I’ve been seeing this guy for 6 months and we decided to officially become a couple after about a month of dating. Lately he’s been withdrawn and doesn’t give me nearly any attention. When we’re together we sleep together, but recently he became really emotional (like he was going to cry) and was telling me that “I deserve better than him” and that “he’s not good enough for me.” What does my boyfriend really mean when he says that?
Well, at the risk of being too blunt and direct… he’s basically saying that he doesn’t love you as strongly as you seem to love him.
He’s not saying you deserve a better man than him. He’s saying you deserve a better love than he feels for you or believes he will ever feel for you.
That’s not to say he doesn’t love you. He may love you very much… but not feel very “in love” with you at the moment.
As for him looking emotional and tearful when he’s saying this, it’s probably because he genuinely cares for you, he doesn’t want to hurt you or break your heart and there’s still a large part of him that likes having you around.
One way to put it is that he genuinely feels that he’s “cheating you out of real love” and that he no longer sees the future that he once saw with you.
So given that you’re at this crossroads, you have a choice: Do you fight to rescue the relationship or do you let him go?
If you are reading this article and you’re in this exact situation, I would imagine that you’d want to do anything to create that kind of love with him.
On the A New Mode newsletter, I talk extensively about how to really reach a man so he feels that kind of love for you. But in this article, I will quickly go through a few things you can try to revive the relationship.
Before I do though, I want to make a point about relationships: the biggest issue I ever see with relationships is that people want to “shove a round peg through a square hole” (so to speak). In other words, before you go trying to force your relationship to work, ask yourself a few questions:
a) How do I feel about myself in this relationship? Do you love yourself and your life more while you’re in this relationship… or are you worrisome, stressed out and insecure? If it’s the latter, that’s a good indicator that this relationship might be worth leaving…
b) How deeply do you feel you know and understand the person you’re with? (Note: I am not asking how deeply you love them, how “close” you feel or anything like that…)
Do you feel you can read them like a book? Or do you feel like they’ve always had a wall up to you and you’ve only gotten to know a surface level of them but have otherwise been at a distance?
True love and intimacy requires that you and your partner can let each other in. Some guys don’t like to talk about things, but they have ways to show their love (see How Do Men Show Their Love?)
On the other side of this if your guy became closed over time, then it might be because you’ve unknowingly stopped doing the things that made him feel love for you in the first place (let’s talk about that in a moment).
c) Are you happy, fulfilled and secure in your own life? For your relationships to work, you must show up first as a happy, fulfilled, secure person.
Think of the women you know who are always talking about how men are using them or the man they’re dating isn’t treating them how they wish he would. The women who complain about these sorts of things are are usually insecure, unhappy and unfulfilled in their life in general.
If you really want a relationship that works out, then you MUST finally get yourself together. Fill your life with things that make you happy and feel fulfilled.
And finally KILL those insecurities. Being insecure about things is both a habit and a lifestyle. It stems from the belief that worrying or obsessing about something you don’t like will accomplish something…
It won’t. When you get down to it, you really only have two choices with insecurities: Either CHANGE whatever it is that you’re insecure about or OWN IT.
If you can change it, commit to change it NOW. Have a game plan that you are working on every day to have it handled. For example, if you want to get fit and shed some extra weight, DO IT – get into action NOW and stop driving yourself crazy with feeling bad about it. By taking action and handling what you don’t like, you will feel in control and in charge of your life.
And if you can’t change what you don’t like about yourself… own it. Embrace it and accept it as a part of you. I know it sounds cliche, but you must love yourself, all of yourself, before anyone else can truly love you.
…
OK, so let’s say that you want to turn this situation around and try to save your relationship.
Fair enough, I’ll tell you a few tips that will give you the best shot to save your relationship. But keep in mind – not all relationships are “meant to be.” Sometimes in the long run, a relationship is best off ending if it ultimately isn’t a good match.
First, let’s talk about you. Like I said earlier, you need to show up in the relationship happy, fulfilled and secure. This might be particularly hard for you at this point since you might be worried about your relationship collapsing and that worry is poisoning your mood and mental state.
I realize it’s tough, but it is at this time that it’s MOST important to stand on a firm foundation emotionally.
All to often I see women who are unfulfilled, unhappy or insecure jump into a relationship and start to look to the relationship as the Holy Grail of happiness in their life. They fixate entirely on their relationship and use it as an emotional crutch… their relationship makes them feel fulfilled, secure and happy. Inevitably something happens and then comes the worry. Maybe the guy didn’t text back right away or he said something that sounded negative.
And very quickly you go from that happy, love-filled woman to an insecure mess, analyzing every detail of your relationship and desperately clinging to every little clue that could reassure you that he cares.
That’s when the big shift happens… you go from effortlessly filling the relationship with your positive energy to constantly needing to suck reassurance and confidence out of the relationship. You go from being fun and carefree to be around to being an insecure mess of emotions, desperately reacting to every one of the guy’s actions and “chasing” the relationship.
Now with all this new worrying and insecurity about the relationship, your focus becomes the worrying and not the relationship itself. You lose sight of what you were putting in at the beginning of the relationship… and what you were putting in might very well have been exactly what attracted him to you in the first place (and made him feel love for you…)
Again, if you want deeper details on how to do this, get on my newsletter cause I go into great detail.
But the quickest and easiest solution is to first make sure you have a fulfilling, happy and secure life. So that means having your own hobbies and fulfilling activities, going out with your female friends and having fun instead of staying in hoping that he’ll call you. And that means either handling what you don’t like about yourself or finally owning it.
As for the relationship, your focus should be on recreating the first days of the relationship… those were the days that brought him in initially, so it’s highly likely that’s what he loved most.
Think back to how you were and what you would do with him. How did you act? How did you dress? What kinds of things did you do together (or did you do for him)?
Whatever it was (even if you did less for him in those days), it’s highly likely that the initial 3 months of your dating contains the “secret formula” of what was working for you both.
It is common for people after the initial 3 months of a relationship to start getting lazy. They stop doing the things that initially attracted the other person and then they wonder where the love went!
After the initial period of euphoric love feelings wears off… love becomes a choice. If you’re lazy about it and decide to focus on your own worries and insecurities more than the relationship itself, you will end up draining more and more life out of your relationship.
But if you can rewind your mental clock to those initial days where love was growing, I think you’ll find a lot of things you were doing that you can start doing again.
Hope it helps,
eric charles
Written by Eric Charles
