When You Are Doing All the Relationship Work
At one point or another, most women find themselves in a relationship where he is withdrawing and they are the ones doing everything. Calling all the time, planning everything, driving, even initiating the affection or intimacy? It's a pretty bad feeling when you are the one doing all the work.
Soon enough, your fun relationship turns into a lot of work, and you might start to get hostile or needy. You are not getting what you need, and you are overcompensating for that. "Overfunctioning" is the term Rori Raye has coined for this problem, and I think it fits.
What overfunctioning means is that you are doing the work of two people - you are functoning both as the man, and as the woman in the relationship. What you don't know, though, is that you don't like it - but neither does HE! Men want to be MEN, not emasculated by being babied and taken care of.
How it starts is by you wanting to show this man that you are capable of taking care of yourself. You DON'T want to be needy or clingy - you want to be strong and independent. Then it develops into you telling him how to do things orthat he is doing things wrong.
Doing this, we take over the masculine roll in the relationship, which kills the attraction completely. The attraction dies because he wants YOU to be the woman, and you want HIM to be the man, but by trying to prove how strong and independent you are - you have taken that roll from him, and doused the fire.
That does not mean that men like women who have no brain or backbone. What it DOES mean is that he wants you to be you, and let him be HIM. If you take that role from him, it only kills the attraction, but begins putting YOU in the "friend-zone" - which is certainly not where you want to be if you are romantically interested in this fellow because the relationship becomes a male and male relationship, not man and woman.
Fortunately, you can change your behavior. This means that first of all, you must become self-aware. Most of this behavior happens unconciously - you do it and you never even realize it. Start being self-aware, and when you start behaving like the man, step back and relinquish the reigns to the one who wants them.
Then, start noticing when you are feeling any sort of negative emotion. You need to pay attention to this for two reasons. One - because you may take it out on others or two - because you may attempt to make yourself feel better by using attention seeking behavior afterwards. This may be seen as immature or needy to a man.
If you do that, you will also start to notice when you are going to start speaking in a negative way to HIM. You will see when you are going to tell him how to do something, or why, or try to take over for him when he does not want you to. If you can stop this behavior, you can begin to turn your relationship around for the better.
You can also begin taking your cues from his actions. If you do or say something and he reacts in a positive way, by giving you affection or telling you he loves you, you know you are on the right track. If he reacts by withdrawing, getting quiet, breaking eye contact or any other sign of stress, you know that you are taking away from him.
By doing these things, allowing him to be the man and paying attention to the cues, you can begin shaping your relationship into the relationship that you want it to be.
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
Relationship Advice for women by Rori Raye - Help for YOUR Relationship NOW!
Dating Tips for Women by Christian Carter of Catch Him and Keep Him
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