Everything seemed to be going great and he just pulled away all of a sudden. Why? What went wrong all of a sudden? Did I scare him away?
I remember asking this question while my friends would pat my back, pronouncing that famous line, “It’s him… not you… never you.”
It was easy to believe them, and maybe those lines were true for the better part of my love wrecks.
Let’s face it. If he is wrong for you and you’ve done absolutely nothing to scare him away, he will just as well run for the hills because he is not ready for a relationship.
That can’t be helped. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. What if it was me? What if I am sabotaging my own chances for love?
I decided to get to the bottom of it, and it took a lot of time, self-research, dissecting, investigating other people’s love lives, and a few more personal love failures to figure it all out.
There are things that will end your relationship before it even has a real chance to start.
You might not even be aware of what you are doing wrong as I once wasn’t.
These are the things that you might be doing:
You deny him the right to meet you on his own terms
Do you tell your life story to someone you’ve just started dating? Do you tell him about your flaws?
Do you say that you are not always cheerful and that you have your bad days?
If you do, please stop. He doesn’t want to know these things. He is just as flawed as you are and he didn’t have the urge to share that with you.
You are killing the mystery and the beauty of beginnings by oversharing too soon.
A relationship needs to be stable enough for you to be able to talk about stuff like that.
Take it one step at a time. Spend time with him; allow him to gradually get to know you.
You don’t have to explain who you are. He will find that out for himself.
You rub your independence in his nose
While being a strong and independent woman is something to be admired, there is a way in which you can go to extremes with it. Most men like to feel needed – it’s in their DNA.
If you repeatedly say that you don’t need anybody, that you are fine on your own, they will believe you. They will feel like a spare.
So be independent, but let him help you move the couch and carry grocery bags.
It doesn’t matter that you can do it yourself. Take it a step further by asking for his opinion or advice.
Find a balance. Let him know that you want him in your life, even if you don’t need him.
But don’t take it too far either. Dependence is even worse and it will without a doubt make him lose interest.
You want to fast-forward your relationship
It’s only natural to daydream at the beginning of a relationship. But it’s also easy to get carried away and take things too far.
You start to connect your name with his surname, you name your children, and think about where would you live, while you’ve been on 5 dates so far.
You are not alone in all of this. A lot of women, including me, are guilty of this, even if they have a hard time admitting it to themselves.
Lower your pace and whatever you do, don’t talk to him about your plans of happily ever after together.
Men usually don’t think that far ahead; they take it one day at a time.
Try to follow his lead. You will avoid getting hurt because of getting your hopes up too soon, and you will lower the risk of scaring him away.
You want to “improve” him
It’s hard work trying to change things about yourself that you don’t like, let alone another person.
It’s mission impossible, useless, and it will only end your relationship. If he accepts you just the way you are, do the same for him.
Sure, we can change little things about ourselves to accommodate someone else, hear them out, see that we aren’t always right, and decide to make compromises, but our essence will always stay the same.
A person you are supposed to spend your forever with will be full of flaws just like you are, but the thing that will keep you together is that you will be able to handle each other’s flaws.
It’s also important to stress that if he is generally a bad person who treats you poorly and plays with your feelings, it’s time you end things, not fix things.
You don’t give him enough space
Nobody likes feeling suffocated or trapped – especially men. If you go overboard with texting or your desires to see him every waking hour, he will start to think that you have no life and that you are obsessed with him.
I believe that’s not the message you want to send. Don’t neglect your friends, interests, or life just because you’ve met somebody new and interesting.
Don’t send him a follow-up text, don’t force the conversation, avoid being too needy, and you will do just fine.
Let him be a man – let him go after you – and meet each other halfway. That goes for texting, planning dates, and making effort in general.
You are unaware of the trap of self-fulfilling prophecy
When you think that everything will go south, that it won’t work no matter what you do, the odds are it will happen exactly that way and you are setting your relationship up for failure.
To avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy from coming true, stop being so negative about everything. Remember the law of attraction and send only good vibes.
Your past might make you lose trust in love and doubt the fact that there are still good men out there, but the past is the past for a reason. Don’t allow it to interfere in your future.
Things are going to work once you are with your forever person – there is no doubt about it – and you will realize that you can love harder, dream bigger, and laugh louder than you ever have before.
If you don’t find yourself doing any of these things, you are lucky. Trust your friends when they say “It’s not you… it’s him.”
Because they are right. There are some outside factors that you can’t influence.
To be completely honest, I could find my old self in half of the things I listed above.
Once I figured out what I was doing wrong, I could fix it. I think it’s always better to know the truth than to bury your head in the sand, no matter how much it pained me to admit that I was wrong.
For instance, once I started living in present and enjoying the moment, and stopped fast forwarding to the future, my love life became better.
I am sure yours will too.
