Over parts one and two of this mini series, I have been explaining why John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus’ theory that are all men are like rubber bands because they have an intimacy cycle that needs them to stretch (retreat) and then eventually spring back when they want to get closer can be a dangerous belief to have that will cause women to overinest in inappropriate relationships in the belief that poor behaviour is just ‘normal’.
I’m a firm believer that with the type of modern day relationships that we have which are fraught with commitment issues, emotional unavailability, assclownary, and complications like technology such as online dating and text messaging, that subscribing to this theory is like giving a man carte blanche to take the p*ss. It also means that the lines become very blurred because many women do not end up being able to distinguish between this so-called rubber banding and someone who is actually using a cycle of distancing themselves and then returning to control the relationship and manage down your expectations.
You always have to remember that in any relationship, we teach people how to treat us and also what to expect.
For people with issues who will want to control their environment as much as possible, they use blowing hot and cold and the pushey pulley game to teach you what to expect from the relationship and ultimately, what initially will have felt uncomfortable to you will eventually become familiar and habitual, even though it is actually uncomfortable.
There are a few key things that you need to take into account to assimilate your situation:
1) Are you in a hot and cold/pushey pulley cycle with your guy? If so, this is a very strong indicator of problems. This can feel like passion and excitement initially but it will eventually translate to tension, ambiguity, and drama.
2) Are you looking at the bigger picture? Are you seeing the wood for the trees? These things do not happen in isolation. Where there is one dubious pattern of behaviour there will be others plus red flags and boundary crossings. The truth is, when you open your eyes and take off the rose tinted glasses of betting on potential, the reality may add up to a whole lot of issues. When he’s ‘retreating’ what is he doing? Being a bit quiet or doing a few things he enjoys doing on his own, or trying to shag other women, completely ignoring you to the point of hostility, or straight up disappearing?
3) How much of an impact does fear have on your relationship? Fear draws us into poor relationships anyway, but you do need to start differentiating between your internal fear which is the negative messaging from fears that drive your mentality and beliefs about yourself, love, and relationships and also external fears, which is their real, negative behaviour that exacerbates your internal fears.
Fear derails relationships and also creates bad ones but we also need to recognise that sometimes our internal fears can have us either believing that someone is retreating when they are not, or can cause us to believe that they’re going to retreat so that we behave in ways that bring about the outcome and create the self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you do either of these things, this will create a dubious intimacy cycle that’s actually of your own making.
4) Are you co-dependent? In my ebook Mr Unavailable and The Fallback Girl I explain that
“Co-dependency is something that affects all Fallback Girls because the very basis of your interaction is built around the idea that you place all of your love on one person, that makes you feel secure, builds you up with his own supposed intrinsic value, and provides the source of all of your wellbeing and happiness. When he leaves, you feel miserable, agitated, nervous. You wonder where he is, what he’s doing, and if there is a possibility that in the last few hours, he may have discovered the ‘truth’ about you and decided to leave you. You fear abandonment and with some women, every time their Mr Unavailable leaves them, it feels like abandonment. It’s like you need them in your field of vision.”
I also say that “You lose yourself in relationships and you find it easy to take on his characteristics or relationship style so that you can fall in sync with his behaviour.”
I bet this sounds familiar to many of you!
The trouble is with being co-dependent is it’s a recipe for relationship disaster as it can feel pretty overwhelming and intense to feel like the complete and utter focal point and source of everything for another individual. Imagine then, that you have that expectation of someone who is emotionally unavailable or an assclown, and do you really have to wonder why you run into problems?
5) Is there a noticeable, negative impact on the relationship? If so, is it because of how you have reacted, or is it because he has behaved in a way that detracts from the relationship? Really, is he actually retreating or is he just being independent and autonomous and you’re struggling with that?
The reality is that whilst we all have our off days and can be impacted by stress, tiredness, and a variety of factors that may not actually be related to our partners, it shouldn’t be a ‘chore’ to be in a relationship and you shouldn’t really have to be at the mercy of some guys emotional menstrual cycle that seems to come about when it all gets a little much and he wants to go away so he can feel the desire to come back.
As I said in part two, there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wanting to maintain their independence and autonomy but there is a big difference between this and actually using the ‘intimacy cycle’ to edge out of the relationship or ensure that it’s solely on your terms.
Because this is something that stands out about this rubber band theory – much like when we’re involved with Mr Unavailable’s and assclowns, this is about doing things on their terms and jumping to their beat and relationships require a bit more than that.
What I can say is that generally speaking, healthy relationship or not, when someone does appear to retreat the solution is not to come at that person full force. Whether that’s because you continuously ask the person what’s wrong (sometimes you can’t always put into words that you’re just having an off day) which can often make it bigger than it actually is, whether you go into a tailspin and start wittering on about what you may have done to ’cause’ the retreat, or whether it triggers you to start drama seeking, doing the bums rush on his retreat no matter what relationship you’re in will just exacerbate the issue and blur the lines.
This is why it is important to have some self-esteem in your relationship because when we have low self-esteem, we are inclined to place ourselves in the centre of everything and assume that if something appears to be ‘wrong’ it must be down to us and we respond accordingly.
If you have higher self-esteem, not only will you make better love choices, but you’ll be confident enough to recognise that when your partner does appear to ‘retreat’, it’s not down to something that you have ‘done’ and you can see the wood for the trees enough to realise that it could be any number of things or he might just have ‘things on his mind’. You will also have your own healthy desire for independence and autonomy.
If you’re already in a cycle, the only way to deal with it is to break it. One of the biggest ‘weapons’ (for want of a better word) in your relationship armour is realising that when you start to take control and remove the controls that men like Mr Unavailable’s and assclowns have (like when we do No Contact), you not responding how they expect you to respond throws the cycle out of kilter.
Stop chasing, stop asking, stop drama seeking, even if it means sitting on your hands and taping your mouth closed. Fight the urge because trust me, being in a cycle means that he has come to believe that you will behave in certain ways.
The key now is what does he do when you don’t play ball? Does he adapt his behaviour in a positive manner? Does he pretend to adapt and then slowly slip back into the cycle?
If it’s genuinely a case of him just needing a little space, try to step back and leave him to it without being resentful and see what happens. If you do ask what’s wrong and he says it’s not you, take it at face value and go about your business.
But if you know that this is one in a long line of things and that your relationship isn’t particularly healthy, you will need to start making some uncomfortable decisions and having some uncomfortable discussions, and taking action and making what may feel like uncomfortable changes.
Relationships require positive consistency, not extremes and ultimately the choice is yours – if your man does have an ‘intimacy cycle’, can you handle it? Do you want to?
Your thoughts?
Get ahead on understanding waste of space men and relationships with my ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download. Also find out more about my No Contact Rule web seminar, or if you need personal advice or analysis of your relationship, check out my consultation service.
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First of all, I feel as if this is important… I’m a guy. I happened upon this article as I searched for answers as to why my girlfriend keeps pulling away from me during certain times in our relationship. Our relationship is rather weird, as our roles are somewhat reversed (I’m very sensitive, loving, touchy-feeling, and she’s very distant, unresponsive, etc.).
The issue is this: Her and I moved in rather quickly… about 3 months in. We’ve been together close to a year. It was great for awhile, but eventually the struggles of trying to relate to the other person while moving that quickly took it’s toll I suppose. We were fighting every other day or so. We thought it was normal for awhile, but then she started breaking up with me… seemingly to get a reaction out of me. She told me it was the only thing that would “make me see her point of view”. It went on for months until she finally left and packed her things when I was at work. The next day she told me that she wanted to be with me, and that she left because she needed to work on herself before she could come back and live with me. She named her anger as a primary influence. She wanted to see a therapist to deal with it. Another issue we touched upon was her unavailability emotionally. We’re in our very low 20s, and I always want to make love to her. I’m an emotional person and I always want to be passionate. Over the last few months she really hasn’t wanted to as much as I’d say is normal… but it doesn’t stop with sex. I find myself touching her and caressing her all the time I’m around her, but she kind of just sits there and doesn’t really do much… I feel as if it’s really one-sided. I’m hurt when she doesn’t return the intimacy. She said it needs to be worked on on her side of the fence. Apparently, she believes she has problems with it.
I’ve been having a difficult time with all of it, especially giving her space. I try and hang out with her pretty much everyday and every hour that we’re not working… maybe a few hours a day? Today, we got into another fight, and her anger came out of nowhere and never let up. She said some pretty hurtful things to me… questioning why she even moved out if we were just going to fight all the time anyways… like it’s the same now as it was then. The entire time I was just trying to calm her down and talk to her about it, but she just kinda did exactly what she was doing before all of this. She told me there was nothing to talk about and to leave. I stayed and calmed her down somehow, but had to go before we talked it through. Before I left, she told me that I’m too sensitive, and that I can’t be over there everyday and that she’s repeatedly told me that she needs space to deal with her problems.
With everything that I’ve read, I can’t help but see some similarities… between this archetype in the article and her behavior. Is it wrong for me to be chasing her around like this? Does she really need time to work on herself? Or does she need time away from me? Is it healthy that she feels as if she needs to be away from me to do this? How should I be interpreting all of this?
Hi Jer, I think it is always wrong to chase someone around like that. For the other person as well as for yourself. In a healthy, committed relationship no one should have to chase. You obviously put more commitment in then she does, stop asking yourself what she needs but ask yourself why you do it. Are you getting enough in return? And does it make you happy? Are you hoping she might change?
It might give you more insight to you read some of the other articles here as well.
Well, she tells me that she needs to do this for us. I feel as if her doing this, however hard it may be, (and believe me, I know she misses me… she cries and tells me she does) is her way of trying to help. Whereas I have this completely different way of dealing with my problems… I turn inward and fix myself if I need to. She told me today that not everyone can do that, and that she can’t and she needs this to be able to change. Am I right in believing that even though she’s pulling away… she’s doing it for the right reasons, and I should support her if I really love her?
Hi Jer, I’m sorry you are going through this, I’d guess that a lot of us reading this understand how you feel, we’ve all been in these imbalanced relationships, that’s why we are here!
The thing that stands out to me, is that your need for her, is much greater than her need for you, and believe me I’ve been in the same position as you for the last 6 years. I’ve spent that time analysing my X to pieces, it’s got me nowhere. He is what he is for whatever reason, and more importantly I’ve been chasing him despite the warning signs that things were not working.
My advice to you? Step back, try to focus on yourself and consider your need for validation from someone who is giving out such mixed signals. It’s not an easy thing to do, I needed professional help to tackle it, but until you can clearly see what the dynamics of this relationship are really about, it’s going to be difficult to move forward.
sadthing’s last blog post..Waiting To Exhale
Well, we had a talk yesterday… Sometimes I’m quite foolish when it comes to her. I know her better than to think she’d try and pull away from me, and once we talked I came to the realization that she’s really doing this for us. I also came to the realization that I am, indeed, smothering her and making her responsible for my happiness. That’s a lot to put on someone’s shoulders, and it’s not a burden I should be making her carry.
She knows how much pain I’m in, and it hurts her everyday to put me through it, but she has complete belief that this will help our relationship and that everything will be so much better once we move back in. She tells me that she’s not pulling away, and she’s noticeably hurt when I say it seems like she is… because she knows it’s taking a negative toll on us putting distance between us like this. She’s having a hard time keeping faith in her decision, but she’s always been headstrong and that’s what I love about her. I know she loves me, and now I know she’s doing this for the right reasons. It’s just going to be hard until we’re both ready a month or two down the road.
And yet another thing that I realized is that I can’t keep asking other people how to solve my relationship problems… I know her and our relationship better than the people I ask for advice, and I should be the one making the decisions for myself. Thanks for all of the help. I really think things will be okay now.
Girl,
I’m like loving this post. As soon as I saw rubber band effect and then the name John Gray I was hooked!
I’m a big fan of his and loved his book Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus.
Not only does it give great insight into Men but also into ourselves. Why we act the way we do and why we have the tendency to feel insecure.
I loved many of the points you made especially about the pulling and pushing affect. I think it made me realise that this is something I do a lot with my men, the reason being that I’m just not that into them.
However, it could be something much deeper!
Thanks so much for the insightful post! Your blog is looking might grand!
Hot Alpha Female
The Only Woman You Should Take Dating Advice From
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