She Said She Needs To Pause Our Relationship To Figure Out What She Wants

Why a woman will pause your relationship to figure out what she wants.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has read 3% Man seven times so far. However, he’s struggling with pursuing too much to the point that he turns off a girl he’s been dating to where she only wants to be friends and pauses the relationship. It’s gone back and forth from her being hot for him romantically to her backing off and leaving him hanging.

Now it’s happened once again. He asks my opinion. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

In this particular Members Only video newsletter, this guy says he’s read 3% Man seven times so far. However, like most of us, he’s really struggling with pursuing too much to the point where he pursues so much that he’s eliciting platonic feelings in this girl he’s been dating. She gets confused, she needs space, she wants to put a pause in the relationship. Then she says, “Well, I got to figure out what I want.”

Typically when a woman says, “I got to figure out what I want,” what it really means is she’s not feeling like she wants you. The reason they want to pause is some time and space away from you to wonder about you, to think about you and to see if their feelings grow, and if a guy is not OK with giving a woman that time and space, it causes her to get turned off. As the book says, you never want to do more than 20% to 30% of the calling, texting and pursuing at all times. In most cases, women are going to let you get away, especially after they’re in love and they’ve been with you for a few months and your boyfriend/girlfriend, where she’s doing 95%, 100% of the pursuing.

Women are just natural pursuers and contact initiators when they’re happy, when they’re in love. When they feel safe, they want to bond, they want to connect. What that typically means when you’re in a long term relationship is you should expect two to three phone calls a day, FaceTimes or audio calls or texts just throughout the day, checking in or discussing what you’re going to have for dinner, what you’re doing later, where you’re going to meet up or she’s sending memes or whatever. When a woman’s in love and she’s contacting you that much, it’s actually counterproductive for the guy to reach out because again, if she’s reaching out to you two or three times a day and then you start reaching out to her, typically you’ll notice she’ll contact you less going forward and she’ll become less available for dates.

So this guy admits that he has a really hard time exercising self control. This typically comes in, just like the family I grew up in where my parents were just kind of like emotionless zombies. My grandfather would come over for Christmas, he’d reach out his hand and shake my hand instead of hugging us and saying, “I love you. I’m proud of you,” whatever. It was very business-like, very cold, and my parents, they would hug us and show us affection when we were real small, but as we got older, it’s like they didn’t know what to do. So we never heard, “I love you,” we didn’t get hugs, there was no affection shown at all.

As a child, when you grow up in an environment like that, you want love, but you constantly don’t get it or when you do something wrong, you get the shit beat out of you, eventually you start trying to figure out, “There must be something wrong with me. I must not be loved, I’m unlovable or something’s wrong with me.” So you create a story around that. If you’re used to wanting love but not getting it and then you grow up and you become an adult, as soon as a woman is not making enough of an effort, she’s backed off, we want her to want us more than she does or she was really into us at first and she’s no longer that into us, then typically we try to make up for that and try to force the love because we’re in a state of fear.

What you fear, you attract. With women, like I wrote about in the book, you got to let them come to you at their pace. When you don’t do that, then you get into situations like this guy is in or he’s stuck in a place of fear, he’s impatient, he’s constantly trying to find out where he stands with her, how she feels about him, and that’s the opposite of masculinity. That’s the opposite of being calm and confident. You’re communicating that you’re very needy, you’re very neurotic, you’re insecure. Again, the number one male characteristic that women are attracted to in men is confidence. If you’re constantly displaying a lack of confidence because you fear you’re not going to be loved by her, you’ll call too much, you’ll text too much, your text will be too long, they’ll be too frequent, you’ll try to stay in the phone too long, you’ll linger, you’ll be clingy, you’ll be needy, you’ll touch her more, you’ll try to initiate more contact when she’s comfortable or ready for and you literally start chasing her right out of your life.

Let’s see what we can do to help this guy pump the brakes, because he’s in a situation now where she was really hot for him at first, they were hooking up a lot when they first met and then she backed off and went cold. He pursued more. She put a pause in the relationship. Then they started seeing each other again. She was hot at first, and then just like before, she gradually became cold. Now she’s once again paused the relationship to figure out what she wants, because what’s happening is women need time and space away from you to wonder about you, to think about you, to miss you, to wonder where they stand with you, and this guy is just not giving her enough space because he’s losing his cool, he’s upset and it just comes off as being needy and clingy. That’s the exact opposite of confidence. It’s a huge turn-off for women when guys behave this way, and all they know is that their feelings have changed and the desire just evaporates.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach,

Thank you for your service to humanity!

I have currently been through the book seven times and I am highly motivated to keep reading it to better my understanding. I came upon your work this autumn when a romance with a co-worker gradually went worse and worse and ended in a “pause” initiated by her.

Well, it’s usually most of the time the women are doing this. 75% of the time the breakups are initiated by the ladies. Often for reasons like this, the guy’s just not acting calm, he’s not acting masculine, he’s not acting sure of himself. He’s like a little boy that needs an attaboy from mommy, and that’s just not attractive.

To make a long story short, we started communicating through text gradually during spring and summer, but everything was initiated by her and I was being a challenge and hard to get, with out even realizing it.

Well, that’s the solution right there, because if you look at how she behaved before when you first started seeing each other, she was doing all the pursuing, because women are natural pursuers, they do this naturally. Since he wasn’t that into it, didn’t really know what he was doing, he did everything perfect, but as soon as he started caring, then he had some downside risk. Therefore, he’s got potential fear of loss. What if he loses her? What if she loses interest like all the others? Then he tries to make up for that by trying to over-pursue and shoehorn himself into her life in every possible way.

It escalated quickly in 4-5 weeks during the fall, we met and hooked up a lot and because of a upcoming trip of hers to the U.S., I locked her down prematurely and she agreed to be my girlfriend.

So asking her to be his girlfriend wasn’t because he was really ready. He was afraid he was going to lose her. “Let me lock her up so nobody steals her while she’s away on vacation.” That’s the mindset. A man who’s sure of himself and loves and values himself, he’s going to look at it in terms of, “Well, she’s got to show me that she really wants me too. She’s going to make the effort,” and it’s just much better, like the book says, if you let the woman bring up the relationship topic first, because nine times out of 10, when the guy does it, it’s way too premature and she’s not ready for it. She’s just not emotionally in the same place. When you do that, you try to lock a girl down when she’s not feeling it, she might sometimes go along with it at first, but then back out a few days or a few weeks later because she just emotionally is not in the same place, but if she starts hinting like, “Hey, what are we? Where do you see this going? Are you dating anybody else?” That’s when you start asking questions. “What are you saying? What do you mean? What are you thinking? Are you saying you want to be exclusive? Are you saying you want to be boyfriend/girlfriend? Why did you bring it up? What’s in your heart? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?” You got to ask these kinds of things and get her to tell you instead of assuming because nine times out of 10 you’re going to assume wrong.

When she got back from the vacation, everything has changed, and in my desperation I started to pursue more and more…

Notice she was doing all the pursuing. Women are like cats, and this is what really trips a lot of guys up, is that they just get that way, but since he hadn’t heard from her, he assumed he presupposed he wasn’t going to get the love that he wanted because that’s how he was emotionally conditioned in childhood to think and feel and assume that’s what was going to happen, that he wasn’t going to get the love that he wanted. So he tries to force it, and that never goes well.

…And also getting emotional and butt-hurt when she wouldn’t hang out.

So he took it personally instead of just assuming, “Hey, she’s busy. She’s got things to do too.”

I know, incredibly unattractive behavior.

Finally, we had the talk where she said she needed a pause to figure out what she really wants…

Yeah, she’s purposely taking space because you’ve turned her off, and now her feelings towards you went from being romantic, turned on and making her pussy wet to drying her up drier than the Sahara desert and being confused about why she no longer feels the same way when you guys first started dating. She was all over you like white on rice.

…But that she still had strong feelings for me. I agreed but didn’t fully implement the no contact you advise until three weeks later.

So when a woman says she needs space or she needs to pause the relationship, the absolute worst thing you can do is to continue calling, texting and pursuing her, because all that communicates is you’re not OK, you’re not comfortable, you’re coming unglued, you need her. It’s gross, it’s unattractive, and it doesn’t work, but he couldn’t pump the brakes because he’s freaking out about losing her. You have to have the attitude of, “She’ll be back.”

I actually did a video a few years ago, same exact topic. A man should have the attitude of, “Just like a cat. She’ll be back,” because if she’s really into you, if he thinks back to how she was in the beginning, he has to get back to behaving the way he did when he first met her and he had a “Take it or leave it” kind of attitude because she was all over him. They were hooking up constantly. So the only thing that really changed is that when he didn’t hear from her, he freaked out and he started pursuing. Then she no longer initiated because she wasn’t feeling it, and this guy was paying attention to his interest and his feelings for her and ignoring the fact that she kind of backed off and gone a little cold. She goes a little cold you just match and mirror that, but he didn’t do that.

After eight days of no contact, she couldn’t take it and hit me up. I invited her over and two days later she came over and we hung out, had fun and hooked up.

You see how that works? See how quickly that turns it around? “Eight whole days. I’m not speaking.” Then she really missed him because she started to wonder where she stood. Her feelings returned and they hooked up because under normal circumstances, the guy should be busy with his mission and purpose in life, and he should sometimes be getting too distracted with that, because when a woman notices and feels that, “Wow, he’s not giving me attention like he was. Is he not interested? Did he meet somebody else? Is he sleeping with his secretary? What’s going on? Where is he at? What’s he doing?”

It’s a scientific fact that women are more attracted to men whose feelings are unclear. So when they are not so sure of where they stand, in this case, she hasn’t talked to you in eight days, she starts to miss you, her feelings go back up because you acted like you did in the beginning. So she became very attracted, she comes over, they hung out, had fun, hooked up just like the old times and that, in a nutshell, is the microcosm of how you should be interacting. Hang out with her as much as she wants and she initiates, but as soon as she starts to get a little cold or back off or just seem like she’s not as enthusiastic as she was, then give her the gift of missing you. You got to kind of sprinkle it in there. It’s an art, it’s not something that’s like a light switch, so you just have to go through it and you have to learn and find the sweet spot between pursuing too much and not enough. In this case, he got to back off when he notices that she’s cold and he’s not been willing to do that. He’s not been willing to pump the brakes.

After this, I still held back and she started contacting me to hang out New Years Eve with her family some days later, we hung out, had fun and hooked up again. We went skiing, we had walks, etc.

So notice he’s exercising self control and it’s working like a charm. However, as soon as he re-engages his pursuit, which he shouldn’t of, but he did, look what happens.

I think I have been too available and pursued too much again, because in the last weeks it has gradually drifted towards platonic activities and there has been no romance.

Well, it’s your job as a man to lead it to romantic opportunities. At this point in the relationship, she should be doing 95% to 100% of the pursuing. So you need to back off until it gets back to that ratio. You can slowly do it over a couple of weeks, but obviously in this case, she’s hit pause once again as you’ll see and he’s just going to have to wait. He’s going to have to be OK with the silence, missing her, not hearing from her and wondering where he stands with her. We’re supposed to be more masculine than the ladies. It is feminine energy to be unsure and indecisive. So when you act unsure of yourself and indecisive, that’s why it turns women off because you’re acting like another chick, basically.

I always say yes and she always has some excuse when I invite her.

So if she’s reaching out, or more likely he’s probably reaching out at this point and then he’s asking her out on dates and she’s declining, when you notice that happening, you got to back off and pump the brakes.

Culminating with her now leaving me on read for a couple of days.

That’s really rude.

What that tells me is that her interest is super low, but he kept pursuing, he kept calling, he kept texting, he kept trying to get her out on dates, she kept saying no. There’s a quote in the beginning of 3% Man by Adam Corolla and it goes like this. It says: “When a woman likes you, the doors start opening and all you got to do is walk through them, but if the doors start closing in your face, then you just turn around and you walk away.” In other words, you have the attitude, “She’ll be back.” So when you invite her out on a date and she says no, she’s busy, doesn’t offer any alternative days, doesn’t really seem like she’s willing to do anything to get together and stop calling, stop asking her out. Next time she reaches out, assume she wants to see you, try to make a date. If she still says she’s busy, just say, “Hey, get in touch and when your schedule frees up. I’d love to see you,” and just leave it at that. You’re not mad, you’re not angry, you’re not butt-hurt, but going forward, since you’ve asked two consecutive times in a row once where you initiate and then the next one where she initiates, and I assume both times she won’t make a date, then the next time she reaches out first because again, you got to let her do all the pursuing when that happens, is that you shouldn’t even bring up getting together, and you talk for a few minutes and just say, “Hey, babe, it’s good hearing your voice. I gotta run. I got some errands to do. I’ll talk to you later,” then you get off the phone and one of two things will happen: She’ll either bring up getting together first, or she’ll flake out and disappear forever.

So this guy is just not pumping the brakes because the unknown scares the crap out of him, and this is something that every man must conquer and overcome when it comes to the ladies. If you want a lady to stick around, you got to be OK with not hearing from her and wondering what the hell she’s doing. Even if a few days or a week or two goes by, I mean this girl is leaving him on read for several days, that means she really doesn’t want to talk to him and he he kept pursuing to the point where she basically is like a soft ghost. She doesn’t want to interact with him because her feelings are gone and she’s not ready to blow it up yet and say it’s over and she’s trying to have some space, but you got to be man enough to let her have it. 

I really like this girl, and I realize this makes me fearfully attached to the outcome.

Trust me dude, we all know. No matter how much you like her, it’s not important. The only thing that matters is how she feels about you, and the way you’re behaving is the opposite of what you did in the very beginning. So what you really need to do is go back to the basics. Let her do all the calling, texting, pursuing, and just make dates when you hear from her. It’s pretty simple. It’s hard to do though, when you really care and you’re infatuated or you’re in love with her because you got the illusion of action that is trying to tell you to do something, to make something happen. In reality, she needs the space, she needs to wonder, she needs to get back to a place where she’s unsure of where she stands with you, and if you’re always in her face and you’re always texting her and badgering her, she’s just not going to get to that place where she feels like she wants to see you again.

What advice would you give me in this situation?

Bob

I would do nothing. Wait to hear from her, and again, if she initiates, because it looks like he pursued and pursued and pursued and initiated to where she just kind of disappeared and he didn’t realize he didn’t pump the brakes because it’s like tennis. Dating is like tennis. You hit the ball over the net. You got to have the self-esteem to wait for her to hit it back, and if you hit the ball over the net and she waits 24 hours or 12 hours to respond, you should recognize that her feelings have changed and she’s not that enthusiastic about seeing me. Therefore you got to do nothing and wait to hear from her. In this particular case, this girl would do 100% of the pursuing, she was doing that in the beginning and she was all over him, they were fucking like rabbits, but as soon as he started trying to speed up the courtship and get it to a relationship because he was worried about losing her, he called too much, he texted too much, he badgered her to the point where she literally didn’t even reply for days, that’s not good. When a woman goes beyond 24 hours, that means she really doesn’t want to see you. She’s not missing you. She’s not thinking about you. That’s just a bad way to go.

You have to let women come to you at their pace. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way God designed them to be. We have to be focused on our mission and purpose and things that are really important, and give women the space and time to miss us and try to get our attention and validation, because when you’re doing it as the guy, you’re basically acting like a chick, and that ruins the sexual polarity, turns her off and it elicits platonic feelings, and the more you elicit platonic feelings, the less she’s going to want to see you.

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. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.