Signs that you are being down managed out of a relationship with him on purpose


Men who want to have the opportunity to date prolifically are constantly going to encounter women who conversely want them all to herself. In fact, most any woman that a single man gets involved with wants to have him all to himself. Well if the man likes the women and wants to keep her around but still wants to be free to explore and date other women, he has a problem on his hands. The problem is how to continue seeing her and keep her happy, while also continuing to date.

Men who are in this situation merely want to date. They might be too young to get married and just want experience dating, just out of divorces and not ready to be committed again, or new to the singles market. Some men, once they hop onto the internet dating scene, become fascinated by the vast choices and opportunities before them. Whether they just aren’t ready to commit, or loving the abundance interesting and different women that the internet offers, or just haven’t met the one as yet, they all encounter the problem of dating girls who want exclusive relationships.

So what do they do? They learn how to manage their relationships with girls to postpone commitment and exclusivity and prolong the open relationship period where they can ethically still date other women. The goal is to prolong this open relationship dating phase for as long as humanly possible. Men in this predicament look up how to articles on the internet about how to handle the delicate matter of dating several women. They type into Google search phrases such as: How to keep a relationship with her casual.

This article is for women and it is about recognizing signs that you are being down managed out of a relationship, on purpose by him. More often then not, you are one of the women who he is dating and hoping to prolong the open dating period. You might unwittingly be one of the women he is juggling. The first waving red flag that hints you are being juggled, is when you mainly communicate with him via text message. The second waving red flag is that nagging instinctual feeling you’ll be having that you are being strung along. This is a long winded article because it goes through all the typical string along excuse phases men will try to utilize all the while stringing you along in a go nowhere relationship.

Be forewarned, if you find yourself involved in such a non relationships and fall in love with this man, you could be in for the most miserable, time consuming, highs and lows roller coaster ride of your life. Once you allow yourself to be involved in a non exclusive relationship, it is nearly impossible to change the nature of the relationship. If a man knows he can remain on line and date other women while continuing to date you, there is no incentive whatsoever for him to change his behavior towards you. At the end of the ride you will likely come up empty handed while some other woman who absolutely insisted the man be a committed boyfriend and get off line right out the gate will effortlessly land the very same man.

Casual relationships are to be avoided for a reason and the reason is that they can be incredibly heart breaking time wasters. Aside from too much texting and a distinct gut feeling of being strung along, here are some further warning signs women should look for and practical suggestions of what you can do about being down managed in a non exclusive dating scenario. Obviously the number one solution to being down managed is to opt out of the relationship because it stands so high a probability of being an unhealthy one.

He’s keeping the amount of contacts per week down

If he is down managing you he manages to wean you down to a contact that is just enough to keep you interested in him but never enough to let you get really close to him. That means he might be the type that gets in touch with you every week or every few weeks. If you have the feeling that contact isn’t where it should be then you are probably right on the money to worry about contact not being where it should be. Women tend to let this sort of behavior slide for weeks and months thereby giving a man they like excuse after excuse for why the contact is at a minimum. He usually claims he is busy with work or family, but will remain actively online every day. If his contact with you is at a minimum and you are rationalizing ridiculous excuses in your head about why he really can’t manage to call you every few days rest assured you are being down managed.

What you can do about his infrequent contact is leave it alone but recognize it is happening. Putting pressure on it will get you nowhere. Now I know this is insanely hard to do for women but the advice would be keep your eyes open for the exit and always be looking for other men do date, since he is clearly doing the same. If you are really hooked on this guy odds are that you’ll just let yourself be taken for the ride and be twiddling your thumbs a whole lot waiting by the phone. The main problem we women have is that we aren’t like men. We have a one track mind mentality and when we really like someone we tend to act like a pink flamingo with its head dunked down in the sand. Now I recognize that dating several men while you are hopelessly into one feels like torture but you should. If you really can’t date anyone else, at the least get busy taking care of other aspects of your life.

Dating books typically advise women to duty date. Duty dating is when you go on other dates just to keep yourself busy. Some women dislike duty dating because it doesn’t work for them. It can get you more depressed to force yourself out with other men that you do not like as much. If duty dating is too hard for you then what you can do is just try to keep your eyes open. While you are being strung along keep your eyes wide open for new dating opportunities and try to adopt a focus of getting ready for the future. Face it, that if your man is down managing contact with you the relationship might not work out. You can ride it out to the end but you would be wise to work on yourself while it’s going down. Get to the gym or start a work, home or beauty project. Try to do something valuable with your time and take good care of yourself. This will help minimize collateral damage if you the situation with your non-exclusive boyfriend does not ever materialize into a relationship. You don’t want to feel like you’ve wasted weeks, months or years of your life, so try to get something accomplished unrelated to him.

He presents his lifestyle as perpetually busy

A man that is down managing your expectations is going to be unusually busy, in fact suspiciously so. He’ll use all the excuses he’s got. That could be his career, his children, finances, his sports team, golf night with the boys, travel, friends, and everything else under the moon and sun. If he is really busy and you seem to be sitting around waiting and hoping for the phone to ring or for plans to materialize then assume that you are being relationship managed. Trust me that you are just as busy with your career, children, finances, family, volunteering etc, and yet you could manage to call him every night to chat or every other night. He can do make time for you, he just does not want to. Recognize what is going on instead of making excuses for him. Start to plan for your own downfall because if he’s too busy for you now, it’s only going to get worse.

He sidesteps talking about defining your relationship

If you are being down managed by a man he is going to systematically side step relationship discussions. If they come up then you’ll get vacuous answers that make no sense such as, I am just focusing on living each day one day at a time. Or, the person I want to be with is going to have their own life going on and not be all over me because I have always been independent. I am not into that. I’m looking for an independent woman. You‘ll get that type of noncommittal nonsense from him because he does not want to define your relationship. He wants for it to go one day at a time. You should stop pursuing this man.

If you try to directly press him on your relationship status he will begin to ignore you. It’s the old, I want to enjoy my time with you, not hear about this relationship stuff and get pressured, so then maybe I will just stop talking to you for a while so I don’t have to be badgered. Yes, he will turn your desire into talking about your status such as why he is still active online, into you badgering him. When your reality starts to get skewered to the point that asking the man you’ve been intimate with to take his profile down off the internet constitutes badgering, you know that you are being down managed. You’ll even try to work over time to impress him to try and coax him into wanting a relationship with you on his own free will, even though clearly that is not what he wants with you. You’ll start trying too hard. You should stop pursuing this man.

He says he wants a girl that has her own life, and tells you to get a life

One of the relationship stall tactics men use when cornered on relationships is to claim that you aren’t independent enough. You’ll hear excuses coming out of him such as go get a life, and I want a woman who does her own thing, and so on. Trust me if you were a millionaire supermodel he wouldn’t be complaining to you that you should go get a life, he would be integrating you into his life as fast as humanly possible. The point is, he doesn’t want a life with you. Since he doesn’t really want you in his life, he tells you to go get one of your own, and he means it! If you are smart, when a man tells you to go get a life, you will go get one as fast as you can that does not include him, thereby saving you the misery of all the next phases I am about to describe.

He makes you upset then calls you hysterical

Noncommittal men like this will soon make you psyco if you aren’t already. This is especially true for women who have never really fallen hard, super hard, for a man. If its your first time falling madly in love and you find yourself in the fateful scenario where the man you adore is not going to commit or be exclusive, this in itself is crazy making. When you are in love and he’s still dating you are going to become so incredibly needy and poorly calibrated in your emotions. This is the exact breaking point at which you run the risk of becoming a psyco texter. You’ll be texting him all the time, following his social network profiles, looking at all his friends on the social networking sites, spying on his internet dating profile activity, making fake profiles to see what he is doing or enlisting your girlfriends to spy on your behalf, and so forth. Some lucky internet marketer selling an expensive get him back or to get him to commit book might get your money right about now and you’ll devour the self help material happily. You should stop pursuing this man.

Granted you might be the persevering type to begin with, just a little bit. Because after all, you fell for Mr. Unavailable. But when you are starting to act psyco over a man and you’ve managed to come this far in life without ever acting like this before, you have to question what is going on. If you’ve got the propensity to persever and find yourself going in noncommittal circles, this man is like going to be sending you right on over the edge. You’ll know it when you’re writing this man a dozen texts a day and rarely hearing back from him. Sadly, the minute that you start executing annoying behaviors and over texting him or showing up at his house, warning bells with be sounding off loudly in his head. It’s like you hit the hammer on the fair game and it goes all the way up, and boom he thinks your crazy. It’s sort of like this sick self fulfilling prophecy thing that happens. He is elusive and noncommittal and that drives you bananas, then he gets the distinct vibe that you really are bananas, then he categorizes you into the crazy girlfriend category, and makes plan to get out and get away from you. If you’re really pretty and an ego boost to him, he might try the transition his get away by relegating you to text message communication only. That way, he doesn’t have to hear your complaints. He just gets annoyed by your text messages and deletes them all, putting your cell phone text ring tone to silent on his phone, and your incoming calls directly to his voicemail. You should stop pursuing this man.

He relegates you to text message

If you press a man that doesn’t wish to be exlusive but he still enjoys seeing you from time to time, he’ll try to down manage you totally to text. That way, he can keep you around without completely getting rid of you. It’s easier to manage because there are no phone calls and you can only send so many questions or complaints in a text message. It’s akin to stuffing you in a genie bottle of text since when you out and flowing around sort of crazy you were starting to smother him. It’s like, ok she’s going crazy and getting needy and demanding and I’ve got no other choice put to her completely into this text bottle and see if she’s contained ok there. Otherwise, I’ll have to get rid of her completely, gosh what a pain she’s being.

Seriously, if you get down managed to text message only communications the man probably secretly blames you for it. He figures, she can’t deal with the fact that I still want to date, she couldn’t handle it, so now its her fault I had to relegate her to text. By the way, getting relegated to text is pretty much a one way ticket. You’ll spend the rest of the relationship trying to prove yourself as totally un-crazy while he happily dates around. It’s a melancholy win situation for him actually. You should stop pursuing this man.

Getting relegated to text is pretty much the death of your becoming this mans girlfriend. My advice is that if you manage to be the wild genie that gets itself stuffed into a text bottle, stop texting him and stop pursuing him completely. You’ll have to go for weeks and months without bothering to touch base with him. If you can do self imposed breakup and just back away completely, he might actually have a chance to miss you. Plus, you won’t be texting so he can’t claim you are bothering him. It’s sort of like, you have to go away and become a whole new woman who is emotionally stable at that point, in order to regain a foothold with him. Think of it as starting over.

Usually it is better to find a new man altogether, one that does want a girlfriend. But if you really are addicted to this man the soundest advice is to go away, don’t contact him, change and become more emotionally stable, then come back around giving him new behavior. If you really go change and deep down he likes you still, you might be able to get out of the text bottle trap, who knows. It’s a long shot. The good thing is that becoming more emotionally stable and not letting a commitment shy man make you nuts is a good learning lesson for you. A learning lesson you can use on the next man you meet if this doomed relationship does not go anywhere.

He creates issues with you while continuing to see you but not commit

A man that has no intentions of getting more serious with you but is still willing and maybe even happy to keep you around depending how annoying you are and how attracted he still is to you, is going to create issues with you where there were none. These issues didn’t exist when he started to date you, they only exist now that you are pushing for a commitment. For example, he’ll say something like I don’t want to marry a woman that smokes, if you smoke. He’ll invent disqualifiers. Notice how he dated you just fine at first, knowing that you smoked. Now suddenly, it’s a relationship deal breaker that disqualifies you.

The only way that you can deal with his nitpicking is to try and cure bad habits that you do have. This gives him less to nitpick you about and actually improves you as girlfriend material for the next man since it probably won’t work out with this one. So, self improve yourself. Consider his nitpicking as good pointers to make you more valuable for the next man who might actually be capable of being a boyfriend. If you continue to improve the behaviors that he complains about, he won’t be able to blame his desire not to commit on them which leads to his next relationship down managing tactic, which is to say it’s too late for a relationship.

He says its too late for a real relationship, once a non relationship is established as status quo

Once a man has managed to establish a set pattern and routine of contacting you every so often, having you be really into him, and dating other woman all the while, he won’t let it go. He will want to keep his cake and eat it too. He has the pattern set and he knows that you are bonded to him and that his hooks are into you. So he holds the line and refuses to change things. If you press him at this point then he’ll come up with confounding reasons why things can never work out. The most common one is, it’s way to late for that. Our chance to be anything got passed by long ago the minute your started doing x, y, z behavior.

Ladies, let me assure you that it is never way to late for anything. If two people want to work on things then they do. That’s what happens in a marriage that lasts decades. Sure its hard to change but people do it if they set their minds to it. It usually takes a long time to make even a small change. Let’s say you acted needy but now a year or so later you’ve working on it and you don’t act needy any more. He’ll come up with the old it’s too late for us to change our status excuse, even though you’re no longer needy. It’s too late because you were needy, and now you’re blamed for how you acted in the past even though in the present you don’t act needy.

Sometimes a relationship simply misses the timing to really take off the ground. And to a certain extent he is right since that initial chance to be something was missed. It’s a timing thing. If you’ve truly worked on yourself and you have changed and he’s still stringing you along saying it’s too late for progress to be made, even though you made the personal changes he complained about, then ladies it is time to cut bait and opt out. He doesn’t want to commit to you and won’t. Once you’ve made serious and genuine changes to strengthen your persona and really worked on any behavioral or emotional problems you had, what excuse left is there? None. Leave him alone, give up and move on with your life because the next several phases become increasingly hurtful if you try to keep getting yourself strung along in a down managed relationship.

He disappears and then reappears right when you’re almost over it

So he sees that you’ve worked on yourself but still has no intention of committing to you so instead of allowing himself to get cornered he just starts being selectively unavailable. He admits that a lot of the problems you two had have resolved themselves so now he tries to things into slow motion for a while, see if things go ok, and allow miniscule progression to be made in your relationship. He might claim that he’s suspicious your changes aren’t going to stick so you’re in a permanent trial run now seeing as he does not have a crystal ball handy.

If you improve yourself but your man is still stalling the relationship with periods of being unavailable or missing in action, you should leave the relationship. He could be enjoying the stalled progression with you while pursuing other relationships right under your nose. You also have to understand that if he is yo-yoing then he probably does have some strong feelings for you mixed with one too many reservations, ergo the yo-yo behavior. He could be doing the yo-yo disappearing and reappearing on purpose but more than likely it’s a manifestation of his up and down feelings about you. If a man isn’t sure that what he has is what he wants, then he really doesn’t want what he has. A man who has what he wants, knows it.

He executes incredible will power to force you to initiate contact

When a man has made an unchangeable decision that you aren’t exclusive girlfriend material, he is going to feel guilty. And the way he manages his guilt is to stop putting anything initiation into the relationship. His rationalization is going to be, ok, I am not going to commit so I will just stop putting effort into the relationship altogether. Essentially, I will fake break up with her and 100% stop pursuing her. I won’t call her and I won’t text her. That way, if she calls or texts me I can go ahead and be nice because that’s her choice to contact me and not my fault. I am not even contacting her so how can I be considered as leading her on. I’m not. This way, we can still get together is she starts it up. At this last outpost of a go nowhere relationship that is down managed and will never become exclusive since he does not want it to, he lets you do all the work. Therefore, the fact that you are naive enough to remain in a go nowhere open relationship is your own emotional responsibility and not his problem at all. Fend for yourself.

If its fend for yourself time, then you need to do that. Fend for yourself. If you want to remain intimate with him while you rebound away from this man then do it at your own risk. But the sound advice, is to get away from him and never look back. You should stop pursuing this man.

He tells you the truth

When the gig is up and there is no amount of stalling left because he has exhausted every single relationship management stall tactic under the sun, he’ll just come right out and tell you. We get intimate every once in a while and that’s it. We never were in a relationship, we aren’t in a relationship, and we never will be in a relationship. At this point, its pure abuse and the only purpose in continuing to see him is that he will get his ego boosted and you will be totally heartbroken. If you come through all the phases of this go nowhere relationship and are still in it hanging by a thread, this man probably does like you at least a little. But he is still not willing to be in a relationship with you, so you should leave. Stop pursuing him and don’t look back. Hopefully one of the two of you will meet someone else at this point so that there is no way to lapse back together again.

He creates a fight over it on purpose then threatens to block or dump you when you bring the subject up

The problem with going through the torture of a casual relationship is that it gets so dysfunctional along the way that it has a hard time ever getting normal. That is precisely why they say its almost impossible to take an established casual relationship and make it into a real one. It’s easier to start over with someone new and get it right from the outset. On again off again casual relationships can last for years and usually involve of fights, breakups, and make ups but never exclusivity or commitment. This will suit him just fine if he hasn’t found anyone new. It just continues to drag on. If you bring the topic up you fight and don’t talk for a month, and then if neither of you are with anyone new, you lapse back together again month later due to familiarity and missing each other.

He keeps you around as long as you cooperate

The sad part of go nowhere relationships is that usually the woman really wants to have a real relationship because she actually loves the man. He on the other hand is attached, but not in love with her. One of the reason he continues to see her is that she does try to improve her value and work on herself over the course of time. If she wasn’t, he would have broken it off already. It becomes a self fulfilling cycle. He doesn’t want to commit because you aren’t quite good enough, so you make yourself better and better, so he can’t cut ties as easily, so the casual relationship just continues on. You should stop pursuing this man.

He continues to be intimate with you on occasion and this goes on for months, even years

At the end of this tale you should get the gist that a down managed relationship is going to a long, hard, and tiring journey for any woman. Is there any hope for a casual relationship to get serious after what I described? Probably not. But you have to wonder, after going through all of these phases together if there isn’t at least some sort of bond that cements itself between the two people. There probably is a true bond in casual relationships that go on for years. There is the slim possibility that the two people involved after however many years, look at each other and think, wow what are we doing and isn’t it amazing that we are still getting together after all that. A handful of those down managed, go nowhere relationships that just never seem to peter out probably turn into an everlasting love, just like a handful of people who go out and buy lottery tickets wind up winning the lottery. Never say Never.

           

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