Acting Unmanly & Ending The Courtship & Communication Makes Her Want Space

The importance of acting masculine & continuing the courtship & communication.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for about eight months. Five months ago he met his girlfriend. However, he says he stopped doing what the book teaches after they became exclusive.

She asked for space two weeks ago and is still distant and unsure she wants to continue. He’s in limbo. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is from a viewer who has been following my work, he says, for about eight months. About five months ago, he met his current girlfriend, who he’s kind of on a break with now. However, he says things are great, but as soon as they became exclusive, he said he just stopped doing everything that was in the book, got lazy, got complacent. He basically stopped the love story. He stopped dating and courting her, stopped making her feel heard and understood, the legs closed. On top of that, he doesn’t say, but just the fact that a woman is wanting space, typically she wants space because she’s become the man in the relationship. He’s smothering her. He’s making her the center of his world, not focusing on things. He used to focus on just simple things like, instead of coming up with a date idea and inviting her, he’s like, “What do you want to do tonight, honey?” And she’s like, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” So I see the same things over and over again.

It’s just a good email for those of you that are in a relationship or about to be in a relationship, you can learn from this guy’s mistakes so you can avoid it and having been doing this professionally for a little over 20 years now at this point, I see the same patterns over and over again. Guys all make the same mistakes. They stop dating and courting their girlfriend oftentimes because they’re trying to save money. The second thing is, they don’t make her feel heard and understood. They don’t take the time to open her up. If she’s a little distant, they don’t ask why. They just pretend like everything is fine. Then when the girl wants space, serves him with divorce papers or wants them to move out, then they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t think she was serious about all those things she was complaining about.” It’s a short email, but it’s a good one just because again, the guys make the same mistakes. You know, the book will get you there. It’ll teach you what you need to do.

Like Jocko Willink says, “Discipline equals freedom.” You must stay disciplined. This is like when I had Kuang on a few years ago, he owns a CrossFit gym. He could time it down to the month. People would come in, they’re overweight, they’re out of shape, usually because they just had a breakup. They get fit, they get in shape, and about 120 days, they often meet somebody else in the gym who’s also doing CrossFit, who’s probably there because she had a breakup as well. Then they start dating and they get into a serious relationship. Three or four months later, there’s no sign of either one of them, neither one of them coming to gym anymore. Then about a year and a half later, one or both of them comes back. Usually the dude comes back, he’s fat, he’s out of shape again. It’s like, they work out, they take care of themselves to attract somebody, but once they get into a relationship, they just let themselves go, basically.

The biggest complaint that women have about guys in long-term relationships is that they’re romantic at first, and then they just stop. The average guy thinks, “Well, that was that part of our relationship. That’s what I needed to do to get her, and now I don’t need to do those things anymore.” The reality is, women want to be in a love story. They want the fairy tale ending. They want the guy that continually makes the effort to love them and court them, make them feel heard and understood, and keep the romance going. When you stop dating her, when you stop making her feel heard and understood, what happens is you become roommates and you end up in a loveless, sexless relationship. Then usually the guy is used to having access to it, he stops doing all the things that made him successful. Then the girl no longer wants to have sex because she doesn’t feel safe anymore. She doesn’t feel attracted to him.

Especially like in this case, if your woman wants space, it’s usually because you’re smothering her and you basically turned her into your mommy and your therapist. It’s just a bad way to go. It’s totally unnecessary and this guy just totally did it to himself. At least he admits it. He admits his mistakes because unless you can admit your mistakes, you can’t fix it, because if you didn’t make any mistakes, there’s nothing to fix. There’s nothing to solve.

Viewer Email:

Dear Coach,

I hope my message finds you well.

I have followed your content for the past 8-9 months, and in the meantime, I have read your book two times.

Well, there’s part of the problem. He read the book enough to learn pick up skills and some basic dating skills. He started getting laid, enables him to get into a relationship, but he never went back, never bothered to learn the relationship wisdom in the book. Then now that things are a real problem and she wants space now, he’s willing to go back into the book and see where he went wrong.

This is why I say you gotta read the book 10 to 15 times, because there’s so many things in the book that are opposite of what you think you should do, and are the opposite of what society tells us that we should do. If you don’t really take the time to learn this stuff, as the weeks and months go by after you become exclusive, you’ll just slowly revert back to the way you were. Like in his case, he read the book twice and that was it, he never went back to it. So each time you go through it, you’re going to retain maybe 7% to 9% of what you learn. So if you only learn about 10%, 12%, 14% of the book, and then you don’t go back to it again, eventually that will just fade.

Whatever you observe, you participate in. What you do often, you do best. If you’re no longer focusing on the material and having an awareness about what you should be doing, what you’re doing that’s working and what you’re doing that’s not working, then over time, you just completely lose any awareness that you had. Like in this guy’s case, he wasn’t really willing to do anything to turn things around until she wanted space, until he was experiencing pain.

In May, I started dating my girlfriend and we had fun together. We became exclusive in July, and things were going well. She talked to her parents about me and I also met her brother. She was the one saying to me first that she loved me.

So back then, he was following what was in the book. I mean, it’s pretty simple. So many guys I see, they read the book a couple of times, they start getting laid, they start meeting girls, dating girls, they get into a relationship and they’re like, “Man, this was easy. I had to read a book once or twice and I got it.” Then what happens is it’s six months to a year later, two years later, when they really need the relationship wisdom and needing to understand pick-up dating and relationship skills that they don’t have those skills and then their relationship unravels and most guys are lazy.

It’s like the analogy of the frog. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump right out. If you put it in a pot of warm water, slowly turn up the heat. It’ll just float in air until it slowly boils to death. That’s what happens with guys. It’s like they won’t do anything about the fact their woman is not wanting to sleep with them, she’s getting a little bitchy, or she’s distant until she’s ready to break things off, until she wants to move out, or wants him to move out until he gets served with divorce papers. It’s like they won’t do anything until they look around and go, “Holy shit, I’m in boiling water now. Probably should go back to that book,” but oftentimes it’s kind of too late.

We traveled together and the vibe was very positive. At the end of September, she started acting distant and I could sense that something was going wrong…

Well again, you need the communication skills, Ten Disciplines of love, but if you just read the book twice it’s like, the average guy is looking, “I want a piece of ass. I want to get laid. I want a girlfriend.” That’s what the average guy is thinking. “I want to have sex.” So they focus on that. They get that and then they don’t pay attention to anything else, and since they’re getting it and it’s early in their relationship, they’re like, “I don’t need to go back to this book.” They never learn any of the relationship wisdom.

So when this happens, when the girl becomes distant, what do they do? They do nothing because all they know is their skills never went beyond pick-up and dating skills. So they typically just back off and don’t say anything to her. They don’t ask any good quality questions. They don’t say, “Hey babe, you seem a little distant. What’s going on? What’s on your mind?” They don’t do that because they never learned those parts of the book, because they didn’t think it was important at the time, because when you first start dating, it really doesn’t matter that much, but when you’re five, six months down the road and your girl’s distant and you act and you misapply the book by applying dating skills to that particular instance, you need to open her up and you don’t because again, this guy didn’t learn those skills and didn’t think they were important. Quite frankly, he didn’t follow instructions. That’s why he’s writing the email in.

…(In retrospect, I can say that I stopped doing a lot of the things from the book as soon as we got exclusive).

So he got across the finish line. He’s like, “Whew, I got this! My work is done here.”

Then about two weeks ago, she told me that she thought something was not right and she had lost her feeling of interest.

Probably because he was totally indifferent and just ignored her. Didn’t say he noticed that she’s distant, but he didn’t do anything about it. He just acted like a zombie or a lampshade and probably backed away a little bit and was a little even more cold and distant, which made her more cold and distant and she felt like he didn’t care because he never bothered to ask.

The quality of your relationship, not just your intimate ones, but all your relationships, is going to be in direct proportion to the quality of the questions you consistently ask each other. When your girl is distant and you don’t say anything, and you just continue to let that fester, then she doesn’t want to have sex and you just brush it off like everything’s fine, “Oh, she should be in a different mood tomorrow,” it’s not going to work. If the woman feels heard and understood, the legs open. They’re open like 7-Eleven. Anytime you want, you can get some. If you don’t make her feel heard and understood, you don’t take the time to see what’s wrong, and you don’t take the time to date her and court her, the legs are going to close and the 7-Eleven is going to go out of business, and you’re going to end up with a pussy embargo.

She suggested that we take a break for one week…

Often when women say, “Let’s take a break,” they’re usually saying that because they notice that you’re kind of checked out and they think, “Oh, he’s not dating me anymore. He doesn’t even bother to ask why I’m upset. He must not care. If he doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, well let me just make it easy for him and see what he thinks about space or taking a break.” If the guy’s just like, “OK yeah, whatever,” then she’s going to get upset and think, “Wow, he didn’t even give a shit when I said I wanted a break. Obviously he doesn’t care.”

So if a woman says she wants to take a break, he’s like, “Why do you want to take a break?” “Oh, I’ve lost my feelings of interest.” I would be like, “What do you mean? Why do you feel that way? What’s changed? What’s different? Why do you say that? What makes you feel that way?” But he never bothered to ask any of that because again, all he did was focus on pick-up skills, some seduction skills and maybe a little bit of dating skills so he get his noodle wet and that’s what he focused on. Then, like most guys, they get satiated with plenty of sex. Then what happens? You’ve been together six months, a year, they’re OK with having sex every couple of weeks just to get a release, and then they go from fucking like rabbits when they first meet to now they’re five, six months down the road and they’re having sex twice a month.

So he gets used to just going for it every couple of weeks when he wants a release. Then she starts to realize that he only wants to have sex when he wants to and he wants his release. Once he got his release, he’s just back to watching TV, playing video games and checked out and not really paying attention. So when she sees that, then she doesn’t even want to have sex with him anymore, because she doesn’t want to feel like he’s just using her for a release. He cared in the beginning, but now he doesn’t. He doesn’t even bother to ask why she’s bothered, why she’s upset, or why she’s distant. He just acts totally indifferent to it.

So when a woman suggests a break and he’s like, “Well, whatever,” usually she’ll go and cry to her mom, her sisters or her best friends and be like, “He didn’t even care. He didn’t even care that I suggested a break. He seemed totally fine with it.” So what they’re doing is they’re making it easy for you to bail if you don’t really want to be in the relationship. Most of the time that is why they suggest it. That’s why if you want to stay together, you say, “I don’t want to break. Well, let’s talk it out. What’s going on?” Let’s go back to what she said here. She said, “She thought something was not right and she had lost her feeling of interest.” So she lost attraction. She lost respect. If he’d had just gotten her to open up and talk to her it would be like, “What made you feel that way?” If you realize you’ve been doing things you shouldn’t have been doing, you say, “You know what? I’m sorry if I’ve been lazy. Sorry I got caught up in work. Sorry I haven’t been taking you out as much.”

One of the first things a guy should say when he comes home, especially if he’s living with his girl, is like, “Hey babe, how was your day?” You got to take a sincere interest because when you first met, what did you do? You used the book to get her to talk. She’s doing 80%, 90% of the talking, and you open her up by getting her to talk, but once you’ve been together for a while, you stopped doing that because again, the guy doesn’t think it’s important. So what happens? He knows she’s different. He just shrugs his shoulders and goes back to watching TV and playing video games and doesn’t really pay attention. He thinks everything’s fine. “Well, she didn’t bring anything up.” You didn’t bother to ask. If you didn’t bother to ask, it must mean you don’t care.

…So that she would see if she would miss me. I agreed and did not contact her afterwards.

Again, he’s just basically playing basic pick-up and some early dating skills to something that’s a relationship issue because again, he half-assed it, didn’t take his time to really learn the book, didn’t follow instructions. As soon as he started getting his noodle wet, he was like, “I got it. I don’t need it. I got it. I’m a Jedi Master at this.” You might be a Jedi Master at pick-up and seduction, but you’re not going to maintain your relationship if you just turn into an emotionless zombie. You were curious about her and what was going on, what she was thinking and feeling in the beginning, but once you were together for a while, you just completely stopped all of that.

Then, after 10 days, she messaged me saying that she could not still feel better and that it was up to my decision “how patient” I wanted to be.

Well, once again, basically saying, “Hey, if you don’t really want to be with me, why don’t we just break up?” So what does he say to her?

I told her that I have lots of things on my plate these days and she takes her time and if things felt clear, then she can reach out to me.

Really seems to care…

So if she calls you and says something like that, just say, “Well, I want to be together. I want you to make it work. I want you to make the effort.” When she says she wants to take a break, it’s like, “I’m not taking a break. I’m not interested in that. If you’re upset about something, let’s talk it out. We’ll stay up all night if we have to. Let’s get to the bottom of it. Why do you feel this way?” Instead, he just avoided it. Probably because he felt it would be an uncomfortable conversation. So he just swept it under the rug, ignored it and was totally indifferent to it. All he did was make her feel like he didn’t care again.

So this is part of the problem. He learned the pick-up and seduction stuff, so he’s misapplying that to somebody you’re in a relationship with because again, he didn’t bother really reading the book and taking it seriously. So now when he really needs to open her up and find out what’s going on, he just turns into a emotionless zombie. Totally checked out.

I am still not sure what I should do apart from that. I’d be very grateful for your suggestions. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Best,

Bob

Well in this particular case, again,she reached out and she’s like, “Well, it almost sounds like you’re not going to do anything to fix the relationship.” I assume she’s probably going to start talking to other guys because she’s making it up to leaving it up to you because you’re the one that’s checked out, not really making an effort anymore, and it makes her feel like you don’t care and you don’t want to be with her. All the things that you did in the beginning, you stopped doing. So being totally indifferent is not going to fix this.

In this case, if I were you, I would call her up and invite her over to make dinner at your place. You start out by saying, “I’m sorry if I’ve been kind of cold and distant and checked out. I’ve been too focused on work, haven’t been taking you out as much, haven’t really taken the time to see what’s going on, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. I apologize for basically turning into an emotionless zombie. I’ve probably made you feel like I didn’t give a shit, and that was not my intent.” You got to get her to come over, and she says, “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” say, “What are you saying? You don’t want to be together anymore? I’m not going to stay with you if you’re not even wanting to come see me and you don’t want to make any effort to resolve this.” If she doesn’t want to come over and she says, “Well, my feelings are gone. I don’t really want to be with you anymore,” well at that point, it might be too late. She might already be checked out, but it sure looks like just from what she’s saying, she’s trying to make it easy for you to dip because you’ve made her feel like you don’t give a fuck about her. So you can’t just act like a zombie in this case and think it’ll just fix itself.

You’re not applying what’s in the book because quite frankly, you don’t even know what the hell is in the book because you didn’t take the time to learn it. That’s what I would do if I were you. I’d invite her over to make dinner, see if she’s down with that. If she’s not, then you might just have to pull the plug because clearly, usually when a woman leaves, she leaves when her feelings are totally gone. The fact that she calls you says her feelings really haven’t changed and she’s like, “Well, how patient do you want to be? Do you want to stick this out?” She’s trying to make it easy for him to dip, because the way he acts, he acts like he doesn’t want to be with her anymore. Like I said, invite her over and get her to talk, dude. Gotta get back to the book. You gotta spend time with it. The Courtship Never Ends, that’s a chapter in the book.

So he knows that he stopped doing all those things, but I mean, that’s a pretty quick turnaround to go from her being in love to wanting space. That’s what happens when you check out. She’s not totally, fully emotionally bonded to you yet. That’s why it’s easy for her to leave because she fell in love after about two months. Then as soon as she said she was in love with you and you wanted to be exclusive, you just stopped everything and it just fell off a cliff. It’s not like you were together two years and this happened. It was like you were together for a matter of months, and then you checked out, dude. So you better pull your head out of your ass and take this seriously.

Take reading the book seriously and learning it. You gotta learn all three phases. Pick-up skills, dating skills, and relationship skills. Don’t be lulled into arrogance, if you will, in your ego just because you’re getting your dick wet. You’re going to need relationship skills, and if you don’t know them, then your relationship is going to quickly fizzle like this guy’s did because he just totally neglected it. It’s like he thought as soon as she’s in love and wanted to be in a relationship, all he has to do is kick his feet up, pop a beer, just celebrate and everything’s going to be gravy from there on. Life requires your participation. So do relationships. You can’t act like an emotionless zombie who’s checked out, stopped dating your girl and courting her, and never ask her what’s going on. When you notice she’s different, you just completely ignore it. That’s a quick way to end up single.

If you haven’t already signed up for our exclusive premium Members Only content, in the video description is video, there are links to join on YouTube, to join on Spotify or our website UnderstandingRelationships.com. Just click the “plans” tab. When you get there, you can do a 7-day free trial to check out what content you get for your money. If you choose an annual plan, you can get a 25% discount at the end of the 7-day free trial. So go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the “plans” tab, and start a 7-day free trial as a premium member.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly.