It makes no sense to you.
It can’t.
How can the very ones who can’t commit keep on choosing you? No matter how much you’re drawn to them, no matter how many times you keep finding yourself attracted to them, there’s another side to this.
He chooses you.
Why?
Because of the way you love. Because of the hope you give him. Because of exactly who you are.
This man you’re trying so hard to get a commitment out of, to prove why he should pick you, is exactly the man who needs you.
It’s no wonder in the beginning he tells you he wants the same thing as you.
It’s because he actually does.
It’s ironic to you that this could possibly be true because in flies in the face of common sense. If he actually wanted a loving, committed relationship with you, he would make it happen by taking action to make that happen.
Right?
Exactly. That’s the common sense part.
But there’s a whole other part to this.
He believes the reason why he hasn’t found love, the reason he hasn’t been able to commit before is because he’s never found someone who could love him the way he wants to be loved, who could be someone worth committing to.
He puts this all on someone outside of himself. The women before you.
And now you.
If you’ve downloaded my “Why Men Pull Away” program, you’ll know where these roots stem from.
And the more he puts it on you, the more he reveals himself to just be looking for someone to love him like he’s never been loved before, the more you’re going to rise to the occasion to show him.
This is where who you are comes in.
This is your moment. This is what you live for. To have the chance to prove just how much you love, how much you’re capable of loving and giving and caring and being everything he’s ever wanted in a woman.
This is you at your essence.
Giving, caring, loving unconditionally. It’s the most beautiful part of us we have to offer.
And for awhile, for as long as he’s comfortable believing this is the missing piece that he’s missed all along, it’s pure bliss.
This is what he sensed about you, Beautiful. This is the sensitive part of him coming through. He could tell. He saw your smile. He sensed the love – and the unbridled capacity for emotion - behind it, and it gave him hope.
Hope that he could finally do this. That you would be the one to make him capable of love, capable of emotional connection, capable of not running away again.
But he lacks the follow through.
When it starts feeling overpowered with that same love, he starts to lose control. And he can’t lose control.
Who he is, the image of what he’s worked so hard to present as who he is, depends on his maintaining this image, of being in control. And so when he starts feeling like there’s something more you want from him – like a real commitment – the conditional nature of what he thought was the unconditional love he craved takes over him and feels like control.
He’s lived most of his life with that kind of control. It’s what he’s running from.
And this is why it can be such a catch-22 for you.
The very thing he wants has a limit to how much he can handle if you so much as want more from him. Be content with giving him the kind of unconditional love without requiring a commitment for as long as it might take him to be the one to initiate that kind of commitment, and you’ll know it’s come from him.
But few of us can wait that long. After all, we’re not talking weeks or months here; we’re usually talking years. And even then, there are no guarantees.
So what do you do with this?
You stop driving yourself crazy believing that you’re wrong about him. No, you’re absolutely right about him!
Everything you feel he is. He has all the potential you sense. But is this enough?
No.
But not because you’re not enough. Not because there’s anything wrong with you. In fact, it’s precisely because of who you are that he’s here at all.
It’s only because you’re only one half of this, Beautiful. The other half has to come from him.
He absolutely chose you. But can he come out of his comfort zone enough to make this real? That takes something more than choosing you.
That takes choosing love.
Do you have a pattern of attracting men who won't commit? Share your story with us below in the comments!
It’s been almost 5 years since we’ve met and he stole my heart. It took him a year after we met to commit to making me his gf, which only lasted 7 months before he was caught cheating and called things off because he wasn’t “ready.” We are 2 years apart in age (currently he’s 26 and I’m 28). We came back together after he begged me to forgive him and swore he was ready, which lasted 5 months before he was caught cheating again and I called things off because he admitted he still wasn’t ready.
That was now 2.5 years ago, and since then we have gone back and forth from radio silence to hooking up, spending holidays with each other’s families, spending birthdays and New Year’s Eves together…yet, he still won’t commit 100%. The chemistry we have is undoubtable. We are the best of friends, talking all day (when we are speaking to each other). But given we’ve lived on two separate coasts these 5 years, his age, his playboy status, our pursuits as new attorneys…he no longer talks about marrying me, kids with me, or a future with me (the prospects of bf, engaged, etc.) like he did years ago.
Today, I vowed to just stop all contact. I didn’t tell him and haven't reached out today, but weirdly neither has he. But given my age, that for us to be together I’d have to relocate (which he hasn’t asked), and my desire to get married soon and to be a couple for a few years before having kids, I felt it best to move on....Finally. I’ve dated people only in the last year but none of them have had the chemistry or friendship my ex and I have. I feel like, the fact I don’t even know what it’s like to have all of him (without him cheating or even in the same city) that waiting on him any longer than these 5 years would be an injustice to myself at almost 30. But why do I feel like I’ve made the wrong choice? Have I?
No, you haven't. Reading your post, I personally think you have thrown yourself under the bus since the beginning. A man who cheats on you... Girl, no. I don't understand why you would give him so many chances to disrespect you. Playboy status? Why on earth would you want to be married to one of those? Could it be you're falling unconsciously into the trap of thinking that the right woman would change his ways? That if you're more this or that you can make him change? Be careful, because life doesn't work like that. Move on to a man who is kind, loving, respectful and who wants the same things you want. You've already wasted five years on the wrong person. Learn everything you can from this experience and go make your own life.
"But few of us can wait that long. After all, we’re not talking weeks or months here; we’re usually talking years. And even then, there are no guarantees."
It's December 10th. It's taken my whole life to get to this day. I'm 67 years old. I've spent my whole life waiting. First waiting for my father. Then, beginning at age 17, waiting for 42 years for a man I wouldn't give up on, who didn't marry me ( a Vietnam veteran, a drug addict and alcoholic, a survivor of physical and sexual abuse in childhood) ending with his death in 2008. And again, beginning this last May when I finally opened my heart again to a man who is just like the man you described above who won't commit. It is a sign of progress for me that I risked opening my heart again but soon after that, as his behavior began to baffle me, I found your website. I had Googled, "Why doesn't he call me after saying that he would?" and found that I was not alone in asking that question. After reading what you wrote, I refrained from calling him and found that he would call me eventually.
Eventually.
That was the pattern. It wasn't long before I found myself unable to wait for him to call and began calling him first. That was the beginning of the end. Except for one time, when he was watching a baseball game on TV, he always seemed happy to hear from me, but I was teaching him how to treat me. Teaching him that he didn't have to call me.
Now it has been since the day before Thanksgiving that he has called me, and that was in response to a call I made to him. I sensed that he was saying goodbye, although he didn't come out and say goodbye, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye. He hasn't been in a relationship since his wife left him 25 years ago. I thought I was the one who would change that. I was wrong. I called him about a week ago, but he has not returned my call. My gut feeling is that I won't hear from him again.
Today, it is absolutely clear to me that I have a choice. As you have said, I am the one doing the choosing. I choose to go on with my life. I've never been able to do this before.
My heart is open. It is not broken.
It is the only way to go forward. With an open heart. To choose to love myself and know that I am worthy of love. That we are all worthy of love.
Thank you for all your insights and encouragement!
Oh Amanda, I feel every one of your words. Thank you for sharing. You brought me to tears reading this from you. Because these kinds of realizations do take our whole lives to get to. At any age. What you've discovered here - that we are always the ones doing the choosing, even when - and especially when - it doesn't feel this way, is my hope for each and every one of us. We may not be able to change what we mean to them, but we can absolutely change our mindset within all our relationships. Don't close that beautiful heart of yours for anything, Amanda. You're absolutely right it's not broken, it's open. And an open heart is pure gold to the ones who can handle the shine.
I honestly don't know what attracts me to this type of man. Maybe it's the newness of it all. I get drawn in from his charm, from his texting, the X's and the O's at nighttime texting. How he wants to touch me and teases me with all his lustful ways. BUT, he tells me he Loves me and I believe him, because for so long I have been waiting for this guy to Love me as a friend and a lover. THEN, my nightmare comes crashing in! He starts to become aloof. His texts are few and far between but still when he does, he tells me he cares. Soon I need an answer and so I ask him what he wants to happen between us. I am honest with him...I am ME. I have no ulterior motives, no lies, no over the top game I am playing. I just want this guy to show me his Love, to tell me he Loves me and wants to be with ME. But there's another her and now he can't leave her. He can't risk it. Now, my heart is broken in a million pieces...AGAIN! So see, I did learn from that experience, most recently, and I will NEVER put myself in that position again. I will NEVER believe another guy telling me its me he wants because you see --- I don't believe it anymore. He destroyed my Hope when he misled me. When he told me that he would do anything for me and he would be there for me. He made a choice to stay with her, to stay in the life I know he wanted to be better. We were friends for years and he basically wasted those years... for me. Of course, I blame myself for getting involved with him on that level. Thank God, we never slept together, but we kissed and we hugged and we had a few places we met to have alone time. I also know now that the "midlife crisis" they claim to go thru is a pure lie. It's just for them to feel better about themselves and in the process they use an innocent, good woman to fulfill their need. They may be sorry to your face for what they did, but they went back to their life with her, and left you in the cold. I say to myself that I should of known better. I should of not let myself get in too deep. It hurt bad as I cried endless nights and felt awful all the time. See, I wasn't and am not a little young girl that went thru a break up, like most of us do in our teen years----I'm a grown woman, married for over 20 years, and divorced now for almost a decade more. I am me once again. I did get my spirit back and I do have hope that someday maybe it will be in the cards for me to meet a real gentleman that is free to love me and his actions...his longtime actions and words will prove it to me. I hope so, but until then, if it is God's will, I will be okay. I will survive, as the song goes. I am stronger than I have ever been and I will not accept anything less the next time around. It may not even be in this life for me, but I am at peace with me and I know that is what counts. I give selfless Love to everyone in my Life and I am not about to change that now----and this man I want, I call him my dream man, because he isn't real YET---well, I want him to be selfless too. It's what we both deserve, and I know somehow he's out there...just hope it's not too late for either of us. God Speed! Love, Lor...... P.S. Sorry for the jumbled writing---don't have much room to write my long responses---otherwise I would separate into paragraphs 🙂
oh Lora, you're not the only one. We all want to believe he's different, and that those X's and O's of nighttime texting actually means to him what they mean to us. If you have to ask, trust yourself that you already know the answer. Intuitively. We still ask, just to hear something different than what we already sense, but we already know if we allow ourselves to. Every relationship, we learn. First we learn what we don't want. Then we learn what we do. And the clearer we get, the more we narrow it down so we can't miss him - and so he can't miss you either. It's never too late!
It's scary how the years fly by while you listen to his BS excuses. It's always feasible enough for you to think: "Maybe he's right; maybe it's my fault." Now, I find myself still living with him, after 7 years and still no commitment. He's been a charmer, who's cleverly twisted the facts. He says he can't please me, when it's him who cant be pleased. He says he's scared of losing me, when it's him that has one foot out the door. He says he loves me most, when it's him that won't commit. This week, I reached breaking point when I found out he's still married. For once, I'm really grateful as he's caused me so much pain that I won't have any regrets about leaving him. Thanks to Jane and her posts and letters, I'm slowly recovering my self-esteem and getting my mojo back. The reason I'm saying this is: face the truth EARLY on. Don't hang on like I did and waste years of your life.
I'm so sorry, SJ. At least now, you have your breaking point. You've captured exactly why we have to do what we need to do for ourselves until we have clearly seen what we need to see. These are wise words you're passing along when you've been there in the heart of a relationship like this. Here's to you, getting your mojo back. You will! Even more so then before because of what you've been through. I'm so glad these posts and letters are helping you through. Whenever someone projects the very thing they're doing onto you, that's a red flag not to ignore. But you're human, SJ. And now, now you know!
My boyfriend and I just broke up 3 weeks ago. The awkward part is that we're still living together for the time being. We've been togegher for 3 years. When we first met he told me about his issues (life long depression, hard childhood, PTSD from being stationed in Iraq, fear of intimacy). He wanted me, he could see a future with me. We talked about the future, about marriage and kids. Last year he decided to buy a house and I was there every step of the way. He made sure to get a house that met my needs, he wanted to make sure I would be happy in the house we found since we would be here for the next 10 or so years before we upgraded (all his words). That was last November in 2015. Things were blissfully great for a while! Then a few months ago he stopped seeing his therapist because he felt he didn't need her anymore. Then 3 weeks ago he threw a bombshell on me and told he wasn't happy and really depressed and he no longer wanted to be with me. He said that he can't give me what I need and I deserve to be with someone who loves me they way I deserve to be loved. He said he just wants to be alone. I asked him why he would have me pick out his house, move me in, create a home, buy me a puppy, and talk marriage and kids with me if that was not ultimately what he wanted. He told me that he was entertaining the idea of marriage and kids and for a while he thought he wanted that but he realized he just wants to be alone (he has told me once before when we had first started seeing each other that he always figured he'd end up alone). He said if he was going to marry and have kids with anyone it'd be with me but that's not what he wants. I'm still living here until the first of the year because I have no place to go and I need to get some things in order to find a new place. I am completely heart broken. The worst part is, this is the second time this has happened to me (once when I was 25, with my ex, I'm now 31). I know that he really doesn't want to be alone deep down but his fears are pushing me away. I love him so much and I want nothing more than to work things out but he's just not putting in the work he needs to. Why does this keep happening to me? Also I'm torn on whether I should try to work things out with him or just let him go?
Have you tried letting him go even while you're still there? By focusing on you, letting him be - just be - sometimes we find a balance between togetherness and separateness that makes someone like this with all he's been through - feel safe again. When someone feels safe, they can feel. Without feeling safe, they run in circles trying to figure out how to bring back that safe feeling, even though it may never have existed for them in the first place. I would encourage to at least see his therapist again, gently, but still mention it for his own sake. Sounds like he needs support from someone who he doesn't have to worry about letting down. As for you, Jamie, it sounds like you have a beautiful heart that feels so deeply for someone going through these types of things and you want to help. This is such a beautiful part of you. But know that you can't be the only one who's willing to come out of your comfort zone, he has to be able to get there, too. And PTSD, depression and a difficult childhood can't always be loved away by someone with a heart like yours, no matter how deeply that heart feels.
Thank you, Jane for your reply! I'm working on letting him go (even while still being here). I'm trying to remind myself that I am enough regardless and that the love I deserve is out there for me, whether it's with him or not. It's hard for me to let him go because I don't want to "give up on him" but I'm slowly realizing that I have to put myself first, no one else. I'd love nothing more than to work things out with him but I just don't think he's willing to put in the work. I want happiness for him but he has to want it too. For now I'm trying to focus on myself and my future without him. Thank you for your emails, they are helping me a lot!
Good on you, Jane! Good on you for putting yourself first. There is no other way, you always have to be number one, don't ever lose yourself in relationships. It might take a while to develop this muscle. But keep pouring all your energy into filling yourself up, you are generous and loving soul, Jane! All those problems he revealed to you straight away and you attracted to him still the same ... or maybe more so. Is there a clue in this? Do you have history with these kind of problems, Jane? Are you trying to figure it out for yourself indirectly, perhaps? Where most people would pull away you seem not to be afraid and perhaps even attracted to these kind of situations? Perhaps you are extremely compassionate, often not to your own benefit , perhaps? Lots of questions for you.
And you don't have to "give up on him". Letting him go and working it out now is a good thing you are doing for yourself. As you said, its not a first time, so you can figure it out now and make it the last time. Desire happiness for yourself, seek support, get your girl-network wider. Go and play, enjoy yourself, don't be dragged into perpetual sadness, dream your dreams, don't lose yourself in relationships. Take care of yourself. When person with problems is in our relationships they can drag us into their problems. Don't take part in it. Stay outside. This is why he was attracted to you. He saw you as a sunshine, a light at the end of the tunnel. But he possibly don't realize also that you have your own everyday needs and help with your own problems just as BIG and you are can be dragged into his misery and he has ability to do so.
Boundaries, girl! Establish your own kingdom, fill it with love, activities, rules and rulers! And keep your priorities straight ... as you do! As you do! But go deeper this time. Don't go just like "last time", break the cycle! Go deeper into love, loving yourself, sweetheart! You can, I know you can! And you deserve it! I am sorry that it seems so hard sometimes, but it is not as hard as when you were powerless little baby, and you survived! Now you are big girl! You can and you will figure it out. We are all here to help. Love Mila
Not knowing ourselves does this. Not knowing who we are at all beyond and apart from all these concepts of "man", "woman", "sexual orientation", "nationality", etc etc etc does all this damage. We're trying to make a subconscious script work where it really doesn't and never actually has. We don't see ourselves as a human manifestation of an essence.
At least that's what it's come to seem like for me. A lot of reading has brought me to that conclusion.
I've been trying to find a partner, a boyfriend since I was like 4 because as a little girl, I was brought up to believe however tacitly that my worth lied on being a woman, whatever that means and being chosen by a man. No matter what we achieve in life, society minimizes it if there is no man around to take credit for it. Some world we live in.
Finding out about all of this left me feeling confused, sad, angry, and cheated. Of course the world and no one really cheated me, but it's how I felt. At the same time, I realize that the burden of the search is pointless and unreal. It liberates me, but I also feel somewhat confused. I guess that's more of a goal in an of itself, to find out who I am as a lifelong, more worthwhile project.
So true, Angel. Release the burden. Love finds you in ways you least expect along this lifelong, more worthwhile project than any other.
My problem I have realized is falling for someone too quickly and deeply. I've never really really liked anyone before so when I did it was intense. I've only had one recent past bf who I got burged from but he was the one I longed for it to work out for the long run . At the one year mark he said he was afraid to commit, in this sense I take it he's afraid of being serious. Now this is a guy who in the past broke up with a previous ex at the one year mark.
Sounds like he has a one year expiration date, Diane. That must be when things get too real. Remember that you really don't know someone well enough in the beginning in terms of character and values and all the things he'll need to prove to you to get ahead of yourself. If you can measure how much you feel like you're on equal footing with him and use that as your guide to whether he's worth your beautiful heart, you'll save yourself some heartbreak down the road. He doesn't get the deeper part of you that fast; he needs time - real time - to show you he's truly on the same page as you.
ThanI you for your response Jane! Your insight has helped me reevaluate how I approach relationships if I want to pursue them in the future. As I'm recovering from a breakup since March with the said guy, your perspective is on point.
So glad, Diane!
Well for me I've known this guy for nearly 6 years in a friendship. Normally most friendships (male n female) would become BF & GF after 5 years and enjoy each other's company.
With this guy I saw him 30 Oct and I mentioned to him taking the friendship to the next step n he said he just want to be friends n I'm like sure in a happy manner. I had ideas like 1-1 coffee when he's on his 4 week break n he said "that's not a bad idea" & my family want to meet him n he said he would love to meet my family 1 day n he wasn't shy when he said it.
My pattern for attracting men who won't commit is that I'm cool, calm & collective. I would love myself as a part of me says don't talk to him unless if he talks to me I will talk back to him. I would smile at him whilst talking to him. If he ignores me i back off n give him space.
I like to be assertive to them too.
What can I do with my friendship with this guy who I've known for nearly 6 years n he's not ready to commit but I'm ready to take the friendship to the next level?
If he's not ready, keep living your own life, Courtney. You can't change him, but you can become the best person you can possibly be - with the best life you can possibly create for yourself! - so that you're not just waiting around for him to be ready. And you never know, while you're creating the kind of life you want for yourself, you may just find someone else who IS ready right now.