What It Means If He's Giving You The Cold Shoulder — And How To Make Him Want You Again
You can still get him back.
nomadsoulphotos | Canva Have you ever wondered why men pull away from relationships? You get a vibe that your partner is not interested anymore. They don't make the same effort to spend quality time with you and you feel like you're being taken for granted. You feel this gut-wrenching feeling that they’re not in love with you anymore, and your heart sinks. He's become distant and focused on his career, interests, or anything else that keeps him away. You’ve become convinced that he's stopped caring about you, so you avoid that dreaded feeling of rejection by not caring in return and giving your partner the cold shoulder. You stop being interested in your relationship or you avoid the person you love so that you feel less hurt.
You don't know what to do, so you start withdrawing yourself — hoping he might come closer or notice how you’re feeling. You might accuse him of not loving you — to see whether he notices how you feel — and he tells you that you’re being insecure and silly. This makes you feel even more worthless. Your feelings have been invalidated, and you feel more guarded and even less likely to open up to him. Meanwhile, he feels offended that you question how he feels when he's worked so hard to prove his love and devotion, but now he feels ignored and nothing he does is good enough. So, in turn, he starts withdrawing and pulling away to avoid feeling this way. He focuses on the things that make him feel better about himself, where he can feel validated or worthy.
When he feels not wanted around you, he ends up avoiding you. That is the real reason why men pull away from relationships. This doesn't mean your partner has stopped loving you ... at least not yet.
Rather, you’ve pushed him away by thinking he does not love you. So, now, he is slowly withdrawing from you. He waits for you to show him love and acceptance, but he is afraid to show you how he feels because he fears you'll snap at him when he gets close. You've shown him how you feel by acting not interested in him so that you feel less hurt.
But the truth is this: When you withdraw love, so does he. When you’re convinced that your partner does not love you, because you feel worthless deep down, it is easy to blame them for causing you to feel this way, but it can actually push them away from loving you. When you accuse them of rejecting you, they end up defending themselves to prove you wrong or they simply pull away and become more distant. This causes you to feel convinced that they’re rejecting you. When you put up walls to protect yourself from getting hurt, your man feels unloved and unwanted. He thinks you don't care about him. It feels safer for him to distance himself from you, so he might spend time with friends, and play with the kids or even the dog because they acknowledge him. Yet, deep down, he has a longing and craving for love that gets displaced into other things.
Pexels / Ron Lach
The truth is, he secretly wants you, but can't show you how he feels in the same way you can't show him how you feel. However, it feels too scary for each of you to lower your defenses and show each other your vulnerable feelings.
When you feel insecure about yourself, no matter what your partner says, you may not believe them or misread their signs of love. Our unconscious perception can cloud how we see things, causing us to be not open to receiving love, as reasons why men pull away. If you are not open to receiving love because you do not believe it, you will push love away and the relationship ends up turning out the way you projected it to be.
If you have an unknown fear of rejection, the chances are that you will re-create this fear in your relationship, without realizing it. Are you unknowingly causing him to pull away? If so, you can learn how to make him want you again. Perhaps if you find self-love, you will be open to receiving love in your life. If you do not like yourself, deep down, then you will not be able to receive a man's love and give love back. Men pull away when they feel their love is not acknowledged, which occurs when their partner does not believe them and cannot accept their love, unknowingly pushing men away. So accept his love and stop him from pulling away from you.
Nancy Carbone is an author, relationship therapist, and psychodynamic therapist. She specializes in the treatment of personality disorders and relational trauma and is accredited as a mental health social worker.