Have you ever deeply fallen for someone only to feel them gradually fading away?

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Matthew:

Have you felt someone in recent memory or very recently in your life pull away? What was your reaction to them pulling away? In fact, what do you feel was the reason that they pulled away in the first place?

In today’s video, I’m going to tell you a quick story about someone who came to me about someone pulling away and what they did, and I’m going to show you a very, very common three-part pattern that happens in situations like these. And as I go through each of these three parts, I want you to just see where you might be able to see your own pattern aligning with that because it might be that you see exactly this pattern show up frequently in your life.

The woman who came to me told me a story of a marriage that she had recently left, an eight-year marriage, which for five of those eight years had become devoid of passion, there was no sex, there was no real intimacy or romance. It was essentially a relationship of two roommates. And she left that relationship, went back out there into the dating scene, and then met a guy that she felt an intense chemistry with. Now, in feeling all of this chemistry and the excitement of it and how important that felt, she suddenly started to give an awful lot to this situation, and she said herself that the text messages from her got longer and longer and his messages got shorter and shorter. There was a strong initial interest from him, but it started to fade. And as it faded, as she felt him pulling away, she felt this urge to make it work. Then when she happened to see that he was hanging out with another woman, she tried to reach out and assert a boundary and say that she wasn’t comfortable with that.

He said, “That’s way too much control for me at this stage.” He wasn’t willing to oblige and then suggested they go their separate ways. This is the point at which I entered the dynamic. And she said, “Matthew, what do I do here? I really like this guy. I feel something extraordinary with him that I didn’t feel in my marriage. Why did this happen when he showed all of this initial interest and then faded away? And what did I do wrong in trying to assert my boundary about this other woman that he was hanging out with?” Now, let me explain the three-part pattern that this aligns perfectly with that happens to so many people when they feel an intense chemistry.

The first part is that we overvalue something in the situation. Now, let’s take her story. She was in a marriage for eight years where for a very long time she was not feeling that chemistry and they weren’t having sex. So now the first person that she really meets and connects with, when she feels an intense chemistry, it feels like the most important thing in the world, that this is exactly what was missing in my marriage. Now, when we feel like we’ve been missing something for a long time, we can hyper focus on that thing and not all of the things that perhaps a marriage is important for and provides. In other words, when we find someone new, we still have to have the good parts of that marriage, the teamwork, the mutual respect, the thinking about each other, all of the ways we show up for each other, the consistency, the stability. We still need all of those things. It’s just that we were missing a very, very important component of a long-term relationship, which is intimacy.

But when she felt chemistry, it made her forget about all of these other things someone would need to have and massively overvalue that chemistry. So that’s part one, and that happens to so many of us when we meet someone. There is something they have that we overvalue. And because we overvalue it, we put them and the possible relationship that may emerge with them on a pedestal. 

The second part of the pattern is this. When we overvalue something, based on that overvaluation, we begin to give way too much. So for her, her effort that she was putting into this was effort that corresponded with how important she thought it was because of the chemistry she was feeling. It did not correspond to how important he was making it or how important it really was. She had just decided that because she was feeling something intense, this was a really important thing to hold onto, and she gave in accordance with that. That made him feel like he was getting way too much for what he was giving.

And I’m not suggesting that this person would’ve been capable of a real relationship had she given the appropriate amount, but what is guaranteed is that he got way more than he was giving, and that only lowers her value in his eyes, that this effort is cheap. I don’t need to do much to get this amount of investment. And what was the investment based on? It wasn’t based on real qualities. It wasn’t based on character. It wasn’t based on how much he was investing. It was based on some attention that he’d given her that had resulted in some chemistry. I see this pattern a lot where someone says, “But Matthew, he seemed to really like me. In the beginning, he was giving a lot.” And we have to almost stop thinking of someone liking us as meaning one thing. Someone liking us can be they really like having sex with us because we’re good in bed.

Someone liking us can mean they like not feeling alone. They like the feeling they get when they have companionship around us. Someone liking us can be that they like that we’re a really great person, but maybe they don’t feel romantically about us, but they do like being around us because we have great values and they feel secure around us. Someone liking us can mean they’re just having a great time right now, the same great time they’re having with five other people. So what does liking us really mean? Not a lot on its own. Liking us just gets us some of a person’s attention, but attention is not intention. It’s not the intention to have a relationship with us, the intention to build something with us, the intention to be a permanent feature in our life, and even intention doesn’t mean real investment because not everyone who has the good intentions can back it up with real investment over time.

In her case, she didn’t have intention or investment. She just had attention, attention that she was vastly overvaluing, and that overvaluation was making her give way too much. 

Now, here’s the third part in this pattern. Her giving so much and him realizing, “Oh, I really don’t need to do a lot to get this amount of investment,” which naturally makes someone go, “Well, maybe I can give a little less. Oh, I still get the investment. Maybe I’ll give a little less. Oh, I still get the investment.” When he feels that, he’s giving less, and she’s feeling more and more out of control. So in response to feeling out of control, the third part of the pattern is: “I now try to exert control in the wrong way because I don’t feel in control of how much this person is giving, but I can be in control of trying to tell them I’m not happy with them hanging out with this person in this case.” So we try and exert control there.

The problem with exerting control in a way like that is that, A, it doesn’t show control over the right things. It doesn’t show that I’m just simply controlling whether my perception of whether you are right for me, or I’m controlling how much I give to this situation. Those are higher-value ways of controlling, but a low-frequency way of controlling is, “You can’t do that. I don’t feel powerful right now. I feel like I’m trying to get you, and I can’t get you, so I’m going to try and control you in this way.” Often when we do that, and it’s coming from a place of desperation and insecurity, we are trying to make a demand at a time where we don’t have leverage. In life, when we ask for something, we usually need some form of leverage. In dating, if I say, “You have to commit to me,” I have to have some form of leverage. And I know that may sound like a crude way of looking at it, but what makes someone commit?

I don’t want to spend time without you. I don’t want to lose you. I want this to continue. You represent so much importance in my life that I couldn’t have you not in my life. I really like you, or I love you. That’s a form of leverage. We don’t think about it like that because it sounds too kind of manipulative almost. But the truth is, we ask when we have leverage. It’s the same as in anything in life. In business, if you are asking someone to pay for something, the leverage is that you really want that thing. If you ask someone to pay for something they don’t want, there’s no leverage there. In her case, what I gather from this situation is this is kind of a charming guy enjoying himself, enjoying creating chemistry, maybe doing it with multiple people, enjoying that freedom. And the fact that he had chemistry with her wasn’t enough leverage on its own, but she was treating it like it was.

In order to make an ask, someone has to really want us in that moment. They have to be asking for something. The right time to say, “Hey, something’s making me uncomfortable,” is when that person is actually asking to see you again, when that person is asking for more of your energy, when that person wants to keep dating you. That’s a great time to say, “Hey, I’d love to keep dating you too, but there’s something that’s making me a little uncomfortable, or I just want us to establish the rules going forward of what we are not going to do or what we are going to do.” Those are the right times to ask for something. But if we don’t have leverage, there’s no point asking. In that moment, what could she have done differently? Well, ultimately, if she feels like she’s texting more and more and more and him less and less, that’s a good time to step back. And the next time he reaches out to her, she shouldn’t ratchet up the energy she gives him until she feels a ratcheting up from his side.

So there should be a reduction in her energy, a reduction in her investment. And if he questions that reduction like, “What’s going on?” That’s the time to say, “Well, I felt like there wasn’t any progression with you, and because there was no progression, I just kind of felt like . . . I didn’t feel excited in giving much more to this.” 

He could at that point say, “Oh my God, but I want to keep seeing you.” 

“Well, if you want to keep seeing me, you need to show me.” 

And if he does show her, then she can increase her energy in accordance with that. But what was happening instead was he was decreasing his energy. And right as he was lowering his energy, she came in and said, “And here’s what I want,” and he’s saying, “But I’m not even asking for anything from you right now and you’re telling me what to do.”

No leverage to three parts to that pattern that people fall into. If we ever want a shot at pulling them closer, we have to reverse this pattern, value appropriately, give appropriate to the investment that I’m getting, and then make our asks at times when I have real leverage because this person is seeing me as someone they want in their life more, but what I’m showing them is that there’s a price to having me in your life more. 

How to do this in reality, because I’m giving you a conceptual model here, but what we need is, “Okay, how do I actually apply that? Like, walk me through from the moment I meet someone on a dating app, to getting on a date, to what I do after a date, between date one and date two, what do I do when I don’t hear from them for a week after date two, how do I communicate with them at each juncture, when I do ask for more, what’s a great way of doing it in a powerful, confident way?

These are all things that I’ve created for years of my life now in very practical ways that are easy to follow, and I’ve put them in a program called The Momentum Texts. And The Momentum Texts is 67 specific ways to increase momentum in the early stages of dating so that a situation like this doesn’t happen, so that when you apply energy to your dating life it actually goes somewhere instead of always petering out, instead of always fading out. And by the way, a copy of The Momentum Texts is seven bucks, so it’s a very, very accessible program. There’s no excuse for everyone not to have their hands on this. To get your copy, go to MomentumTexts.com. Whether you are on day one of texting someone, or you’re on month six of seeing someone, this program will give you something for every part of the dating process. Go check it out, and thank you as always for watching the video.