annabanana85 Posted May 19, 2011 Posted May 19, 2011 I have been dating this European grad student who is in his mid 20s for the past 2 months. He is kind of dorky and shy but i really like him. The thing is he is very reserved and our relationship is progressing very slowly. We see each other once a week since we live one hour away and he is also very busy with work. During the week, we contact each other by text and never talk on the phone. I know that he is not a player and he has very limited experience with girls. When we meet, he is very enthusiastic and attentive to me however I feel like we do not get to spend a lot of time together. He had his big grad school exams this week and was very busy. He is also not particularly romantic and expressive with his feelings and we do not talk about emotions and mushy stuff. He is very physically affectionate and passionate in bed though. I also know that he is someone who is very reserved and does not have close friends. He does not flirt with me and rarely compliments me yet I sense that he is very interested in me and does not really know how. Do you think this guy is emotionally unavailable and the relationship is going nowhere? Or is he just a shy person who will take some time to open up? How can I get him to be more passionate and romantic and attentive?
Leigh 87 Posted May 19, 2011 Posted May 19, 2011 Hey, I am seeing a guy who is also very affectionate in bed and when he is alone with me, but that hates talking about feelings or acting all lovey dovey; for instance, he rarely calls me goegeous or beautiful. Furthermore, my guys mother recently died. It was a year ago that she dies, but it was out of the blue, and they were close. Perhaps he is emotionally unavailable, and your guy might be unavailable emotionally too, but due to his studies taking up so much time and energy? I was just making the observation that both guys are very affectionate in bed, and yet rarely show it in other ways, that they like us... and he correlation between my guy snother dying, ad him beig emotionally unavailable, and showing a similar attitude that your guy is ( affectionate i bed, but no outside of the house and seldom talks abot feelings or calls us gorgeous or act all lovey)
thatone Posted May 19, 2011 Posted May 19, 2011 i think you two have different situations, but similar men. as for anna, i was like that when i was younger and around college age too. for me, it was due to work/school. men are conditioned to think that career success trumps all other successes, so we can wind up being emotionless people when working hard on such things, because being emotionless about work is more effective, to be honest. when disassociating emotion from work, and work is most of your time, it's easy to let that spill over into relationships too. for leigh, yeah, the mother's death is probably a lot of it. the death of his mother is a huge thing, for most men their mother is the one woman that they can always trust. emotions are hard for men to deal with sometimes because of the reason that anna mentioned, when emotion starts to affect your work/study/etc., the male response is often to stamp emotional thoughts, or confide in their mothers if when they need to have a woman's input. you have to gain that trust. for both of you, i think the best solution is an honest talk about it, but you have to have that talk carefully. if you make demands and accuse them of being emotionless, they will push you away as part of their knee jerk reaction to other emotional issues. reassure them that you care for them, and are there to help, not hinder. tell them that they don't have to "fight the world alone" so to speak, and that they can trust you, all they have to do is tell you how they feel. put yourselves in YOUR mothers' shoes. ya know how your mother will always help in any way she can no matter what you've done? talk to them in that way about this, and if their feelings are mutual toward you they'll come around.
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