He’s stopped talking to you. What’s wrong? The last text you got from him was back at lunchtime yesterday. An entire 24 hours ago! He’s forgotten about you. Better send him a sexy text—quick!
He won’t talk about his feelings. You’ve tried to get him to open up. You share your feelings with him, so why won’t he share his? It’s like you’re talking to a brick wall. Maybe you need couples counseling.
When you were with him last night, he seemed preoccupied. It was like he wasn’t even there with you. He’s starting to pull away. He’s probably thinking about breaking up with you. You’d better do something fast!
What do all these scenarios have in common?
One HUGE relationship mistake that so many of us (including me) make!
Love Isn’t Obsession
If you’re a woman, you love your relationships.
You love being with your loved ones. You love thinking about your loved ones. You’re always trying to understand them better so you can love them better.
Because you spend so much time thinking about your relationships, you expect guys to do the same. He should always be thinking about you, wanting to be with you, and trying to find ways to love you better, right?
Wrong.
When a guy is obsessed with you, either he’s in the honeymoon phase—which ends eventually—or he’s love-bombing you (and you do NOT want to get love bombed!).
Relationships shouldn’t consume us. In healthy relationships, time together is balanced with time apart. Without that balance, relationships aren’t sustainable. They burn out.
So a guy who doesn’t spend 100% of his time thinking about you is not a guy who doesn’t love you.
It’s a guy who’s trying to balance his life with the demands of a relationship.
And THAT is a guy who can go the distance.
It’s Not Always about You
We make a huge mistake when we don’t recognize that our partners have a life outside of us.
Not everything he does is about you. Not everything he does is about the relationship. Sometimes, it’s just about him.
Our biggest relationship mistake is taking everything he says and does personally.
He didn’t text? He’s forgetting you.
He’s not opening up? He’s shutting you out.
He’s preoccupied? He’s pulling away.
We forget that he has a life, too. He’s got stresses and concerns. He may not want to burden you with his problems. He may not be used to talking about his feelings. That doesn’t make him a bad partner. It makes him human.
Expect the Best
Successful couples do one thing differently:
They make positive assumptions about each other.
You don’t know why he did something? Instead of jumping to conclusions, assume there’s a good reason for it. Then ASK him.
It’s scary to ask him if you think his answer will be, “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
But if you assume that he’s got his reasons, asking him about it won’t be scary at all. It will put your mind at ease.
Always talk to him in person. These aren’t the kind of conversations to have via text.
You might ask him how often he prefers to text back and forth. Couples who have similar texting habits tend to be happier.
You might ask him how you could get to know what’s going on for him. You care about him. Learning more about his thoughts and feelings makes you feel closer to him.
You might mention that he doesn’t seem to be his usual self. Ask him if there’s anything you could do for him. He doesn’t have to tell you what’s wrong, but he might be able to tell you how he’d like to be supported.
As long as you remember that what he does is about HIM, not you, then it’s easier to keep some perspective.
So the next time you’re wondering why your guy isn’t texting or why he’s late or why he’s not answering you, don’t assume there’s trouble in paradise. Communicate.
Because healthy communication is NEVER a relationship mistake.
Great article that I definitely needed, so thank you very much! However, your articles don’t print well (text and graphics overlap etc., making it unreadable), at least from my phone, so if you could add printable versions to your site, that would be great!
Thanks so much for your feedback! We’re working on finding the best option to create printable versions of our articles. Will let you know as soon as we have that feature up and running!
Thanks for your patience! We’ve made some tweaks to make our articles more printable. Thanks again for letting us know about the problem!
Thanks so much! It works almost perfectly, the only problem being that almost all of the article title is cut off (only the very bottom of the letters of the last two words, “Women Make”, gets printed for this article). It is still very helpful, though!