Are you a woman with a lot going for her in all areas except in love and relationships? Do men stop calling or withdraw after a few dates or tell you they’re not interested or don’t feel the right chemistry with you? Your intelligence and ambition may have gotten you where you are in your life and career, but are those same qualities intimidating to men?
The truth is that success and independence are actually attractive qualities to a man. Men are not intimidated by smart women. They can, however, be intimidated and turned off by the way you’re relating to him. You may be failing in love because of your energy, not because you’re smart and have your act together.
Way to Fail #1: Emasculate a Man by Out-Manning Him
One sure way to lose a man’s interest is to make ourselves “smaller” or “less-than” so we don’t intimidate him. We play down our strengths, successes, and abilities because we think that men are competitive and want to be better than we are at everything. It’s simply not true!
If you’re a successful woman, revel in your success and happiness! Run everything at work, be firm, be tough, be managerial and multi-tasking. But when you’re on a date with a man, or at home, or hanging out together, don’t try to run or manage him.
There are subtle ways you may be doing this that completely emasculates a man and makes him feel not only terrible about himself, but turns him away from you. For example, he’ll tell you about a problem he’s having and you say, “You should do this …” or “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that …” This makes him feel managed—like he’s a child and you’re his mother. This isn’t a good feeling for a man. He wants to feel respected and admired, not mothered.
No man wants to be in a relationship with a woman that makes him feel like a child or with a woman who acts very masculine. When you take charge, have opinions about everything—including where you go and what you do—and what you think about him, you are displaying masculine energy.
You can be a doing, thinking, take-charge kind of woman at work, but in your love life, you should be a feeling, being and expressing kind of woman. This relationship enewsletter provides great suggestions for letting him be a man.
You can let a man know what you want and need by simply saying, “I’d like that” or “I don’t want that” or “that would feel good to me.” When he asks you where you’d like to go this weekend, you could say, “It would feel good to me to spend time outside enjoying the sun. I don’t want to stay stuck inside all day.”
Way to Fail #2: Try to Manage Your Relationship
Being a woman means taking charge of your own life, but letting him run the relationship.
If that sounds odd and unfair and plainly not at all about female empowerment. But here’s a new way to look at this: Love isn’t a management opportunity. When a man pulls away from us, going after him and trying to “talk it out” to get him back full-force again is the kiss of death for your relationship, not the spark that will re-ignite it.
Save management for your life outside your relationship with a man—your time, your money, your work, your environment. A man is not a chair. You can’t move him around and decorate him and sit on him and make opinions about him and tell him where to stand and expect him to feel anything but friendship or obligation toward you. That means don’t tell him what he should wear, don’t give him advice on his career, and don’t tell him what he should think about a certain topic.
