Men Who Can’t Love

READ this book. It has completely changed my life. It’s by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol and explains the commitmentphobic man and what a relationship with him is like. I think it will help a lot of you, because what I didn’t realize is that most commitmentphobic men start out as the pursuer. They seem very interested in a future with you, and then once things start getting good they pull away. And it turns into an emotional rollercoaster nightmare.

I just went through a year-long relationship with a man like this. We came from very similar backgrounds and HE initiated conversations early on about marriage and children, even telling me he’d thought about what color eyes our children would have and asking me my favorite baby names. But he was never 100% present! He would say things you would only expect someone very serious about you to say, but he would always pull away for a bit after each time we’d see each other. He would maintain distance in other ways too: being very busy with his career, talking to other women on social media and even dating apps, and never introducing me to his family.

Just as an example of this disconnect between his words and actions: early on he said he would’ve wanted me to go to his sister’s wedding with him, which was still almost 4 months away at this point, but that his mom told him that she was uncomfortable with him or his brother bringing someone they’d been dating for less than a year. We’d only been dating for 6 or 7 weeks at this point and hadn’t even discussed exclusivity yet, so I hadn’t expected an invite at all, especially since the wedding was in Bermuda! I always thought it was odd after this that he never actually invited me to meet his parents. I met some friends and a cousin, but never his immediate family. And then when I finally did initiate the exclusivity talk at about the 4 months point he gave me a very vague non-answer about being ok with it “for right now.” I feel so stupid now for being swept up in it despite knowing in my gut that something just didn’t feel right, but hopefully it won’t happen again now that I know what to look for!