“He’s really busy right now”
“She’s got a really important job”
“They travel a lot”
“They’re just insanely busy”
“He said he hasn’t had five minutes”
You know, I’m not disputing that being busy is a very real experience, but as excuses go for why you’re letting someone off the hook for being emotionally and physically unavailable in your relationship, not making an effort, and keeping you on the fringes of their lives while you wait for your ‘time slot’, it’s actually pretty pathetic.
Not only are they using a lame excuse to manage down your expectations or to even passive aggressively communicate that they want out or that things are casual, but when you use this as an excuse, you’re talking yourself into managing down your own expectations.
You’re a valuable person in your own right deserving of love, care, trust, respect as well as time and effort. How can a relationship progress, experience commitment and intimacy, plus have balance and consistency if someone is pleading off with the modern day equivalent of “Oh sorry, not tonight love, I’ve got a headache”?
- So they’re so busy that they couldn’t find two minutes in their day to pick up the phone?
- They’re so important that you’re not important?
- If they’re travelling a lot, why bother?
- They’re ‘insanely busy’? Doing what? Saving the world? Running a country? Helping the hungry and the poor?- They haven’t had five minutes? Wow. I bet they’ve found 5 minutes to sleep, use the bathroom, hang around on Facebook.
Being super-duper-busy all the time whether it’s them offering it up as an excuse or you’re making the excuse for them, is a rather big hint – it’s telling you that they don’t have time for the relationship and certainly don’t have time to meet your hopes and expectations, so you should be making an exit and moving on to someone and something where you’re more valued and not in their ‘queue’.
You’re like a plane circling above them waiting for relationship traffic control to give you your slot. “Permission to land in the shag lane” and “Permission to land for dinner and an ego stroke”.
When I ‘dated’ – and my goodness I use this term loosely – the guy who gave me my epiphany on unavailable relationships, he was always telling me how busy he was. I used to call him Busy Bee and he would go on and on and on. “Wow… you must be really important at work…” and “How do you cope with such a hectic schedule?” After a while he realised that I was mocking him and would at least muster up some embarrassment when I’d refer to him as Busy Bee. I even asked him if he was working for MI5 or running a country that I was unaware of.
I don’t buy busy. I’m not saying that people don’t have busy lives but using it as an excuse for why you don’t make an effort is bullshit. Behind every excuse is the real reason and the real reason is that aside from considering themselves to be ‘super-important’, they also don’t want to make the effort. Whatever they’re busy at is a crutch and it’s one that they cling on to that prevents them from getting ‘too’ intimate and ‘too’ committed ensuring that they don’t have ‘too many’ responsibilities.
It’s not about you though. I wouldn’t go thinking that your inadequacies are what are causing them to fill up their schedule. It’s not about them making time for the ‘right’ person; it’s about them not only being available but also having the decency and a reined in enough ego to not actually think that it’s acceptable to treat someone in this manner.
They’re just not that special but on top of this, they just don’t know how to come correct and say “You know what? I’m not truly available for the type of relationship you want or deserve.” Instead, they hang around enjoying the fringe benefits of a relationship on their terms and their schedule. Often if you tell them to hop it, they make themselves temporarily available and then gradually ease things back to their comfort zone.
There are many people who work very hard because they’re busy building up a company, studying or on the fast track in their career, but there are also people who act like they’re ‘critical’ and work very long hours because it helps them to avoid their feelings, themselves, and even relationships. Shock horror, but there have been people who have founded companies, built them up, studied, been on the fast track of their career and many other things, who have also found and made the time for a relationship.
And you know, if you’re in this situation, it’s a good time to ask yourself just what you think they’re busy doing and how if you’re already making excuses for their busyness and writing yourself out of the relationship that you deserve, do you expect to actually have a full on relationship with this person that will actually go anywhere?
They’re just not that busy and they’re just not that special that you should be “Oh little old me must wait around patiently because they’re so important and busy”.
It can be very easy to buy into the whole ‘super-busy’ excuse if one or both parents didn’t have time for you, or you got lost in the shuffle of being one of several children, or had a parent who travelled or you had to do ‘visits’. My own Mr Unavailable father was so ‘busy’ that most visitations were spent with us sitting on the side of a cricket pitch and then when we were flown halfway across the world to see him, he was ‘out’ (as in socialising not working…). You can see how easy it was for me to think that not being a priority was normal.
You are deserving of being a priority and don’t let anyone tell you that being low on their todo list is what being a priority in their life looks like. Instead of waiting around for them to be less busy, it’s best that you make time for you and tell them that if they don’t have the time for even the basics right now, they surely don’t have time for a relationship. I know of lots of busy couples being busy together. You know what being a priority looks like – you talking about their busyness or them talking about it while you’re waiting around isn’t what being a priority or even being in a relationship looks or feels like.
Your thoughts?
The Dreamer and the Fantasy Relationship is now available from my bookshop along with with Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. You can also check out my ecourses.
About the Author:
Natalie Lue is the founder and writer of Baggage Reclaim and author of the books Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, The Dreamer and the Fantasy Relationship and more. Learn more about her here and you can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter - @baggagereclaim .
Natalie (NML) – who has written 1082 posts on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.
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This is one of my biggest pet peeves – always has been, even since before finding out about this blog, and likely always will be. If the President of the United States can make time for date nights & bring the First Lady with him to different countries & events & etc., then YOU, Mr. or Ms. I’m-So-Busy-And-So-Important, have absolutely NO excuse whatsoever and need to get over yourself. (The same goes for non-romantic relationships.)
Why is it that they’re never busy in the beginning and in time, they become too busy? What do you ladies think of men who can greet you good morning by text EVERY single day yet you hear absolutely nothing from them ALL day. I mean like complete radio silence.
4Maree: texts mean very little. There are women on this blog who received good morning texts each morning from their MARRIED partners. Texts are crumbs. A text takes two seconds to send, and then they think they don’t have to contact you for the rest of the day because crumbs are what you have accepted as enough.
I have a strong suspicion that one of the bums who was (unsuccessfully) trying to get at me last year was sending all his intended women the same lovey-dovey “good morning” text at the same time. You can do that, if you put them all on a text list.
The texts never used my name; that was the main reason I thought they were SMS spam for a long list of potential victims.
Just one more thing to watch out for.
OMGsh do you know I thought the same hing and dismissed it!!! I said hmm he sends good morning every morning w/o my name i felt as if he programmed his phone to send it to me or was jusst sending it to a lot of girls!!! WOW this just confirmed it!
4Maree
Most mornings I get a text from the man. he starts the day with prayer and he prays for me. But we also text during the day, call and see each other twice a week or so (I’m not keeping tabs on it, but it feels appropriate to how long we’ve been dating).
If I was just getting one text a day I’d be moving along pronto.
I hate to say it, but this lame excuse is just a cover up for what the person really wants to say, but doesnt want to come out and say it.
“you are not important to me”
And if you really are important to that person, and they STILL use these lame excuses, then, the other person is probably a USER, and only thinks of you during times of THEIR need.
If you hear this, just back off, and adjust your expectations downward, and reciprocate how they treat you. If they call you, put them off, with the I am busy line, and see how they respond. Its been my experience that these types of people go bat crazy when THEY are put on hold.
Wow. And wow.
I discovered your site, Nat, a while ago, as I’ve been trying to untangle myself from an unavailable partner for months now. The busy excuse was something that came up more recently and for a while I just bought it as we are long distance – him on the west coast and me on the east coast in the US. He’s been struggling financially and working hard manual labor and I’ve been trying to be understanding. But for so long, I would always feel rushed in our communications or that we were running out of time or that we could talk only when he was available.
I have to say this site is so right on and has been bringing me many realizations. We were together for four years. He pursued me very strongly and never having experienced that love or acceptance or attention or validation from someone before (especially someone as handsome as him) I fell in. And deep. In November of last year, though, I came back from a trip to see him not feeling very satiated and that was the beginning of the end. I knew we wanted different things, my needs were changing, but I couldn’t come to terms with it. How could something so good, so amazing, so wonderful not be meant to last – even though we were talking about the future, life together being bicoastal, etc etc etc. I trusted him and I really believed he had good intentions – I do believe he still does, but I think he is stuck in his own patterns in regards to relationship and is deluded in regards to what he has been doing.
We finally broke up in May – over my birthday – and at this point, I was still working so hard to please him and he was withdrawn and unavailable in his actions and behaviors but telling me he loved me and wanted to be with me. I kept believing him. So we broke up and for two weeks had no communication. I started getting my spirit back.
THEN he called me crying and told me he missed me and that we had come so far that we were foolish to give up now. (Granted, we did a lot of good work together and I did learn a lot about myself and relationships and there was a lot of good, hearty value to our time together that I am grateful for. This is why I think I had a hard time realizing what was really going on). So we started reconciling over the phone. I was skeptical, but since being apart was painful (despite the fact that I was starting to feel better overall) and I didn’t really want to be broken up (at least wouldn’t admit that to myself) I went back. He made plans to come visit me and once he booked the flight, I started getting sick – first with intense jaw pain (repressed anger, anyone?) and then with sore throat and then I lost my voice a day before he was due to arrive. So he came and he just left on Monday. I won’t go into details but what I realized being in his presence is that I felt heavy. There was no joy. We did fun things but I did not feel like we were having fun. I felt lonely. There was virtually no emotional connection. What was once intensely passionate and full of affection was now feeling very dud like. And once I realized these were my feelings and they were not going away and acknowledged that I could not ignore my voice of “break up with him already!” playing over and over in my brain, I just told him, the day he was leaving that I couldn’t do it anymore. We wanted different things. My feelings have changed. I love him, care about him, but I can’t go forward. There’s nothing left to do. We ran a course. It was good. Enjoy your life. Have your freedom. Goodbye.
Fuck it was hard. But I was blinded for so long and I did not listen to my feelings. I didn’t trust my own feelings. My own intuition. I wanted so badly for the relationship to work, to please him, to have that validation from him and being in a couple that I was ignoring my own wisdom and emotional intelligence.
I feel really grateful. And I feel daunted about the separation process but I know it’s really the right thing to do. I need my energy back.
Thank you for this site. It’s invaluable.
Interesting article as I have been the one accused of being “too busy” I have really resented men who expect me to have no life just hoping for them to walk into it and make it complete. I’m happy to make room and also include that someone special in my life, I’m happy to figure it out and find a way to talk, see them, text, quick hello or an email just to bring a smile. At times I have had to go up to two weeks either due to mine, theirs or both of ours schedules. The way I see it you can be legitmately busy loving life, your friends, family and work, squeezing enjoyment out of every second of the day but when that special someone shows up smiling and inviting them in is easier than you think. Cheers to my fellow busy beavers who never settle to have their life fulfilled by someone else but who recognize when and how to make room when that person arrives.
It’s a hard pill to swallow when you care about someone that they simply don’t make you a priority.People make time for the things that are important,don’t let anybody fool you,I recently had to say so long to someone who thought it was acceptable to be really neglectful,I didn’t want to say goodbye but for my own self respect I had no choice,nobody is too busy to take twenty seconds out of their day to text “I love you and I’m thinking about you”,being too busy is an avoidance mechanism,either through fear of intimacy or simply lack of interest,for those “Busy Bees”I wish you the best
Just to update on my post. Its been 13 days now no contact and though thats not a lot, it has surpassed the amount of days i have had no contact with him before. I wrote to natali and called him a colonic EUM and thats what he was. so after getting rid of my Colonic Irritation lol, how do i feel,? well better really, the time spent in no contact really makes you reflect on the situation. Up to now I have no intentions about contacting him. it was his birthday yesterday and i never sent a text or anything, ususally I would have. so to get past that was another milestone. I wish you all the best in whatever you all do and really feel for you all going through pain. hard to believe what we go through really when you look back. If i hadnt have found this site i think i would have cracked up. Thank you Natalie x
Natalie, your posts are always on point. You speak the truth. I love it.