It's a Guy Thing (14 page)

The times he is most afraid of commitment usually come after periods of incredible intimacy. You will have a really intimate time together, and the next morning he says, “I think we should spend some time apart.”

You feel, “We just had this incredibly intimate time together. What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong? Is it over? What’s happening?”

Perhaps what he is really trying to say is, “Intimacy scares me because I’m afraid of losing my freedom.” It’s an acknowledgment of intimacy. It’s an acknowledgment of love, expressed as, “Wait a minute. Let’s take a break.”

The fullest possible response on your part is to feel whether the space or freedom he asks for serves him or not. If it serves him, then transcend your own sense of hurt and rejection, and allow your heart to remain open to love.

If he chooses his freedom over committing to you, that’s his choice. You can only provide him with an invitation into love. Then you will find his natural rhythm of needing time apart and wanting to be with you, as well as your own rhythm. This practice of continuing to be present in love when you feel rejected, rather than pulling away and feeling insulted, moves you out of the cycle of emotional reactivity. This cycle goes nowhere: He expresses his need to be apart,
you feel hurt, withdraw, and then he feels hurt, unattracted, and likewise withdraws further. This cycle is endless, unless one of you is willing to give love even while you feel hurt.

So, discriminate why he is pulling away. Perhaps he is being a jerk, but maybe his fears are genuine and he needs time to open up to love you. Before you automatically shut down, decide if his needs are real.

Why Does Intimacy Seem Less Important to Him Than to Me?

If a man doesn’t feel he is living his vision completely, he cannot give his full love. A woman usually has the ability to love in intimacy, and also master her “doing,” at the same time. Men, however, often must master doing
first
in order to have the free energy and attention to love. Otherwise, he is full of self-doubt and feels his woman is a constraint and a demand. His woman’s mere presence demands his attention, and he will resent her for drawing him away from his quest, his search, his vision.

When the masculine principle is whole in your man, he loves what he is doing. He does it with integrity. And when he is with you, this sense of wholeness allows him to be fully with you. His attention isn’t compromised by a nagging sense of having unfinished business in other areas of his life.

It is the ultimate castration for a man not to be able to follow his vision because of his woman. Even if he has willingly made this choice, it feels like emasculation to him. It is impossible for a man to be sexually polarized with the woman for whom he has given up his vision. This choice is
the exact opposite of what the masculine energy is all about.

It is impossible for a man to feel whole and give you passionate love if he gives up his vision in order to be with you. He might, however, have to sacrifice personal preferences and little things he wants in order to make the relationship work. That’s not the same as sacrificing his vision of what his life is about.

Freedom to a man is what love is to a woman. For him to sacrifice his freedom, his vision of life, in order to be with you, means giving up his most essential desire. The equivalent for you as a woman would be to give up your desire to experience love. Would you be willing to give up experiencing love in order to be in relationship with your man? That would be ridiculous. You are with him in order to experience love. And he is with you to experience love, which he can only do fully when he is free to pursue his true vision.

Should I Just Accept the Fact That Men Are Selfish?

There is a big difference between a man who follows his true vision and a man distracted by his thoughts. When a man follows his vision he is whole and present. When a man is distracted in his thoughts, he is out of relationship and not present. He is heady and anxious. He feels slightly blocked in all kinds of ways: with money, creativity, sexuality, relationships, and so on.

You may notice that your man is distracted in his own selfish world. Don’t accept that in your life. Don’t think you have to go along with everything or anything he does. That’s not the feminine gift at all.

Don’t support your man’s head trip. Support his deep vision and his true love. If he is confused and ambiguous, help him to rediscover and refocus his true vision.

Why Can’t He Receive My Love?

Almost all men feel burdened by their intimate relationship. A man’s reality consists of many activities and relationships. His relationship with you is one aspect of his reality. For you, the relationship may be at the core of your reality. For him, it is probably not. For most men, the core of their life is a mission of some kind. Their intimate relationship is a primary relationship, but not the core of their life.

You may call your man at work to tell him how much you love him. But if his mind is involved in business, your call interrupts his mission. You may say, “I just wanted to call and tell you I love you.” He may feel,
Damn it! Why is she calling now? I’m so busy!
He may feel this even though you are loving him. Sometimes he will be able to receive your love, but often he will experience it as a distraction.

He may be abrupt with you, you feel hurt and let him know, and he wonders what you are complaining about, while you wonder why he can’t feel your love.

In the daily practice of intimacy, your man has his responsibilities and you have yours. One of your responsibilities is to remember that his rejection of your interruption is not his rejection of
you
. He is rejecting an interference in his life. You can transcend what seems like an obvious rejection of you and realize that all he is doing is regretting being distracted from his work.

One of the biggest gifts you could give him is to develop your ability to feel,
Am I serving him in this moment? Is he benefiting from the way I am giving him love?
Or,
Am I being needy and clingy? Am I dramatizing my own neediness or am I relaxed in the knowledge of love?

Are you bringing him true happiness when you talk to him? Are the emotions you bring to him serving his growth? If you feel you are serving his growth, then it doesn’t matter what he says about it. Listen to what he says, and continue feeling in your heart,
Am I really serving him?
If you feel you are, then continue doing whatever serves him.

What Should I Do When He Ignores Me?

Imagine a moment when you are relaxed in love. You are not being needy or dramatizing your need for attention. You are offering your man a gift of love in your unique way—but he is not receiving it because he is absorbed in doing something else. In that moment, you could feel all of your possible responses:
Well, who needs him! Oh, I’m hurt. What am I doing wrong? I must not be doing enough. It must be my fault that he doesn’t love me. Tough. If he doesn’t like it that’s his problem
.

We all respond differently when we do not feel loved. These responses are usually rooted in our childhood and early life experience. We can become aware of our habitual responses. Do we act like we don’t need love? Do we retaliate and withdraw our love from him? Do we act like we are not hurt, but then punish him in some subtle way? Do we collapse or do we become rigid?

Assuming we all have a tendency to dramatize our feelings of rejection and anger, what is the best way to practice in a moment when we do not feel our love is being received by our partner?

Remain in love. Remain in as much of your own love-energy as possible. Relax in your heart and trust your own feminine reservoir of love.

As a child you may have felt rejected. Throughout your life you have built strategies to handle these feelings of rejection. As children, we learn not to express our fear, our hurt or our wounded heart. In our masculine-oriented society vulnerability is considered weak. Even as children, we quickly learn to hide our pain.

So, instead of remaining open in love even when your heart is wounded, you may do one of two things, depending on your habits from childhood. You may stay in your feminine energy, closing down, hiding in your shell and curling into your darkness. Or, you may learn to act tough and act masculine; especially when you are hurt by your partner. So when you feel rejected by your man, you may tend to shift from feminine openness to masculine toughness: “Listen to me!” Or, “I don’t need you anyway.”

When you feel rejected by your man, you may shift to your more masculine, more directive, more angular and pointed kind of energy. When this shift occurs, the distance between you and your man grows. His masculine is depolarized by your masculine energy. He begins treating you more like a man (fighting and debating with you) than as his chosen woman. So be aware if you shift to a more angular or sharp energy when he rejects you.

If, instead, you can relax into your feminine and stay open, even in the midst of pain, he will at least have the opportunity
to feel you as a feminine, wounded lover, rather than as a sharp, masculine opponent. He will be able to feel your openness, your hurt, and embrace you as a man embraces his chosen woman, rather than butt heads like two masculine rams.