Conquering Confusion: He loves her? He loves her not.
Dear Duana,
I’ve been dating Cal for half a year, during which he’s introduced me to his parents and taken me on weekends with his friends. He hasn’t called me his girlfriend, hasn’t said he loves me and hasn’t asked to be exclusive, but his friends said Cal talks about me more than anyone else he’s dated. We have great sex, but there’s never a mention of the future. Finally I couldn’t stand the confusion anymore. I sent him an “I love you, do we have a future?” text message. He became very distant and (eventually) sent this reply: “Hey, Sweetie. I don’t want to tell you this, but although I care for you it’s not on the level that you care for me. I don’t want to hurt you, you’re great. I just don’t see a future together.” He hasn’t asked to see me again. His response has me more confused than ever. What’s your interpretation and advice?
Julie
Dear Julie,
There’s a gold standard for confusion, and it’s this: inconsistent words and actions. Cal had ‘em. Simultaneously affirming and denying your relationship, he juxtaposed opposite impulses—avoiding terms of commitment while using terms of endearment; introducing you to important others but failing to reference the future to you; and spending six months’ time on something he didn’t define.
Anytime a person’s words and actions fail to align, that’s a huge Caution sign. Inconsistency not only creates painful confusion, it may also mask serious mental illness, unsavory secrets, character flaws, insecure/avoidant attachment styles, or—at best—indecision. All are unfavorable to the relationship’s prospects. Be warned: Confusion is your cue to open your eyes and find out what’s going on, because *something* is wrong.
How to proceed with Caution: Take The Roads Less Traveled
There are multiple routes towards heeding the Caution sign. Under Roads Less Taken designation are these:
- Just quit seeing Cal; if he had let you go, he wasn’t into you in any serious way.
- Test the relationship by creating jealousy, since men who aren’t jealous aren’t in love.
- Combine paths #1 and 2 by ceasing your relationship with Cal while openly dating others.
Approaches #1-3 Work. They elevate your status, avoid the taint of clingy desperation, and create all-important clarity –his and yours— regarding the core question: Does he love you, or not?
Then there’s the Road Most Traveled—which I would have advised you to avoid:
4. Tell a man you love him before he’s ever told you, and directly ask him whether a commitment is forthcoming.
Your choice of this technique is thoroughly understandable. After all, women are socialized and may even be biologically wired to be more verbal than men. We gravitate towards communication to solve problems, and we’ve been told it’s dishonest game-playing to use Routes #1-3. Plus, asking is the most straightforward path to an answer.
Trouble is, men tend to label such honest women as nuts or sluts, punishing the directness many claim to honor. Indeed, research shows that Direct Questioning is more likely to get you the answer you don’t want to the Do-You-Love-Me-Where’s-This-Headed query: No/where.
Which is where you are now per Cal. For several months, his words and actions were genuinely confusing, but no more. Now, everything lines up; painful though it is, he is not pursuing you and he does not want this. He isn’t in love with you. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. It’s hurtful, but it’s clear. If you hang in there or do anything at all to keep Cal around, he might use you as a booty call. He might keep you for a convenient, fun-for-now thing. But you will not court him and win your way into his heart. Evolutionarily, men have the right of pursuit, just as women have the right of refusal. I hope you’ll refuse to invest anything more in Cal.
The Road Ahead
And this is the part where I tell you not to flog yourself for having been direct. The fact is, you got what you needed the most—clarity—and you got it quickly. You showed tremendous bravery in intentionally (and soonly) facing a truth many women trade years of their lives to avoid. You saved yourself wasted time, the only thing we can never regain, and a commodity crueler to women than men as age comes on.
Your next move, in my opinion, should be moving *on*, accepting that things are over with Cal. Settling for a man who doesn’t love you is, I hope, not an option, not even when you love him. One-sided love isn’t good enough. Go back out there and date someone who proves himself enthusiastic about you—who clearly shows you, in word and in deed, that you’re It for him.
You may encounter a few more Caution signs on the way there. But next time, you’ll know and hopefully take the Roads Less Traveled. I wish you well on the journey.
Cheers,
Duana
Related LoveScience Articles:
Much of the science in this article has already been summarized elsewhere at LoveScience, and you can find it under this tag. I also highly recommend David Buss’ outstanding book, The Dangerous Passion: Why jealousy is as necessary as love and sex.
Roads 1 and 3, Walking Away
Road 2, Creating Jealousy
http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/winning-him-backwith-jealousy.html
http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-from-winning-him-backwith-jealousy.html
Road 4, Why there’s never been a perfume called Desperation
Don’t Settle!
http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/settling-101-traits-for-a-mate.html
Men: How do you tell *she’s* just not that into you?
Do you have a question for Duana? Please email her at Duana@LoveScienceMedia.com.
All content copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D., and LoveScience Media, 2011.
Share Article Print Article Permalink tagged Commitment, Communication, Dating, Evolutionary Psychology, Jealousy, Male Female Differences
Reader Comments (7)
Thanks Dr. Welch! As usual, GREAT advice!
Love this article, Duana! And Julie, I feel your pain. Suffice it to say I've traveled that road and responded the same way you did (i.e., asked the direct question, which seemed very reasonable to me) ....and it didn't turn out well, that is, in the short term. In the long-term, however, letting that guy go was the best thing ever. Now I'm married to an awesome man who loves me, and I wish the same for you.
My question for Duana: Why do guys do this?? Why would a man introduce a woman to his family that he's not serious about? In my family, Meeting The Folks signaled a serious intention. And girls have long been cautioned: "There are women men date, and women men marry - i.e., those they bring home to Meet Mother." But not even Meeting Mother is an iron-clad clue. What is going through the guy's mind, and how do they see it ...? Is this confusing behavior unique to Cal, or is Meeting The Folks just not as generally significant in the guy's world ....?
I, too, agree that this is a great article. And I also think that the Road Less Traveled points sound spot-on. They would be effective.
But - OMG OMG OMG OMG No No No No No . . . . I am a man and I see No Inconsistency here whatsoever! The man's perspective is likely vastly different from the woman's in this regard, and I hope this will contribute to answering Gillian's question . . .
First of all - important point in (this) man's mind. It's not Marriage that we see as the commitment. It's Exclusivity. When Cal did not indicate to Julie that he saw himself as being exclusive with her . . . when he did not talk about the future, and when he did not indicate some form of status that she held ("girlfriend" or "my baby" or such) . . . that contained all the information, and the assumed-significant visits with family and friends were *not* significant. She was simply his date.
I see nothing wrong with this in a six-month time frame. At least he liked her enough that he was comfortable with her meeting his people - he was not concealing her. But, again, it's the offer of Exclusivity and Future that matters in a man's mind. Nothing else does. (not sex - not gifts - not meeting the parents - not even a long-time arrangement). I am a little bemused at how clear this seems to me.
Sadly, I have someone in my life to whom I would offer that. But we are long-distance, and there is no prospect of changing that for either of us in any foreseeable time frame. I still love her. We'll see what each of us does about it, as the days pass.
Tom, you've provided a fabulous explanation - thank you. How shocking that males and females can see the same act as crystal clear, but in completely different ways. Dang. No wonder we have difficulties dating and mating and thank goodness for this column to sort it all out.
Dear Tom and Gillian, thank you for the great exchange. Gillian, I cringed right along with you as I wrote the article--I, too, have taken Route #fail, I mean 4, during my single years. Seems like a good idea at the time. Except that it's man repellent.
And Tom, I think you did a wonderful job of answering Gillian's query and simultaneously dispelling some mating-centrism (seeing the opposite sex's mating psychology as similar to one's own). What you see so clearly, given your possession of a male mind, is not so clear to those of us of the two-X-chromosomes persuasion.
While Meeting The Parents very often is a cue towards a deepening relationship, that varies according to individuals. Apparently, that wasn't a reliable cue with Cal. I think Julie was wisely seeking out *all* the cues--and because some were green lights and others were yellow, she was justifiably concerned and confused. But Tom, you're right, the most important data had to do with failures to reference exclusivity or the future--or love.
Which brings us to another roadblock to l'amour: Commitmentphobia. I don't know Cal, but if he's afraid of commitment, then it would 'pay' for him to simultaneously fail to give the most important commitment cues while also emitting "come-closer" signals. To give only the "go-away" signals would be to have no relating, no sex (with unpaid others) at all. Some people, whether male or female, thus become adept at The Mixed Signal--getting their short-term sex and intimacy needs met while offering nothing for the future. Many of these folks have problems with insecure or avoidant attachment styles, and the pain they bring to themselves and the others is heartbreaking.
However, it's possible Cal is Just Not That Into Julie. As I wrote her privately following her response to my letter ("But I thought he cared for me at least with some sincerity!"), "Yes, in all likelihood he did like you a lot. He sees this as a for-now thing, which doesn't necessarily mean he thinks you're worthless. But he does not love you--he doesn't want this to last. It's time to move on."
Either way, Julie's now got her answers and will grow still wiser as she pays utmost attention to the most important signals in her dating life: references to Love, The Future, and Exclusivity.
Thanks again for a great exchange, both of you.
(And to Confused--thank you for saying that. I hope you're confused no longer!)
Cheers,
Duana
I wonder how much age and circumstances for a man (for example having small children to raise by himself) comes into play. 6 months seems very short for discussing long term commitment when in your 20s and if you have few obligations outside yourself. I believe I would discourage any of my children from making such an important decision in this timeframe while in their 20s. Of course, I think stating affections like "I love you" would have been uttered a few times by now which makes me wonder about Cal's just playing the field. As our lives are more matured and settled, 6 months seems more reasonable/ realistic.
Vincent--good point, and thank you for writing. Where we are in our lives impacts the pacing of relationships, and this is usually more true of men than women. A six-month timeframe in a young man's 20's may not seem quite the same emotional investment or motivation towards commitment as the same number of months later on in his life.
For instance, research indicates that most divorced men remarry within two years. It may have taken them a decade to decide on marriage the first time around, but apparently commitment itself is perceived as a Good Thing by most guys once they've fully experienced it. Even when it didn't work out. And I suspect you're correct that men who *need* help raising kids will commit even faster--but I don't have data to answer that either way.
Time nearly always moves differently for women than men, however. Men can literally throw away their 20's, commitment-wise, at miniscule biological cost, while women are moving out of their peak years of fertility by the time many of their male age-mates are beginning to seriously contemplate marriage and family.
No wonder women around the world are concerned about Where This Is Going even when women are very young. And no wonder women prefer slightly older men; those men are usually readier to give women commitment--just as men tend to prefer younger women who can give them children (even if consciously, the guy doesn't want kids at all).
All this said, men can go years--sometimes decades--without a sense of urgency about settling down. The biological clock gives men almost limitless procreative power while constricting women severely by comparison, and that has profound impact on the sexes' inherited mating psychology. Much of the battle between the sexes is due to this biological mismatch and subsequent timing issue.
Upshot? Even very young women are time-oriented in a way few young men are. What you would tell a son, Vincent, might not be the thing to tell a daughter. Her biology knows otherwise; time's a-wastin'.
This is one of the hardest things for me to communicate clearly to my women clients: Just because he is spending time with you does *not* mean he wants to spend forever with you! A man's "good for now, but no future plans" holding pattern can go on for years and years...the investment of time does not necessarily indicate that a ring is in the offing. It could just mean he's comfortable in the moment.
Getting back to Cal and Julie, I agree with you that six months is plenty of time for a man to have stated he's in love. Research shows men usually fall in love *faster*, not slower, than women-- and men are much less calculating about it. Men either love or don't. Men in love can hardly restrain themselves from telling everyone they know, most especially including their beloved.
So if a guy isn't saying it, he's probably not feeling it. Women, use the Roads Less Traveled to gain clarity. Do it soon--he loves you or he doesn't, and more time together is going to hurt you while failing to convince him.
And then ease on down the highway if the answer is No.
Cheers,
Duana