This is the real-life story of one man, and his journey to discover why he leaves. I listened to this last night, found it very interesting, and thought I'd share it with you today.
"Why did I leave?"
"Why did I lose interest?"
"Why did I push her away?"
Why, with every romantic relationship that he has ever had, does he lose interest, leave, or drive his partners away? You may recognize him. Or you may relate to him. Or you may have been with him, or a person exhibiting many of the same behaviours. Yet, you were never able to figure out why.
This is a transcript, which I have personally written and edited and paraphrased for brevity, but these are the actual words spoken, in a conversation between a man seeking an answer, and the therapist who helped him.
(The esteemed, renowned, Esther Perel. I highly recommend getting to know her, if understanding yourself, or the world, or relationship dynamics within couples or colleagues or family, are areas of interest to you. I've provided a link to the free audio recording, below. You can also find thousands of her lectures and interviews in youtube. She is one of the industry's most prolific educators in the field of psychology.)
It is one-30-min session. That was all that was needed.
Meet, Mr. X. Let's call him Michael. Michael is 39, single, and lives in the U.K. As he approaches age forty and is still single, he knows the reason lies with him, not the women he’s dated.
Michael: "I'm pushing forty, I'll be forty in six months, and I've never had a relationship go beyond, four, maybe five months. I'm growing increasingly concerned that I can't have a relationship. So the question is, why is that? Should I be concerned?"
In my twenties and thirties, I was just kind of drifting through life, coasting, it's all good; but lately, in the last few years, it's really begun to concern me, especially as I have begun to feel I really want a relationship."
Three-four months into the relationship, I just hit this wall. I get anxious, I begin to withdraw. She will call me out on it, and basically the relationship just ends, because I can't communicate what it is I'm going through. It's really upsetting to me. I don't know what to do. Why can't I get past this?"
EP: All relationships? Or do you mean friends as well?
"I'm talking strictly romantic relationships. I have friends who have been best friends for well over two decades."
Do you ever ask yourself why I can have these long-lasting relationships, and I don't freeze, don't run, don't walk away? What's different?
"I guess the simplest way to say it is just feel that I can't be my authentic self in a romantic relationship. My friends have remarked how I can be very charming off the bat, if I like someone, but within a few months, I lose all interest; or maybe they do, and I get super anxious. It's one or the other. And later, I look back on those relationships, and I just feel that I wasn't able to be my authentic self. I wasn't being me. I was putting on, constantly."
Because I was protecting myself against what?
"Oh yeah, against judgment; or being seen as boring; or miserable; or as a project they have to take on. God forbid I say how I'm actually feeling. I don't want to be judged for it. So I do feel I have to show just the sunnier sides of myself."
How does that manifest?
"Well, it's either one of two things - that they're not into me as much as I want them to be, so I feel constantly anxious, and I desperately want them to like me, so I become either very cool, or very needy, and I've definitely chased a few people off, as a result. In one way or another, they basically dump me, with ghosting, or whatever.
Or the flip side is that I become passive. I withdraw, I no longer look forward to seeing them, I can't really be bothered. And I begin to resent them, for whatever things. And I lose interest in sex. I literally can't have sex with them anymore; which I feel terrible about because they think it's them, and I assure them it's not, but when they ask me what it is then, I don't have an answer. It just gets worse and worse and worse."
So you become either the pursuer or the pursued. When you are the pursuer, you become needy, wanting their attention but not believing you deserve it, not believing you are lovable. 'I push them away because I come on so strong, and become so hungry. Or, I make them leave me, by becoming passive, avoidant, and uninteresting. I make the point in multiple ways, but none of it is what I really want. And the pattern repeats so many times, that eventually come to understand that it is not the other person, but me.'
"Exactly."
They are the same fear, from two sides. One is manifested in pursuit, and the other withdrawal, but they are the same fear, the same struggle.
And why not friends? Because, for some reason, the only ones that mirror each other are the ones that we have with our early caregivers, or parents, and the ones we have with our partners. Somehow we manage not to repeat that with our friends. Why? Because the stakes never feel that high. 'I never feel like my sense of lovability and self-worth is on the line, in the same way.' They are both around your attachment to people.
Tell me about the early relationships with your caregivers. Who was in your life? Who cared for you? Who was there for you, not there for you?
"So, my parents got divorced when I was twelve-thirteen. It was a terrible divorce; just an absolute car crash. My father was under immense pressure from a new business venture that was going wrong. He was getting really stressed out, and they were arguing all the time.
And then one day my mum went to see him, and she discovered him in bed with another woman, came home in bits, which I remember vividly. And just like that, our four-person household became three (me, my mum, and my sister.)
My father has always been around, we have a close relationship; at least now we do, it wasn't always that way. I remember he would pick us up for lunch, and they were really staid affairs, very awkward, because he, never once, even to this day, ever talked about what the f*** happened."
Did you ask?
"So, my sister was the vocal one. She was sort of like the campaigner on both our parts [she was the older.] My role was passive. I would just sit there and watch them have it out. We've both come a long way since, and have a great relationship with him now."
But you still haven't asked him?
"No, literally, not even once. I don't think I've wanted to ask."
So, this is about more than just what happened. It is, 'You know, Dad, this story that went on twenty years back, it still has a hold on my life. I feel lonely. I've been trying to understand how that impacted me, what it did for me, and I would love to have a chance to talk about this. This is not a recrimination, this is not a blame session. I just need to understand, because here I am, close to forty, I finally switched from thinking about what was missing in the women I was meeting, to realizing that the story was inside of me.'
Which story replaces your mum, and which story replaces your dad? The withdrawal or the pursuit? Which story do you replay when you cling, and which story do you replay when you flee?
"When I cling, I think that is me trying to get validation from my dad. And it was my mother who, recently actually, pointed out to me that the women I've been most drawn to were the stern ones. I didn't see this. And it hit me hard. It makes sense. She was right. So, that's my dad."
And what is the feeling that makes you withdraw? You start to withdraw when? You lose sexual interest when?
"When I feel trapped, when I feel contained."
And I feel trapped and contained when?
(That's not a feeling, by the way, trapped and contained.) What is the feeling?
"Okay.
I feel scared."
Scared of?
"Being seen for all my ridiculous ugliness; being seen for this mess, who hasn't got an f'ing clue for what he's doing, who is sad quite a lot of the itme, actually; who is angry; constantly angry. And I'm just worried about being seen as a bit of a head case, unsure of himself, uncertain, and weak."
A human being.
"Basically, yes."
Okay, what happened to your mum after your dad left?
[sighs] "Okay. My mum was miserable, for a long time. She was f'ing angry, and resentful, and 'That bastard this, how could he that...' and I remember her directly looking at me, and that I had to do something about it. I can't remember what, but that I had to do something, because he's not doing this and that. I felt like I never measured up to whatever it was that I was supposed to do to help her, and she was just on the edge. She had breakdowns."
And you felt trapped.
"I felt trapped, yeah. I got angry at her. I was behaving like a brat, like a little shit, who didn't want to know about her misery, and I hated it when I'd come home from school and she was anything but happy. I just wanted to put distance. It's too close to the f'ing pain, ya know?"
You went through a lot. And you were a twelve-year old who felt terrible for your mum, and at the same time you wanted her to stop feeling terrible. You felt overwhelmed, and you couldn't get her out of it, and every time you meet a woman now and start to feel close enough to know how she feels, you feel responsible, and the entrapment fear comes right back. What better way to flee, and to re-enact it than to lose sexual interest?
"Yeah, it's the quickest way."
And so here you are, with your mom, with her experience, her rage, her sadness, her drama, and you don't know what to do because it's too much for a little boy to make his mummy happy. If she is happy, then he doesn't have to worry about her, and then he can think about his own life. Becoming a brat and a shit is the way a teenager tries to create boundaries so that he can deal with his own life. He pretends he doesn't care, but in fact he cares so much.
"Yes. It just sounds so obvious when you say it this way. It sounds so obvious, but I've never heard it put to me this way. This sense of responsibility, and fleeing, yeah... I want to make boundaries, I don't want to deal with this shit; but at the same time, I do care deeply. And it's this tussle. That's it. That's exactly it."
You don't flee because you don't care, because you're cold. You flee because you don't know how to get close, without feeling the burden of caretaking and responsibility.
"Yes. I get angry, and I feel so much regret after, that even as a thirty-nine-year old man I can regress like that, back into my childhood state, just with a click of the finger, and I am shouting at her, and I feel so ashamed, because that's your mum, ya know?"
That's right. You haven't figured out how to create some distance, or separateness, without having a shouting match. So, it feels regressive, young. Or how to be close, without the burden of responsibility. And she's perceptive, that you may be attracted to more stern or aloof women, because you're romantic unconscience thinks that these women will be less needy, andd you won't have to be so responsible for them.
"That is so spot on. That's what it is."
What's going on is that it's easier to pursue someone who's holding back, because they don't overwhelm you.
When you begin to disentangle, when you see it happening again, that is when you need to have the conversation between yourself today and the twelve-year old boy you were before. Some of this is fiction. Some of it is your perception, or belief, that these women will need you, in ways that they actually do not. This belief you have activates an entire inner world. It's about closing the gap between the twelve-year old and forty-year old.
"I can't believe how accurate that feels. I mean, I actually feel good. It's like a massive knot has come undone, and it's caused me so much distress, and anger, and sleepless nights, being so fed up with myself, for so long. I just can't believe how you were able to articulate it."
We have articulated it. Not 'I', 'we.' If it hits the spot, it's because you're right there already. I could have said this to you ten years ago and it could have landed on deaf ears. It's always a meeting between what is, and what you are ready to hear. What this says to me is that the gap is beginning to close.
~
Conclusion:
While there still exists a fairly robust debate over whether or not men are truly free to, and genuinely and without malice or repercussions, encouraged to express their feelings and emotions (typically the vulnerabilities, not the more accessible anger, and the like), there is little debate that males, typically, do struggle more in this realm. However, the greater difficulty seems to be in receiving, absorbing, and reacting to, the emotional life of others.
Historically, not only has there been a heavier financial burden on males, but many feel unequipped to provide the full breadth of emotional support that females often seem to require. (It is said they have "more complex emotional needs", though without less clarity, perhaps, to the shagrin of men.) Whereas to the more stoic male, it's more common for females to ask, "What are you thinking? What's on your mind?", the man knowing full well that, "Nothing," is seldom an acceptable answer. (Yet brain scans clearly support the fact that they are, sometimes in fact, thinking nothing.) For men, who often benefit more from quiet, solitary soul-searching, without the aid of others (which is both cultural and typically, personal, psychological preference), it can be a worrisome question, and a daunting task to either ask, or answer.
Regardless of who's asking, and in addition to concern, and curiosity, in romantic partnerships the subtext is, "... and does it have something to do with me?" Men know this feeling well - "Okay, what did I do wrong now?"
It is often forgotten, or overlooked, by girls/women, just how draining and challenging this role of responsibility, whether emotional or other, can be for a man. Feeling pangs of suffocation and responsibility, and attachment and fear of being left, can exist in all, but it appears to be men who more often have feelings of being inadequately equipped, or up to the challenge, so much so that they will either not begin a relationship requiring this expected romantic committment, or they dip their toe in, get swept up by her greater desire for intimacy and commitment, and then anguish in feelings of being in over their head. (Such as a marriage proposal that was genuinely asked at the time, yet becomes a terrifying commitment, in the days and months after, particularly when the wedding preparation logistics are a constant reminder of the future at stake.) The emotional weight becomes a heavy cross to bear.
Though there are exceptions to just about every seemingly declarative and too-definitive credo, in general, feelings of romance, unity, partnership, may be wanted by both, but it is often the female who pushes forward, in a more intense pursuit of such markers and milestones. And men know it. Not only do they worry about the financial resources necessary to achieve this and appease her, but they fear their own inadequacy to be all that she thinks she needs... or wants. Expectation is the killer of joy, as they say.
When expectations and critique congeal, bitterness is often the byproduct. No one wants to feel inadequate. It is often men who feel the sting of critique most acutely. They are the chaser, not the chased; they receive few compliments from either gender; and they must present with strength and resiliency, in ways that females do not. Vulnerabilties can be difficult to discuss, and even harder to discern. It can take years, not only in the passing of time on the calendar, but in life experience, and introspection, and self-awareness, to understand that sometimes the reason for which you thought you did something, was not, in fact, the reason at all. "It wasn't the women, it wasn't them. It was me." (And so too in reverse, "It wasn't the men, but me.") So, only the more evolved tend to admit that they do, in fact, walk away, or push people away, and that these feelings and emotions - a response to expectation and the responsibility they feel they must rise up to - are often at the root of their supposed ambivalence or indifference. To admit this is to acknowledge one's feelings of inadequacy and doubt and that is something that society has taught men is occasionally of benefit, but more often a detriment.
Yes, some men leave. Or, won't commit, or won't begin. But let's try to get over the (inaccurate) tropes and cliches, "Men love the chase," and "All men just want sex, and once they get it, they lose interest." Some men do, yes. And sometimes he is bored, and sometimes the sex is dull, or maybe it wasn't frequent enough to satisfy. But it is unfair to classify all men (or women) as if only one type exists, or as if within one gender, all are alike. Michael did experience a loss of interest in sex, yes, but in his case it was the outward expression, not the root cause.
Sometimes it's not boredom, or short attention span, or the anthropological drive of sewing the genetic seed; or lack of respect, or even lack of interest. As Michael discovered, it's a lot of responsibility to care about another person, and caring is exactly why some people leave, or tune out, or push away. They know that they matter to the person, and that what they say matters. So be patient with them, because sometimes it is a sign, and a show of love and respect, for them to wait until they have the emotional energy to reach out, or respond in a thoughtful and considered manner.
If you are the person who often leaves, maybe you want to ask yourself if you relate to Michael. And, if you are the person on the other end, remind yourself that maybe they do, in fact, care very much.
References:
Esther Perel, "Where Shall We Begin," "Still Single at 40."
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