So in this particular blog set, I begin to answer what a many “might” be thinking in a given scenario. Essentially I am breaking the Bro-Code of silence to reveal the deepest darkest secrets behind what men do when we do the rather obnoxious things we do.
This is the similar scenario that several women have e-mailed me and asked me about this last week. It goes something like this:
Man says; “I love you”, “You’re the one”, “You’re perfect”.
Woman says; “I love you too”, “I need you”, etc.
A few days later, man suddenly is completely unavailable for conversation and ignores woman entirely.
Ladies, let me first off say that Men sometimes can and will do dumb things.
First off, let’s break this scenario down to its basic components.
We are telling you ladies “I love you”, “I need you”, “You’re the perfect one”, “and I am hooked on you.”
We are in essence spelling out to you that we have an interest in you and giving you the communication that we wish to get to know you better and be a part of your life.
A great deal of communication failures are caught up in dealing with our own filters. What we hear and interpret often can be very different than what is expressed or intended. When a guy says “I love you”, it can be pretty tempting to take him at his word. However, often as not guys have different interpretations themselves for saying what they do.
When a guy says “I love you”, “I need you”, “You’re the perfect one”, “I am hooked on you”; he has a few different reasons for saying it.
First off, let me at least give some attempt at giving my fellow males a benefit of the doubt. They could genuinely mean to say that they love you, are interested in you, or have a genuine desire to pursue you. The man could really be interested.
Or… A man might also fall into more inappropriate behavior.
He might be saying it because he is only interested in playing you along. Maybe he’s only interested in keeping you attentive to him. Maybe he’s intent on keeping you waiting in the wings while he plays with someone else. Maybe he’s keeping a string of other women along just like you.
Maybe he’s telling you he’s interested in you because he wants to make a play for you. He’s interested in sexual attention and favors and if he tells you he loves you, he somehow has learned that when he does; he gets his desired favor.
Maybe he’s just confused about his own emotions. We have emotions, we are just told never to talk about them. We struggle with a desire to feel needed and loved. We struggle with a desire to be a part of someone special. We are told by society to make that one special hot person our special world and by having sex with that special person, we have a complete life.
So the second aspect of this communication breakdown is the reception of the statement and the return.
You’ve been told one expression and you interpret it as interest and receive the man’s statement. You express your own likewise return interest.
To the man we are giving the benefit of the doubt to; he now has to accept the returned interest in like kind. He now has to interpret the communication and sort his own emotions. We can’t always do so on a spur of the moment.
To the “boys”, the “users”, the “douchebags” of this world.
They universal thought amongst them is this, they now have you right where they want you. You’ve expressed return interest and they now know they can play your heart right into their little game.
The player who keeps a string of women thinks he can keep you on retainer. So long as he gives you only what his budget can afford and ply his pretty words to you, you’ll keep your eyes on him.
The user can manipulate you into any act of lust he desires simply by telling you he loves you and he’ll do anything you need. So long as you do anything he needs first.
The confused boy will smile a wry and fake smile while giving a dumbfounded look. He has no clue how to deal with the emotions he’s carrying.
So the final conundrum breaks down here: What causes a guy to express interest and suddenly disappear?
To the gentleman we are giving the benefit of the doubt to, who has expressed like-minded interest in someone; it can be very difficult to say what would cause him to suddenly lose interest.
There are a lot of outside pressures a guy goes through in a social setting.
His friends might have expressed their own opinions on the future match. Are his friends telling him untruths about you? Are they expressing their feelings for your looks? Gossip is a horrible thing. Hopefully he’s a smart enough lad to want to move past that and find the real truth.
Or he could have something in common with the gentleman confused with his own feelings. Something that develops.
To the gentleman confused with his feelings, suddenly he might find himself unable to contend with a possible new love. Does he have baggage of his own? Has he recently had a break up within the last few months? How serious has his previous relationships been?
The confused gentleman suddenly finds himself awash in different emotions. And as I’ve stating before in previous blogs, guys aren’t often taught how to deal with our emotions. We are often told we don’t have them at all. So when we find ourselves with them, we don’t know what to do. We run, we hide, and we swallow them up and bottle them away.
It’s an immature way of dealing with it.
The users and the players, well it’s pretty obvious why they disappear. They’ve found a new toy to occupy their time. Nothing appeals to a player or a user more than the idea of a shiny new toy to play with. They’ll constantly search for a new object to diddle and in the end… Only end up just as broken and alone as they started.
So ladies… This all seems like a rather large accumulation of bovine scat. All this weird mess of statement and misstatement. Interpretation and intent. I don’t blame any of you turning to masses of cats for company years down the road.
Here’s where I am going to break the Bro-Code. I’m going to give you some tips to break the cycle and hopefully spare you a lot of pain and heartache down the road.
To hopefully sort the well-meaning and well intentioned young lads from the emotionally confused, players, and users of the pack, you need to learn how to better communicate and spot the red flags we guys send up.
Communication works like this.
Bad example!
Person A is Male.
Person B is Female
Person A makes statement: “I love you”
Person B receives statement, interprets statement, and responds: “I love you too”
Person A receives statement, interprets statement, responds: “great”
Better example!
Person A is Male and a good guy.
Person A.1 is Male player/user.
Person A.2 is confused.
Person B is female.
Person A, A.1 and A.2 says: “I love you”
Person B receives statement, should then question: “Thank you, tell me what you mean when you say that?”
Person A should receive question, interpret, and respond: I believe I am interested in developing a committed relationship with you.
Person A.1 receives question, interprets, and responds: “Oh I wanna get close to you. Get to know you and your body a lot better. You know!”
Person A.2 (confused) will receive the question, interpret it, and respond with: “I want to see where this goes.”
The key hear is learning to read the response. The player is focusing not on you, but on what you can do for him. The confused man is focusing on the future, not the question at hand.
Now, there are no hard and fast rules that say ALL men think this way or use this scenario. But the real key to wading through the muck and mire of male communication is this. Question what you receive. Not in a derogatory manner. Some of us guys (myself included) are actually good guys with well-meaning intentions. We want to be a part of your life. But it is worth questioning and asking what we mean by what we say. How do we define love when we say we love? How do we define future interest? It’s okay to ask those questions and ponder. Communication is circular. We have to receive a message, interpret the message, and repeat it back to the speaker to make sure the message was understood.
Contrary to popular ideals heaped upon us ladies, we cannot read minds. No man (so far as had been scientifically proven) is psychic enough to KNOW exactly what you’re thinking and why you think that way. Conversely… GENTS! We cannot assume that women will just shrug off our assumptions of how they think either.
If we all want better relationships down the road, we all had better learn to communicate with our partners better.
Lastly, even after all that communication pep-talk. If the guy still walks out of your life, I leave you with this.
No one person is worth all your tears and heartache if they are that dumb enough to not see what they have. FORGET ALL THAT ROT you hear about “You only know what you have when it’s gone!” Hold out a hope for someone who knows what they have when they have it! Let the dolts go, wish them well, and move forward. Gents, this is equally as applicable to us as well.
We men can be dumb and we can make some dumb mistakes. But we are all on a journey here to learn and one hopes… We learn to spot you as the diamond you are and cherish you for the value you see in yourself. What most of us men want honestly, is for you to see it in us every bit as much as we see it in you.
One last little bit of motivation, a rather fun song I’ve always adore as performed by Rasputina.
If your kisses won’t hold the man you love
very good blog there bill:D answers a lot of questions and puts in in "common scenario"
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