attention but never risks having his fragile ego damaged if someone decides they don't want to be in his life anymore.

I personally think you'd be better off telling him that when he's ready to face his fears, and grow as a person, then come look you up... until that point, he needs to work on himself first before he'll ever be a good partner for someone else.

YES 100%.. I agree.

May 20, 2007

I believe he fears rejection by you. So he leaves first in an attempt to prevent you from leaving him. And since he feels he's not worth-while enough for you to actually want to be with him for who he is, then he keeps his distance in order to keep you. Self rewarding proposition at that point. If he never opens up, you'll never see the bad stuff, and you'll never leave him. When he does feel he opened up too much, he pulls away to create distance so when you leave (he believes you will once you see who he is) then it won't hurt so badly.

Walk, thank you so much. What you've written here not only makes sense but much of it is a much more eloquent way of saying the same things he's said to me. The first time he distanced himself was about two weeks into things when we were having an innocent (or so I thought) conversation about marriage. We weren't discussing this in the context of us, but just generally. He was musing back and forth and didn't come a firm conclusion, but at the point when I did the same, I could feel him leave, could feel it happening! The following week, when he was being distant and I asked him about it, he told me that he doesn't like himself very much and doesn't understand how it is that I do. On another occasion, he expressed concerns about the fact that he was the first man I'd dated since my divorce.

So your response really brings it all together for me.

I guess what I don't understand is how/why he was so warm and close initially -- talking about trips together, making plans into the future, etc. -- and then just pulled that back. The other day he said he was concerned that soon someone would say the "L word" (that's how he referred to it - he's a grown man!!). He said this in tones that would normally be reserved for statements like, Soon they're going to have to amputate that leg. Arrggghhhhhhhh!!!!

Thanks again, Walk.

May 20, 2007

I'm going to have to go back and re-read more of your posts, because I can relate to the feelings you're experiencing, and think I'm starting to understand something. Like you, my guy initially sought closeness and connection, and then suddenly shut it off once I opened up to him. He's been very inconsistent, which breeds this feeling of discontent within me and makes me question whether I can trust him at all. With my current (er, past? dunno) guy, I could literally feel him pull away from me once we got close as well. As though I could FEEL some sort of wall being put up, without him even saying anything...and this was just hours after we slept together.

People pull away and cycle back based on one simple thing: FEAR. Sometimes it's fear of getting hurt, sometimes it's fear of attachment/dependency, sometimes it's fear of losing one's identity, but it all comes back to FEAR and being READY for a real, trusting, healthy relationship. I remember reading a book ten years ago while taking a psych class: "Love is letting go of fear." The title alone is spot on, isn't it?

If a guy still holds on to that fear, he's not emotionally available. To continue to pursue or be involved with a man who's not emotionally available is literally like pure torture. You don't deserve to be tortured. You deserve someone who's willing to look fear in the eye and still move forward. We all deserve that.

May 20, 2007

I agree with Walk and StarGazer here.

I think the thing that made my relationship work is that neither one of us really had a huge desire to be involved with someone again. When we met it hadn't even been four months since either one of us got divorced. And it seems our heads were equally warped from going through bad marriages.

It sounds like maybe you're a lot further along in the healing process than he is. Was he married before or in a LTR or something?

May 20, 2007

SG - I confess that I have been folloiwng your threads as I see some similarities not only between the guys but in how you and I are responding. Like you, I have been replaying every word, every conversation and going through endless variants of, how could he be doing this now when he said that then... or how can it seem that in an instant everything went poof when the instant before everything was full of promise.

I don't remember who, but one of the poster's in your thread said something to the effect that you can reread his texts over and over as much as you want but that won't change what he's doing now. That really struck a chord with me, as I have been unable to let go because I keep cycling back to what was (or what could have been) without giving nearly enough credit to what is.

The thing is, I know that when I tell him I can't sleep with him any more because I want to be able to date others (see my "becoming unexclusive" thread for those details), he's going to say or do something and I will crumble. I have no willpower with this guy. I want to shake him into recognizing the vision that I have, the vision I am pretty certain he had and even has at times. I think that because I don't operate the way he does, it is really hard for me to understand how he can distance himself this way. For me, the more feelings I have, the less distant I am, not the other way 'round. So I keep thinking that he'll snap out of it (or, worse yet, that I can somehow snap him out of it). Anyway. Not trying to bore you with details but sometimes it's easier to see it all clearly when it's someone else.

AG - He was married for 15 years (approx) and then in a LTR for 10. There was time between those two but I don't know the details of how long. He's been out of the LTR for 1 1/2 years or so. I'm separated (in the process of dovorce) and it's been about 6 months. I mentioned in my other thread that his gf from the LTR got saved and then stopped having sex with him because she said it was wrong. That was a big blow for him (understandably). He's dated since then but nothing serious. He was totally head over heals with me until that first marriage conversation took place and then the dance in and out began. I don't mind going slow -- I kind of welcome it, in fact -- but I don't enjoy hot/cold, on/off type behavior.

May 20, 2007

SO7 - I'm so right where you are right now, except I think I might be right where you were the first time your guy distanced himself. I don't want to find myself in your shoes, where he's done it repeatedly, leaving me with the same questions and doubts time and time again. (HUG)

Question though: How did you go about talking with your guy about his distancing? I have no idea how to bring up the subject. I fear if I do, I will drive him away. However, if I don't, I have a feeling I will never know what happened, what went wrong, where his feelings went...he will just disappear into thin air.

I should also add that my guy, like yours, seems to have had some serious and painful relationships. I just don't

think either one of them are ready to give us what we want...and who knows if they ever will.....

May 20, 2007

SG - There are a few differences that made it easy (or easier) for me to discuss the distance issue with my guy. One is our ages -- I'm 40's and he's 50's and I think we are operating under slightly different rules. Just as a for instance, I have to practically get seriously angry in order for my guy to allow me to pay for anything, he is very old school. So I wasn't thinking about dating rules and had not come on LS at that point either.

In any case, he did the first backing off before we ever slept together and when it happened it was so unexpected that I didn't recognize what it was nor assume that it had anything to do with me. So the way I ended up phrasing it was asking him about his "energy" which sounds awfully new-agey in retrospect, but I couldn't find another term that made sense. It was almost like a balloon that had deflated. So that was how I couched it and his response was that he didn't like himself very much and couldn't see who I did. Idiot that I am, I did not recognize this for what it was, and allowed him to gloss over it. I guess I wanted it glossed over because I liked him so much.

We then had a good couple of weeks and that's when I ended up sleeping with him. He was very careful to call me the next day and reassure me that he'd a good time, something he reinforced in emails throughout the following week. Little did I know that another distancing was in the offing.

All I can tell you is that each distancing is both easier and harder. Easier because you start to understand that he is coming back. Harder because at some level you think you've seen the last one -- you were just sooo close that surely that has to have had an impact on him, right? So you're never quite prepared.

Two weeks ago, my guy was taling about "love" all the time -- not a direct statement to me, but it was peppering his talk -- I love being with you, I loved our night together, I love talking to you, etc. This weekend, I haven't seen him and only talked to him briefly yesterday... at about the intimacy level you'd talk to the electrician or mailman.

Ugh. Who invented this dating stuff anyway.

May 21, 2007

Dont know if this helps or not....But one thing I learned from the many dating books out there is this: Its ok to have feelings. The only things is learning HOW and WHEN to react that feeling. In other words, just because you feel something, that doesnt mean that you have to ACT on that feeling. If you start to haved a certain feeling, stop and ask yourself what that feeling is TRULY about before you actually ACT on it. And I haved to admit, it tooks me a couple of months to actually get it down, but it really does work. I promise. And I've also learned to do the exact opposite of what I'm feeling at the time. All of this put together is what helps me to hold my emotions at bay. So what I do is hold my emotions at bay until the guy start to show his side and then I follow his lead. It usually works better that way. I hope what I am trying to say is making sense.

May 21, 2007

And I've also learned to do the exact opposite of what I'm feeling at the time. All of this put together is what helps me to hold my emotions at bay. So what I do is hold my emotions at bay until the guy start to show his side and then I follow his lead. It usually works better that way. I hope what I am trying to say is making sense.

Yeah nice. Acting opposite of what you feel is at least childish. You are confusing the hell out of your partners.

It should be called Self-Control. Not letting your emotions manipulate you. It cant be done rationally....it works a bit but not completely. Its a state of mind. Emotional balance. Your inner core. Your thoughts free of fears mainly.

May 21, 2007

Yeah nice. Acting opposite of what you feel is at least childish. You are confusing the hell out of your partners.

It should be called Self-Control. Not letting your emotions manipulate you. It cant be done rationally....it works a bit but not completely. Its a state of mind. Emotional balance. Your inner core. Your thoughts free of fears mainly.

Exactly. Thanks for proving my point... All I'm saying is that by doing these things, it will help a woman achieve "Self Control" and "emotional balance" Controlling emotions is different for a guy than it is for a girl. So while I respect your response, that process is easier said than done for a woman. Your looking at this from a man's point of view.

May 21, 2007

Yeah nice. Acting opposite of what you feel is at least childish. You are confusing the hell out of your partners.

\

And by the way, I meant in the VERY EARLY stages of dating someone new.

May 21, 2007

Not that you asked me () but I think my self-control is just fine. I am quite consistent in this relationship. It's dealing with someone who runs hot and cold that I am struggling with.

May 21, 2007

I just posted about a guy I've been seeing who I believe is being honest when he says he deliberately prevents himself from caring about me too much for fear of being hurt, etc.

Should the questions be "Do I want to put up with this type of behaviour?" and "Don't I deserve better, like consistency?". If someone is still battling inner demons, is it truly worth your while to continue having your own feelings negated?

You have to decide if you want to change to accommodate his inner demons or if you want him to meet your needs.

May 21, 2007

Not that you asked me () but I think my self-control is just fine. I am quite consistent in this relationship. It's dealing with someone who runs hot and cold that I am struggling with.

OH!! sorry....then my answer does not apply.:D Misunderstood!!

May 22, 2007

He must have a 6th sense.

After not seeing me this weekend (his choice), he has emailed me today to tell me he missed me and even called tonight (a rarity for him) with the same message. Still no plans to get together but these are big communication events for this guy.

It's like he knows what I am thinking of doing.

Did I say urg yet? Urg!

May 22, 2007

You have to decide if you want to change to accommodate his inner demons or if you want him to meet your needs.

This is an EXCELLENT point.

May 22, 2007

Exactly. Thanks for proving my point... All I'm saying is that by doing these things, it will help a woman achieve "Self Control" and "emotional balance" Controlling emotions is different for a guy than it is for a girl. So while I respect your response, that process is easier said than done for a woman. Your looking at this from a man's point of view.

Actually its BRAIN's point of view. Acting can get you temporary results. Its behavioral psychology field. Problem is you have to slowly build selfcontrol in the core - your attitude, believes, state of mind and stuff. And only then you will be OK. Nobody is that good actor not to show or slip one day.

It is probably harder for girls but on the other hand nobody wants from you flawless confidence and self control like girls demand from guys.

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