In this episode, Lisa Shield, founder and CEO of Emotionally Naked Dating, delves into the often unsettling experience of men pulling away in relationships. Drawing on over two decades of experience as a love coach, Lisa explores the real reasons men distance themselves and offers strategies for handling these situations with grace. She emphasizes that a man pulling away is not a reflection of a woman's value and explains common missteps, such as overanalyzing the situation or coming on too strong, which can intensify the man's instinct to distance himself. Lisa also discusses the importance of staying grounded in reality, maintaining self-worth, and keeping dating options open. She highlights the need for self-reflection to recognize patterns and break destructive cycles, and offers practical tips on how to approach and manage these dating challenges. Listeners will gain insights into setting healthy boundaries, understanding men's fears, and using dating as a path for personal and spiritual growth.
The Real Reason Men Pull Away & How to Handle It With Grace
Lisa Shield, founder and CEO of Emotionally Naked dating, explains why men sometimes pull away and how women can handle this situation with dignity and grace. She discusses the importance of self-reflection, maintaining personal boundaries, and not giving away one's power. Lisa also provides strategies to avoid common mistakes, embrace personal growth, and navigate dating with confidence.
Highlights:
Common Reasons for Pulling Away:
Staying Grounded:
Responding Gracefully:
Personal Growth through Dating:
This episode is packed with insights on maintaining self-worth and composure when navigating modern relationships. Listen in for more wisdom from Lisa Shield!
**Resources:**
- Free 45-minute presentation: https://www.lisashieldlove.com/registration-page-final-page
**Connect with Us:**
- Website: https://www.lisashield.com/podcast/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisashieldcoaching/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisashieldcoaching/
I am Lisa Shield, founder and CEO of emotionally Naked dating. I've been a love coach for well over two decades, and I am excited to share my wisdom with all of you today. I am going to talk about the real reason men pull away and how to handle it with grace, have you ever felt your heart sink when a man you're dating starts to pull away? You can feel it. There's a shift in the energy. You've been texting and suddenly he was texting you back immediately, and then there's these long pauses, or maybe you don't even hear from him for a day, and that's unusual.
There's just some. Break in the rhythm that tell, that's a signal to your gut that something is going on. And this is one of the most vulnerable moments in dating, and it can make you question everything, your behavior, your worth, and the connection that you thought you had with this man. But here's the truth.
When me, when a man pulls away, it is not a reflection of your value. It's so easy to start to spiral, to get in your head and think, oh my God, what did I do? Things were going so well. I must have done something wrong. It's happening again, especially if this is a cycle or a pattern for you. It is so easy to just feel your anxiety come roaring to the surface.
And start to question yourself. So today we're going to explore why men sometimes distance themselves and how you can respond in a way that. Protects your self-worth where you stand up for yourself and you don't give your power away. You're going to learn how to stay grounded and avoid common mistakes like chasing or overanalyzing the situation and you're going to learn to use this experience to grow.
Dating can bring up. Tons of anxiety, and you don't have to lose yourself in the process. You can navigate this situation with confidence, clarity, and grace. So if you've ever felt like your world was falling apart because the man you're dating started to pull away, you're not alone. It's one of the most vulnerable and unsettling feelings you could have.
Especially if you're a woman who experiences a lot of anxiety in dating. If you're an anxious dater, it is horrible when a man starts to pull away and lots of women have been there. And they were left wondering, what did I do wrong and how do I fix this situation? Things were going so well. He was so into me.
Everything felt wonderful. And then it's like he took a deep, a quick. Detour, and I don't understand why. You have to know that this isn't about fixing anything. It's really about understanding what's happening and learning how to respond with dignity and grace. So there are different types of men who pull away for different reasons.
There are men who pull away because they're narcissistic. They're avoidant, or they're love bombers. These men, this is woven into their character. It's not your fault. There's nothing you can do if you run into one of these guys. You have to just learn how to see the writing on the wall and walk away.
These men are emotionally unavailable, or they're players, they're manipulative, and they thrive on creating distance and confusion. That's how they hook you. But today, we're not going to focus on those types of men because there's another kind of situation. That you. Have to consider that you have to look at, and you cannot be too quick to label these men as narcissistic or avoidant or love bombers.
If you do that, you will dismiss the situation and if you are the common denominator, if there is, you know this other kind of guy who's pulling away. Because of what you're doing, then you're going to keep making the same mistake and you can't keep telling yourself forever that they're all avoidance or they're all love bombers.
So if what I am about to say resonates with you, it's very important that you start to get real with yourself and look at this behavior. I am talking about the men who pull away too soon because they feel. You are too invested in the relationship before they are. So you meet them, you go on a few dates, and you're already talking about what are you looking for, what a future would look like.
They get a sense that you are too invested too quickly. And if a man senses that the relationship is becoming too intense for the stage you're in, it's going to trigger his instinct to pull away. I. Now, some of you have been on the opposite side of this. You've been dating a man who did this, who was anxious or who was coming on too strong in the beginning.
It was too intense and you hadn't had time to catch up to him, and you felt like he was. Way, way, way ahead of you. And instead of that making you wanna get closer to him, it made you wanna pull away. So when a man starts to pull away, many women will start responding by turning up the intensity. They might start texting more, asking for more reassurance.
They might analyze every interaction, talk to their girlfriends. Why is he doing this? What do I do? What do I say? How do I pull him back in? And I get it. It's na. It's a natural reaction when you're feeling vulnerable. I. To wanna control the situation, to do something, to fix it. But when you do that, you give all of your power away.
And instead of drawing him closer, that kind of behavior makes you look desperate and it reinforces his instinct to wanna get further away from you because he feels pressure and the dynamic is just. Imbalanced and it's really awkward for a lot of men to feel so much pressure on a relationship too soon.
Something that you really need to understand about men is that most men, their greatest fear is losing their freedom and independence, and if they feel like a woman they've just met is trying to corral them into a commitment and a relationship. Without them even having time to get to know the woman, it is going to cause them to pull away.
So when a man does start to distance himself, you need to do some self-reflection. You need to ask yourself, how well do I really know this person? Has he demonstrated the qualities of a great partner? Is he showing kindness, compassion, and is he putting effort into the relationship? These kinds of questions are very important because when we develop feelings for someone, we often skip this step.
We get so excited and we're both feet in and we're planning the wedding before we've even had the third date. Instead, we focus on how they make us feel in the moment, but we forget to assess whether or not they're really meeting our needs as a partner, or if they have the makeup, the character to be a good partner.
We just think they're sexy or they're hot, or they've got a cool job. Or we, they take us to nice restaurants and we like being treated well, there's a little danger zone. There's a little dangerous thing called projection, and we all do it. We meet somebody and we start to project. Certain qualities, we imbue them with qualities that we haven't really seen whether or not they have.
So if a man is successful and handsome and seems to have his life together and we think he's a really great catch, we may project positive qualities on this person. We may think, oh my gosh, like this is a man I could be with. He's got a great job. He could provide a good life for me. He's intelligent. I really you know his character when you don't even know him.
We can also project negative. Qualities onto somebody. We see somebody who may not drive the best car or who may show up on a date and not. Look the way we would expect him to look, and we can start to project negative qualities on a guy. Maybe he is a an engineer. And so we put him in an engineering box.
We label him as an engineer, and then we project, oh, he's not emotionally available, he's too serious. He doesn't know how to have a good time, and we project all these preconceived notions onto him because of his. Career or his title or maybe the part of the TA of the city he lives in. We had a woman the other day in one of our courses and she said, once I find out where a guy lives, what part of town?
I make up a story about who this guy is. What his, income is whether or not he's educated or sophisticated just by the part of town this person lives in so many times when a man starts pulling away, it's because we projected our hopes and our fantasies onto him, and he can feel it. We imagine how great he could be rather than seeing who he really is, and that's dangerous.
And it's uncomfortable for the man because he knows that you don't really know him and he doesn't really know you, so you need to stay grounded in reality. I remember when I was dating, I would go on a date and then I would say to myself after the date, you don't know this person. You're just getting to know him.
So I might say to myself, he seems like a really great guy. That was an awesome date. I had such a wonderful time. I haven't enjoyed a man's company that much in a long while. And then my next thought would be, and I do not know this man. So you have to be very careful. You can enjoy someone's company. I'm not saying you wanna be critical or look for negative things.
If you really like a man and you've gone on, a few dates with him and you're enjoying getting to know him, you wanna enjoy getting to know him. But you wanna ground it in the reality of I do not know him yet. Just because he is kind, just because he takes you to a great restaurant. Just because he is a gentleman, that doesn't mean you know this man's character.
It takes time to know someone's character. So how do you respond? Let's just say that you have. Gotten ahead of yourself, and you have given this man the impression that you're way too into him, and he does start to pull away and you start to feel panicky. What do you do? The first thing that you need to do is maintain your boundaries.
So when a man pulls away, your instinct is going, might be to text him or to figure out, oh my gosh, I've got two tickets for this concert coming up. And boy, I sure would like someone to go with me. And it can't be a bad thing to invite him. Yeah, if he, if you feel he's pulling away.
And you invite him and you're using that as a tactic or a strategy, that's not good, especially if you think he's pulling away and you're using that as a desperate measure to try and reel him in. So you have to be very careful 'cause your instinct is going to wanna lean in and get more intense and hold on tighter.
And instead you need to take a step back and remind yourself of your value. So if he's unsure about you, you need to be willing to say, I don't wanna be in a relationship with someone who's unsure about me. I wanna be with a man who's excited about me, who's as excited to be with me as I am to be with him.
And you have to understand the importance of being willing to walk away or to just sit still and do nothing and see what he does doing those things unless you're doing them. To say I'll show him and I can beat him at his own game and I'm not gonna, respond, I'm just gonna wait for him to text me.
And inside of you, you're doing it in a manipulative way. It'll backfire. Because people can feel your energy. It's not what you're doing, it's why you're doing the things you're doing that really matters. So let's say you pull back and you just, you give you, you say, you know what, I'm go, I really wanna text this guy.
I wanna have a conversation. I feel you're pulling away, is it something I've done? No. Just take a deep breath and let the dust settle. Give it some space, give it a few days, and just sit with your uncomfortable feelings and see what happens. Don't do it as a manipulation, do not do it as, oh, I'm gonna see what he does, or I'm just gonna pull back because I can play that game too.
This isn't about playing games, it's about setting a standard for how you wanna be treated. I. You also wanna keep your options open. So in my Emotionally Naked dating program, one of the things we encourage is that you date several men at the same time, and that you stay online until you're sure about a particular man.
So when you have other options, you're less likely to fixate on someone who isn't showing up for you and you feel like you're always, not in a place of scarcity but abundance. So it's very important that you stay on the sites, you continue to text and communicate with other men, and you do not give your, all your power to one man who you hardly know.
So having other options helps you stay grounded and it helps you remember that one man's uncertainty doesn't define your worth. So it is really important. It is so easy. I, we had a woman the other day and she was talking about. In our course, she was talking about how there was a man who she had gone on two dates with and he didn't contact her again and.
It was clear that she wondered why he didn't ask her out a third time, but she ended this whole, that whole scenario with my girlfriend's helped me figure out that he drinks too much, and so it's for the best. So she. He may drink too much and it may be for the best, but the truth is she did want him to ask her out on a third date and he didn't, and she still doesn't know why.
So the fact that he drank too much and that he probably wasn't the right guy for her, still doesn't negate the fact that she doesn't, she did want a third date. She landed on sour grapes, but she still doesn't understand why he didn't ask her out again. And this is something we often do.
We can have a series of experiences where. Then, we start dating a man and there's a pattern that after three weeks these guys start, three dates or three weeks, or three months, they start pulling away and we can excuse it and say they were avoidant, or emotionally unavailable, or whatever, and make an excuse.
But it may be true. You're latching on too quickly and you're scaring them away. So it's very important that you do some self-reflection anytime there's a repeating pattern in your dating, because it can't always be the men. You're the common denominator. And if there is a repeating pattern, there's probably something, or there is.
Something you are doing that's causing that pattern to repeat. Now, it may be that you're attracted to avoidant men, and that may be true, but it is important that if you're chasing someone who's pulling away, you have to ask yourself, why am I pursuing this person who is pulling away from me? Am I respecting and valuing myself in this situation?
Is it possible that I came on too strong, or I was pushing the idea of a relationship too soon before we really knew each other? What patterns might I be repeating here? So dating is one of the greatest opportunities in life for personal growth. Some of you love doing personal growth work, and you love to think of yourself as being on a spiritual path.
I. And there are few areas of life I'm going to assert that this is the, this really is the ultimate spiritual path and spiritual growth path. So learning how to be in healthy relationship with yourself and with a partner is the ultimate. Way of being on in this lifetime to be able to have a beautiful, healthy, loving relationship with yourself, and then to be able to go out into the world and attract a partner who you can have a loving, peaceful, passionate, playful relationship that lasts a lifetime.
That is the ultimate. Achievement any human being can have in this lifetime in terms of your personal growth. And so dating can be a path, a spiritual path. And when you learn to recognize patterns and especially when men are distancing themselves, when you can step away from relationships that don't serve you.
You start to make space for someone who will truly value you because you value yourself. So when I was dating, I told myself, Lisa, it doesn't matter what is happening in a man's life, I. If he is not making time for you, you don't need to know why. You don't need to know if it's because of his ex-wife or his kids or his parents, are going through something or whatever.
You are looking for a man who truly wants to be with you, who makes time for you and who pursues you. And if a man isn't doing that, then he is not the right man for you. I also learned how not to project on men by telling myself, I do not know this person yet. We're just getting to know each other. I like him.
He seems lovely, but it's too soon to tell, and I also learned. Not to rush into anything with anyone, so I wasn't rushing. You cannot rush if you get anxious and start rushing and get a getting ahead of yourself. I never even talked on dates with men about what they were looking for. I didn't care because I was observing them and their behavior, and I knew those conversations would come up naturally.
But I was not interested in initiating them, especially in the very early stages of the relationship. I felt it was so much more important that I observe who this man is and see how he was showing up in, in the dating, especially in those first few dates. I wasn't interested in just filling that void in my life.
I'd done that in the past. I could find guys, I could have been with some of the guys that I had been with. I had left them because I wanted something better, and that's probably why you left many of the men that you were with or why those relationships ended. So that both of you could find someone who was better for you, a healthier relationship that worked for both of you, and that means if he left you, maybe you still had growing to do, maybe you weren't mature enough to be in a relationship with that person.
We all have to grow up and show up as adults in relationships. We can't rush into anything. And if you are moving too fast, if you're an anxious dater dating. Slowing down is the most important thing you can do. So this is work that we do with you in my Emotionally Naked Dating program. We can show you how to slow down, how to become a secure dater, how to have, how healthy boundaries, how to walk away from a man.
Who's pulling away how to have a conversation with him that says, Hey, if I was coming on too strong, I apologize. I'm not rushing into anything with anyone. I really wanna get to know you, and I'd love. A do over. Let's see if maybe we can slow this down. If you're open to that, I would still love to get to know you.
You keep dating other people while that happens, I. We also help you look at repeating patterns and look at your part in those patterns. It isn't easy to see these things without our help, because we do help you take a deep dive into your past and identify patterns and also look at. What you were getting out of repeating those patterns and how you can break them going forward.
There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle and we can help you put them together. We have hundreds and hundreds of clients who have found guardian of their soul relationships in the last. Two decades because of our help, and we would love to help you too. So please go to lisa shield.com. Click the button all over the page to watch my free presentation.
You must stay to the end. That's where you can book a call with a member of my team. Where we can show you how we can help you get this solved. Don't keep giving your power away to men. Don't keep rushing into relationships because you're lonely and you're trying to fill a void. Don't keep breaking your own heart over and over again.
There is a plan and a path and a way forward, and we can show you how to get there please. Please go to lisa shield.com and book that call. Also, if you'd we would love for you to join our Facebook group. It's called Finding the Guardian of Your Soul. It is it is our Facebook group, so if you wanna join our Finding The Guardian of Your Soul Facebook group please.
Look it up on Facebook. We would love to have you there. And finally, if you have ideas for future topics, I would love it if you would send them to hello@lisashield.com. We get our best subjects from you, so please help us help you. By sending them to us. All right everybody. This has been a lot of fun.
Enjoy the rest of your day. Please tell everybody you know about these broadcasts. I've been doing one a day for the last seven days, and I'm gonna continue. All the way through the holidays. So if you wanna keep up on when I'm doing these, I'm doing them at different times each day. You wanna sign up, you wanna go to finding the guardian of your soul so that you can see the time that I do them each day.
Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for listening, and I will see you again soon. Bye bye.