I Miss Being Single

Some things you should consider if you are starting to miss being single, you are in an exclusive relationship, and you are having doubts that you want to stay together.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a twenty-nine year old viewer who recently moved in with his girlfriend of eight months. They had been in a long distance relationship until a month ago. He has some routines and lifestyle choices that she doesn’t like or approve of, and this is creating some friction between them.

He says he often misses doing his own thing now that he has another person to consider before committing to any plans or deciding to do something. He asks what this all means and what he can do to get some peace and make the right decision for himself. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Today I got an email from a from a guy who I think he says he’s read my book like ten times. He’s in a relationship. He’s doing really well. And he started out with this particular woman that he writes about. They were long distance, and they just moved in about a month ago. And so obviously, like the title says, he now kind of misses being single because now that they’re living together, they’re starting to recognize each other’s personality quirks and weird habits. These are basically 3% man problems.

It’s kind of like the paradox of choice. You know, most guys don’t really have a choice. They can’t date the kind of women they really want. And so, they’re just happy to get somebody that will go out with them. But when you apply the things I teach in my first book, “How To Be A 3% Man,” these are the kinds of things that you get faced with.

I’ve had countless phone sessions over the years with guys in similar situations, and just countless emails come in. It’s the same thing. Guys get this power to be able to meet and date and attract kind of women that they want. And then, because they have choice, they recognize that they don’t have to stay with somebody because they were lonely. They’re now looking at relationships as, how well does she complement my life?

Because if you know deep down the back of your mind that you eventually, with enough time, you can not only find somebody else, but probably find somebody better or better suited, because as you grow and you become a better man, the quality of the women that you’re able to attract is also going to increase. And this is just something that the average guy never really gets to experience. He’s just happy to find a girl that likes him.

It reminds me a lot of what I went through when I was in my early 20s, when I was with my ex-wife. She was a great woman. We had a pretty good relationship, but it always felt like something was missing. And the things that I see this guy doing and experiencing just remind me of the things that I was experiencing when when I was dating, and then eventually when I was married to my ex wife.

And my problem was, because I never really had choice in my life, I was just glad to have somebody that really loved me and really cared about me for me. But I always felt like something was missing, because I just didn’t have a lot of experience dating back then. And this guy might be going through something similar, because he’s having some of the same experiences.

If you’re applying what’s in my book, “How To Be A 3% Man,” and then you’re following what’s in my second book, “Mastering Yourself,” all about how to align your life with your true calling — it’s a book of self-reliance — you’re going to be getting to experience things — not only in your personal life, but your professional life — on a level that most of the people that you grew up with, that you’re surrounded by, are not going to experience. And they’re just, quite frankly, not going to have the guts, the internal testicular fortitude, as Richard Marcinko would say, to persevere when things aren’t going well and move forward anyway towards making your goals and your dreams a reality.

And so, you get to where you’re going to have a set of problems that the average person is not going to have to deal with. Again, these are 3% man, first world problems, obviously. Because I’m sure there’s people watching this in parts of the world who are going, “You fucking Western guys. You’re bitching and you’re whining? It’s like, come on.”

If you jump through your butt and you bend yourself into a pretzel trying to please your woman and become what she says she wants, you give up your friends, your hobbies, your interests, all the things that are exciting, compelling and passionate to you, after a few years, it’s like you don’t even recognize your life. It’s like you became something completely different and it’s not who you are, and you’re going to resent it. And typically, you’ll end up taking that out on the person that you’re in a relationship with, especially if you became what she said she wanted, and she’s still not happy, and she’s still giving you a hard time.

That’s why it’s so important before you get into a relationship to know who you are, what you want, why you want it and have emotionally compelling reasons why you want it. Because like I’ve said before, women are like the Borg. You will be assimilated. They will wear you down day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And if you don’t have a strong internal constitution of who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in, she’s going to mop the floor with your ass. And someday, you’re going to wake up and not even recognize who the hell you are.

Viewer’s Email:

Hey Coach,

Bob here, from Texas. I’m a 29 year old man in a 8 month long relationship with a 24 year old woman. I’ve read the book 10 times and still read it. Your work definitely changed my life and helped me land a committed relationship with this wonderful girl. Although we have a good and happy relationship, I often miss being single. I wonder if this will pass or if my inner truth is trying to tell me something. 

Well, you go from being in a long distance type of relationship to now. Obviously, we didn’t get to that part in email, but they were long distance for most of the relationship, and they’ve only been living together for about a month. And already, I mean, you have somebody that moves in with you and they’re in your personal space.

There’s going to be things like leaving the toilet seat up or down, little things of friction — using all the toilet paper on the roll and then leaving the empty roll on the toilet paper hanger, or leaving your clothes everywhere. Or if you’re very neat and organized and she’s not, and she leaves her shit laying around, what’s going to happen when you see that? Is it going to irritate you? Are you going to find it cute at first, and after a couple of months of that, you’re like, “put your fucking clothes away”?

These are all things that come up as you start living with somebody. And it’s like, how are you going to deal with it? You know, that’s why me personally, I’ve always been a neat freak, and I have to date women that are clean. I can’t date women that leave shit everywhere, leave shit dirty, or throw all the dirty dishes in the sink and just leave it there. That drives me up the fucking wall. It’s just a deal breaker for me. I can’t be with a messy woman. But that’s me. Some people are just fucking slobs.

My girlfriend is an English teacher and I’m a writer. We have similar political views, as well. We share a love of nature and adventure. We always have a great time together. And our sex life is great: She’s affectionate, loving, sweet, playful, frisky, and I usually bring her to ecstasy and climax.

So far, so good.

Lately, however, I’ve found myself missing being single. I moved in with her a month ago, as we lived three hours away from each other and had maintained a long-distance relationship.

Yeah, because if you get a little tired each other, and she’s just coming for the weekend or you’re going to her place for the weekend, I mean, it’s pretty easy. It’s like, “Ahh, I ve got some peace again” on Monday. But when you’re living together… I have had this experience a lot over the years. Obviously, I’ve written about it.

I’ve met so many women that I’ve dated, whether they’re international or they lived in different states or a different part of the state. You start meeting, you start talking, you get together for a week or two, and then it’s like — especially if you’re dating international — you go from barely knowing each other and chatting for a month or two online to like, you’re literally living together for weeks at a time or months at a time. So you get like full breach of the other person in your personal space, like right away. And it’s either going to work, or it’s not.

And if you did a good job at selecting the person up front, it really can be magical and effortless. I mean, if you think about it, you go from not even knowing this other person to talking for a month or two, and then you’re just kind of living together for years on end, and it’s it’s really beautiful. It’s like something right out of the movies. And it’s fun, it’s easy, it’s effortless, but it’s rare.

And you’ve got to know the information that’s in “How To Be A 3% Man,” so you do a good job of prescreening the person up front. But when you’re young and you don’t have experience, it’s like, you don’t know what you don’t know. Obviously, this guy being twenty-nine, it’s probably his first experience at this, probably after having a similar life to the way I did, where I felt like I was missing out a lot in my teenage years, and especially my early 20s.

I miss waking up alone and doing my own thing, watching your videos as I stretch and work out in the mornings, watching my shows at night as I write, drink, smoke my herb, (she forbids smoking).

Yeah, so if that’s something that’s really important to you, and she’s moved in with you, and you were this guy before you met her… And I know a lot of creative people, whether they’re musicians or artists or painters, and they like to smoke the herb. It’s part of their lives and they enjoy it, just like somebody that likes to have a scotch or whatever. And she’s moving in saying she forbids smoking? It’s like, this is who you were before, unless maybe you were hiding it from her, and then you kind of sprung it on her.

I mean the reality is, if it’s that important to you and she’s giving you grief about it now, you’ve got somebody in your personal space, and now she’s telling you how to live. I mean, you shouldn’t be smoking all day long anyway, because that’s not good either, but everything in moderation. And if part of your ritual for your creative process is taking a couple of tokes, a couple of bong hits for Jesus to let the creative juices flow or the “in spiritu.” I think in Latin it means literally “in spirit.” You’re kind of in the flow, where you’re kind of channeling that divine energy, because everything is channeled basically, even this video. It’s just kind of coming out of me, just because it’s what I do. I have attuned myself, this vibration, frequency, whatever you want to call it, and this stuff just kind of flows out. It comes out naturally. Obviously, people seem to like it.

I also miss the seduction process: Meeting hot women, getting their numbers, setting up dates, chatting over drinks, getting to know them, seducing them back at my place.

It’s also possible that you didn’t date and you didn’t play the field enough before you settled down with her. And on top of that, if she’s giving you grief about the herb, there’s probably other things that she’s probably trying to change with you. So you’re going to have to have a nice, sweet, loving, come to Jesus talk with her, if you will, about what’s important to you and what you’re willing to give up or not give up.

My doubts have really been increasing as of late. When she and I are at the store, I find it difficult not to check out women on whom, if I were single, I would definitely make a move. I’m ashamed to admit that when we make love, I almost always am fantasizing about other women or the women I was checking out at the store.

I love her and what we have, but fear that if I break up with her to go back to my James Bond lifestyle, she’ll either find someone else, move to another country, (as her immigration status is up in the air), or not take me back if I regret my decision. I also know she’d be emotionally devastated.

So the reality is, those are all definite real possibilities. That is what we call your downside risk. If you decide to become a free agent again, and then you later regret it… Now, why do people typically regret it? They’re seeking something else, and that something else doesn’t come along. Or maybe they go out on a date and they really start to like somebody new, and she turns around and doesn’t like them back. And they think, “Ugh, I let the love of my life go. Let me see if I can get her back.”

So what happens is they become impatient. And that was part of my problem when I was with my wife. The relationship should have run its course. I should have moved away, moved to Orlando and gone on with my life and be grateful for that experience. But I didn’t know. I didn’t have any point of reference. I didn’t have any family or close friends that I could talk to. Not that I would probably listen to any of them anyway.

I didn’t have anybody in my life I admired and respected enough to actually seek their counsel and ask their opinion, even though I did ask a lot of friends, especially women friends, that I knew and women that I worked with and all. Of course, they’re all like, “Oh, don’t let her go! When are you going to put a ring on that finger?” You know, everybody our age at the time was getting married, and there was a lot of peer pressure. And plus, we were going to weddings all the time.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then. But I just knew that something was missing, and it didn’t feel right, and I really didn’t want to get married. But I was going along with it, because the thought of being single and never finding anybody better, or that everybody else after her would be worse was like terrifying to me, just because I had no point of reference.

I didn’t grow up in a household where mom and dad were crazy about each other and where I admired the kind of relationship they had. As a matter of fact, I made it a point where I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to have that kind of relationship. It was messed up, and it was dysfunctional, and I certainly didn’t like it.

Is this “just a phase” that will pass, or is my inner truth trying to tell me something?

Thanks for all you do,

Bob

Well, only time will tell. I would say, because it’s only been a month, I would give it 90 days, maybe six months. See how you feel then. But you definitely need to address the issue about the herb smoking, and there’s probably other things that she wants you to cut out or do differently. And you’ve got to ask yourself, are these things deal breakers to you? Are you willing to give up the herb for her? And if the answer is no, it’s like, “Hey, you know, I’m going to keep the bong. I’m going to keep toking up, because it’s part of the creative process, and you’re just going to have to accept it.”

I mean, ideally, the best relationship is you want somebody with similar goals, similar values, similar shared experiences. Obviously a woman who’s an English teacher, she probably gets tested at work, so she’s probably not going to be able to smoke the herb. You may be better suited to find a woman who is into the same things that you are. Or maybe she’s a good influence on you, because maybe you are smoking too much. I don’t know.

All I know is that, me personally, looking at myself being single versus in a relationship, especially when I was younger, I liked to party a lot more, especially on the weekends and blow it out. But when I would get into a relationship, I wouldn’t drink or smoke or do anything hardly at all. It would be pretty healthy. It was only when I was single that I liked to party like a rock star. And obviously, as I got older, I mellowed out quite a bit.

So you’ve got to figure out what you’re willing to give up, what’s really important to you. And if she’s really breaking your balls about the herb, and you’re not abusing it, but yet she still wants you to give up, you’ve got to say, “Look, this is important to me, and I’m going to keep doing it. So you’ve got two choices. You can either love and accept me, the fact that your boyfriend likes to smoke the herb, or maybe I’m not the right guy for you.”

And so, you can put it in her court like that, and she can accept it, suck it up or if she keeps breaking your balls, eventually it’s going to turn you off and you’re like, “Hey, you know, I don’t want to change who I am. You’ve got to love me and accept me the way I am, or we need to go our separate ways.” I’m not telling you you want to threaten her right now at the end of the relationship. But, I don’t know any other things, because you only mentioned the one about the herb.

If she’s trying to get you to change and become different and give up other things that are important to you, that might be what’s causing you to feel the need for freedom. Like the quote says, you’ve got to have time alone in your man cave for yourself. Because as men, we tend to solve our problems by going off in the man cave, the garage, the tool shed, the watering hole, our buddy’s house, hanging out by the pool, whatever, having a beer, whatever it happens to be, and contemplating on our problems.

Whereas, women tend to talk about their problems and verbalize them, and they come to a conclusion through talking about them. That’s why in a relationship when a woman feels heard and understood, the legs open. In other words, you’re kind of helping her with her process of working through whatever the issue is, by getting her to talk about it, and express her emotions and her feelings and what she thinks, what she feels, what she desires, what she wants. And so you facilitate that.

But like I said, women oftentimes have a hard time recognizing that us guys, we just need to go work out our own issues on our own. It has nothing to do with them. I’m going to say, “Babe, I just need time alone in my man cave. I need time to paint. I need time to write. I need time to work on my car, fix the sprinkler system,” whatever the hell it happens to be.

You’ve got to let her know if you’re trying to take time alone in your man cave, and she’s coming in to interrupt you, wanting to spend time with you like, “Babe, I love you, but I need some time alone right now in my man cave. I’ve got to work on this stuff right now. So if you could give me a couple hours, it’d be awesome. And then when I come out, I’ll be right as rain. I’ll be great.”

You’ve got to ask for some boundaries there, because you obviously need some space. So if you’re feeling smothered by her, because obviously if you’re moved in together, she’s probably down the road thinking about kids or a family or getting married, whatever it happens to be. And like I said, when a woman’s in love, she wants your attention all the fucking time, all the time, 24/7.

So the important thing to understand about you in you’re in your situation is that you’re not confusing the fact that you’re not asking for freedom to be in your man cave, and that you feel always obligated to be there for her or spend time with her when you’re around each other, that you’re still taking time. Because that’s the thing I picked up in your email here, is that you don’t have any space or time for yourself. And so the natural instinct is like, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, screw this. This girls all over my ass. I need my freedom. I need my space.” And that’s totally natural.

So, tell her you need space, time alone in your man cave, and she’s got to respect that boundary. And then as long as you can get your time alone to contemplate or do whatever you’re going to do, and then when you’ve had your fill of that and then you come out of your man cave, you can pick her up, sweep her off her feet and make mad, passionate love to her.

But like I said, I would do that. Give it ninety days, maybe six months to see what happens. The the overall vibe I pick up from the email is that you’ve got to set some healthy boundaries, get some time for yourself in your man cave. And also, if the herb thing’s a big deal, like she forbids smoking, it’s like no. She moved in with you, dude. As long as she knew that that’s how you were. It’s like, you can’t say, “Oh, I love you the way you are,” and then “Now that I’m living with you, you’ve got to give that shit up.” That’s not how that works. No, thank you.

So, if you haven’t read “How To Be A 3% Man,” or “Mastering Yourself,” go to UnderstandingRelationships.com. They are for free. All you’ve got to do is subscribe to the email newsletter. And if you’d like to talk to me personally to get some help with a challenge or a situation, you can go to my website, click the Products tab at the top or the bottom on any screen or page of my website and book whatever coaching option works for you.

“When a woman is in love, she wants her man’s attention all the time. A man loves to feel like he is successful at making his woman happy. A man takes it as a personal failure if his woman is not happy. A man likes being in a relationship, but he also values his freedom to be who he really is and pursue his purpose and passions in life. A man needs time alone to be in his man cave to think and contemplate. If a man feels like he is losing himself in a relationship to please his woman, he sometimes is going to start feeling overwhelmed and a desire to get away and have more freedom. If you lose yourself in your relationship and give up who you are to please the other person, eventually you will lose yourself and in the long run, your relationship.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

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