Relationships: Why Would An Avoidant Man Rush Into A Relationship?

If a man has met a woman who he is attracted to and she is attracted to him, he can feel a strong urge for things to progress. He can then spend a lot of time messaging her and sending her voice notes.

He may also want to spend as much time as he can with her. Additionally, he may even send her gifts, plan days out, and spend a lot of money on her when they are together.

The Other Side

Either way, thanks to how interested he is, she can appreciate what he is like. She may believe that she has met a man who is not only into her but who wants a real relationship.

Now, he can behave in this way for a number of weeks or months, and then, for no apparent reason, he can become less responsive. She might only hear from him every few days, or it could be longer.

Another Scenario

Then again, he might stop messaging her, and when she calls him, he might not answer her. It can then be as if he hasn’t just stopped speaking to her, he is no longer on planet earth.

But while she is likely to find his behaviour very confusing, and she can feel rejected and abandoned, he may have started to feel smothered and trapped. He would then have pulled away in order to settle himself down and gain a sense of control, not because he is no longer into her.

The Next Stage

Once he has settled down, and this may take months, not weeks, he might go back to how he was before. If he does, the woman might be happy to carry on as normal, or she could conclude that, as he might pull away again, it is best for her to break up with him.

What can play a part in this is that she might have been with a man who was hot one moment and cold the next before, and not be willing to go through it again. She will then know how stressful it is to be with a man who is like this.

His Experience

Assuming that she does end their relationship at this point, he could end up feeling rejected and abandoned. He might even criticise himself for pulling away and wonder why he behaved in this way.

If this is what does take place, he might see that this is not the first time that he has behaved in this way. He might see that in his last relationship, he came on very strongly, only to pull away before long.

Very Confused

But as he was so interested in her at the beginning, only to pull away as time passed, it is to be expected that this wouldn’t make any sense. However, if he were to think about how he felt before he met her, he may find that he felt very needy, lonely and as though he had been rejected and abandoned.

If so, this would have been what caused him to come on so strongly. It was then not purely his attraction to the woman that made him message her so much and want to spend so much time with her; it was also his need to avoid how he felt.

Another Part

Due to how strong this need was, it would have hijacked the part of him that had the need to find out if the woman was actually right for him and take his time getting to know her. To use an analogy, it would have been as if he had been starved for days and then ate whatever he could find.

As a result of how hungry he was, he wasn’t concerned about whether something was right for him. After a while, he wouldn’t have been as needy and would have lost touch with how he felt, only to for him to start to feel overwhelmed by the level of closeness and to feel trapped.

Two Extremes

At this point, the level of intensity that pulled him toward her would have been similar to the level of intensity that pulled him away from her. Unconsciously, if not consciously, she would have probably been seen as someone who would make him whole at the beginning, only to be seen as a threat to his survival as time passed.

With this in mind, it is not a surprise that he rushed in and then rushed out again. If he had been more settled at the beginning and had taken his time to get to know her, he might have still pulled away, but not for as long, and their relationship might have lasted longer.    

A Deeper Look

The reason he feels very needy, lonely and abandoned when he is not in a relationship and trapped when he is can largely be due to what took place during his formative years. This may have been a time when his mother and perhaps his father were emotionally unavailable and out of reach.

Being ignored, rejected, controlled and abandoned would then have been the norm, which would have caused him to be greatly deprived and deeply wounded. This would have caused him to miss out on the attunement, mirroring, care, affection and support that he needed.

The Outcome

For him to handle what happened, his brain would have repressed a number of his needs and the pain that he was in. This would have involved him losing touch with his embodied, connected, and fully feeling true self and forming a disembodied, disconnected and not fully feeling false self.

His system would have also associated human closeness with being annihilated. To stop this from taking place, a protective part of his psyche would have formed to keep people at bay. But while this would have stopped him from feeling as though he was losing himself and was going to die, it would have caused him to be deprived.

Moving Forward

Many years will have passed since this stage of his life, but he will still be uprooted from his body, his system will still associate human closeness with death, and this protector part will still be doing what it can to keep him alive. Tension from his unmet developmental needs and his adult needs will then build up and push him toward a woman, but after a while, this association will be activated, pushing him away from her and back into being deprived.

For him to gradually change his life, there will be a number of steps for him to take. He will have beliefs to question, pain to face and process, and unmet developmental needs to experience, among other things.

This will take courage, support, patience and persistence.

Awareness

If a man can relate to this and he is ready to change his life, he may need to reach out for external support. This is something that can be provided with the assistance of a therapist or healer. 

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Oliver JR Cooper
http://www.oliverjrcooper.co.uk