Are you a woman who is stuck in a casual relationship with a man? If so, there may be certain factors at play. Taking note of the causal factors of a relationship that remains casual (aka at the hookup level) can be extremely useful. It can help you see how certain behaviors of yours are making such a relation possible. Read forward to understand the common factors at play when stuck in go nowhere relations.
Your intention does not align with your action
Let’s say you are not interested in having a casual relationship. You don’t want to deal with a man who only wants to see you on weekdays, barely phones you, only texts you and not often at that, and doesn’t make you a priority in his life. You want something serious. Something more meaningful, and something that can go somewhere. If that is your intention that’s great! But it is never enough to just set an intention. Your intention has to align with your action as well. You don’t have to be a petulant self-entitled brat but you do have to let a man know what your intentions are and opt out of a relationship if he treats you like a friends with benefits.
Ask yourself if what you have been doing, the way you have been interacting, and what you have been accepting in terms of his behavior is aligned with your intention of desiring a solid relationship. Are you interacting with this particular guy in the way that you would expect in a real relationship? Does a real relationship happen only on text messages, only in a bubble at your place or his, or only during the week? No it does not. Real relationships do not function like hookups. They are not backup plans and they don’t happen infrequently and at the very last-minute. Real relationships don’t involved blowing each other off for plans, going missing in action, and taunting someone with all their other available options.
When your intentions and your actions do not align, we end up in relationships that just are not working for us in real life. Sometimes, we even accept relationships that aren’t working because we get our hearts set on this particular man. So it becomes banging ones head on the wall trying to flip a guy from hooking up to acting like a boyfriend. Rarely does he cooperate and once you start with passive aggressive behavior to try to re-rail the relationship, he will most likely disappear. You might be happy with clinging on to hope with this guy, but you aren’t happy with the reality of the relationship. If he is barely contacting you then he does not seem very interested.
When your intentions and your actions mess better it will be way easier to find someone whose intentions, desires and actions mesh well with yours. This may mean nexting some guys and passing on some guys, so take that as part of the process of finding a man who wants something real. Putting your intentions above all else will make it way easier to weed the douche guys out of your life so you quit wasting time becoming another notch on someone’s search for variety and a good time. Dating experts recommend waiting for intimacy and to a certain extent this does help the situation because you can suss out his intentions before letting your oxytocin love hormones get carried away. If you wait, your brain will be more intact to weed him once you notice you are not a priority.
You expect too much too soon and kill the relationship with passive aggressive behavior
A major reason why women get involved in relations that amount to hooking up for a while then fizzing out followed by months and months of girlfriend ear chewing agony even after the guy is long gone and out of the picture. Stare at the phone much wishing he would text so you could pounce on it? Wondering if his maybe on Sunday comment will actually turn into you doing something on Sunday, meanwhile, waiting around all Sunday twiddling your thumbs?
Men do not get super serious super fast. Let’s say you have four dates with him and you actually sleep with him. To him, he barely knows you. Even if he has sex with you he really barely knows you. A man is not going to want to completely rearrange his schedule and his weekend routine after three or four dates so make sure that your expectations are reasonable. In your mind, if you have physically consummated you may automatically assume on some level that you will become some sort of priority in his life. Getting jiggy with him however does not automatically mean you are suddenly his girlfriend, far from it. Now lets say that after a few dates he is still trying to see you only on the weekdays if that. You may soon become irritated that you can’t pin him down on a weekend night. So you start with the passive aggressive behavior. You ignore his request for plans during the week, dodge around, try to blow him off and play hard to get games so that he somehow gets weasel boxed (you hope) into asking you out on a weekend night. Game playing is in now, honestly is out the window.
Meanwhile in his mind he has no intention of getting serious too fast, whether he has slept with you or not. Merging you with his friends at this point screams getting serious too fast, and he wants his weekends free to go out with his existing core friends and potentially meet other women to date that he is even more interested in. When all of a sudden you start making demands on his time, he doesn’t like the way that feels. He resents the drama so early on. He wants to run the relationship and he certainly doesn’t want you to dictate what his obligations are. You become a little too difficult to deal with so he starts acting mean and taunting you. He might even go so far as to say that he spends his weekend time with women who are a tad less dramatic. Now you have created a standoff that ultimately drives a toxic wedge that makes this relationship fizzle.
If you wanted a serious relationship that involves spending weekend time with him, you should have stated that desire nicely and openly early on, or even now. Then, when he refuses to accommodate you simply move on. If it doesn’t work out you go through your behaviors and make sure that yes you did give things enough time and that your expectations were realistic.
You are dating out of your league
Know that not everyone is going to conform to your rules of no intimacy in early dates, only weekend dates out count as something, and the guy must always do the asking out. At any given time, there are 10 guys that are willing to bed you of which maybe only 1 or 2 have intentions to treat you in the traditional gentleman-inspired ways that you seek. That is a lot of weeding you must do in order to get to the men who are actually interested in you being a girlfriend. If you refuse to weed then get upset when a guy doesn’t come through for you, you are going about it the wrong way.
The biggest causal factor in getting stuck in casual relationships is that you are dating out of your league. That means you’ve caught up with one of these men who deems you worthy is intimate relationships but not worthy of girlfriend status. Once you get with a man like this, there is very little you can do to get out of the route he plugged you into. You will see you are in this route with him very early on. For the first few weeks, he will treat you like he wants you as a girlfriend. He will show up on the weekends, call when he is supposed to and go do a few things with you. Very soon after the relation is consummated however, he will back off on the phone calls, the dates will dwindle to him stopping by, and you will never see him open his wallet and ditch a dime for you. The key is to recognize when you are getting thrown into the casual route and get out while the getting is good.
The problem is that a woman gets attached and dreamy about this out of her league guy and sets her sights and goals on flipping this guy into her man. That’s when the obsession starts. Some women realize that a man is not treating her like a priority and they have the fortitude and tact to cut the relationship short no matter how hot and sexy the guy is. Others, the ones who get stuck for years obsessing with a dude that is merely banging them on the side, remain hooked like a dog with a meaty bone. They try to accommodate, please, put up with, obsess over, stalk, throw tantrums and basically become unglued trying to manipulate this guy into a boyfriend. Meanwhile, he remains bemused and looks for other women while you twist and turn. He ratchets down the contact according to how crazy you act. Eventually, he finds someone else and blows you off labeling you as psycho.
Don’t live in fantasy and wishful thinking. If after a couple of months of dating he is pulling the slow fade, don’t game play and try to become unavailable or answer his calls less, or try different hard to get tactics to get him to come around. You would literally be better off telling him to ask you out for the weekend or get lost. That way, at least he would know what you want. Being direct is actually butter than giving him the brush-off or beating around the bush trying to get what you want out of him. Sometimes your own behavior dictates what the relationship will become.
If you hookup too quickly with him, he may for whatever reason categorize you into just a fling girl. If you meet a guy online and then very quickly hook up with him, it puts you into a difficult position for becoming his girlfriend. So remember to take things slow and get to know him a bit. Never hook up with anyone whom you do not know where they work, have not seen their home, and have not been introduced to a couple of their friends. This will help you weed out the men that want to slither in and out in the night. If you accept a casual friends with benefits situation it is next to impossible to unravel yourself out of being just that.
If you accept poor treatment just for the opportunity to be with an alpha male, you can’t be angry with the guy when he treats you like the friends with benefits situation you accepted at the get-go. If you are very early in a relationship even if there has been physical interaction, a man does not have much invested. If it comes down to dealing with your issues and demands, he probably will stop contacting you. A man does not want to deal with emotional and relationship issues with a woman who he barely knows and has only seen a couple of times in his life. Don’t ever give a vibe of insecurity in a relationship. Ask a man for what you want because you will have a better chance of getting it than putting up with poor treatment and hoping. When it comes to relationships wishful thinking and dream on really doesn’t work. Try ask for what you want and you shall receive instead. If you don’t want a casual relationship, just don’t participate in one.
Casual relationships
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