How Women Can Prevent a Man from Drifting Away

Love and hate go hand-in-hand. As much as a man wants to be with a woman, sometimes her behavior can make him tear his hair out… and tear out the front door.

What are women doing that’s putting the kibosh on new love in their life?

Women change. That old saying is true: “Women expect a man to change – he doesn’t. Men expect a woman not to change – she does.” As much as you may pride yourself on your consistency, your ability to stick to a routine, it’s those “little” personality switches that flat-line the electricity in your new relationship.

Women get too serious. When all the fun, light, what-am-I-gonna-wear feelings about dating a new person go out the window, they’re usually replaced with thoughts of, “Is he still interested in me? How does he feel about me? Where is this going?” When urgent second-guessing, paranoia, and, most of all, insecurity, reign supreme, thus begins the downfall of woman.

Women want answers. You were a cool, laid-back, go-with-the-flow kind of gal when you first started dating. He loved that. Now all of a sudden you need definitions. You’ve turned into the evil spawn of Noah Webster. You have developed an insatiable need to define your boy-girl thing. A woman needs to know that a man is thinking the way that she’s thinking. While we’d all like a key to and a map of a man’s brain, scientists are still working on that. So, in the meantime, the shortcut is this: a man’s frame of mind and a woman’s frame of mind usually don’t mesh. There lies the rub (or, rather, the unbelievably painful, never-ending chafing).

Men think, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Women think, “Things are too good. There’s got to be something wrong, right? I need to know what he’s thinking. I need to know where he sees us in the future. I have to initiate the ‘we’ve got to talk’ talk.” Ugh… squeaky, annoying hamster-on-the-wheel alert!

Women show their insecurities. Unfortunately, once a woman reaches the point where she can’t relax and trust in what’s happening between her and the guy in her life, she hungers for acceptance and reassurance. From him and only him. Once that fear has set in, a woman can’t chill. A man can feel her pressure, even if she doesn’t say anything, and his warning bells start ringing. He’s encountered the insecure woman before, and he doesn’t like her. In his mind, thoughts are solidifying, worries like, “I know you… this situation is so familiar... Oh, hell no! I have got to get out of here before she goes all Sybil on me like the last one!”

Put the Crazy to Bedr
Deep breaths. Here’s what’s going on: a woman’s worry and conce
about the status of her relationship is perfectly natural and normal. Practically every woman has done it at one point or another. Actually, you’ll probably never stop worrying about it or thinking about it as long as you’re dating and working on establishing a relationship. But it’s how you handle this insecurity that can make all the difference in whether your new thing with a new guy can actually go the distance.

Giving in to your needs is unacceptable and inappropriate and it will backfire on you every time. Justifying to yourself that you need to know what he’s thinking and forcing him to squeal isn’t going to get you anywhere but alone, or even more confused and insecure.

When that slightly irrational feeling comes along, don’t give it room to breathe. Don’t let the wrong freak flag fly. There are some things that you can and should keep to yourself – your insecurities. He can’t help you with them. Only you can help yourself. So it’s time to find, acknowledge, and weed out the insecurities so this panic mode that keeps happening in new relationships doesn’t continue to plague you over and over again.

First of all, you have to accept that men and women metabolize their relationship needs differently. After a while, women can start to really need reassurance about the path the relationship is on; they start obsessing over the signals he is (or isn’t) sending. Woman wants man to make her feel secure. Ladies, that isn’t gonna be your saving grace. Sure, if he does give you the reassurance you need, you feel great. But if you have to go begging and hunting for it, that’s not the same as allowing him to work at his own pace.

The reality is that you’re never going to be able to talk him into the kind of relationship that you want, or think you want. It has to happen naturally between the two of you – he doesn’t have all the answers so trying to pry them out of him will only confuse the both of you. After a few dates, that’s not the time to try to establish – or, God forbid, demand – an answer from him about the status of your situation.

Men are certainly guilty of committing their fair share of blunders in love. But this article is about women – and the insecurity that plagues us, that eats away at us, that is the monster under our bed. It’s the beast that gets the better of you, even when you know better.

So it’s time to know better.