121 Beyond Attachment Theory: Why Men Need To Pull Away

Inevitably in a relationship, there will be a point of tension where one partner wants to pull away when the other wants to keep connecting. In a secure male-female relationship, that usually means the man is the one pulling away. I'll share why this has to be the man's role, and why in a secure relationship it's actually a gift you give your woman.

Transcript

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So there's a common point of tension that occurs between my lady and I.

And it happens almost every morning and on good days it happens many times throughout the day.

We look together.

And that is in a moment where we're cuddling,

Connecting,

Having a good time.

There's a moment where I realize,

Okay,

I need to get up and do stuff on my own.

I need to work on my stuff.

There's things I need to do.

I need to go off and be independent.

In those moments,

Typically,

She wants the opposite.

She wants me to stay.

She's trying to hold on.

She wants to keep cuddling.

She wants to maintain the pleasant feelings that we are feeling while connecting.

And to be clear,

It's not like she's a housewife.

She's also a busy entrepreneur.

She's got plenty of things to do,

Just as much as me.

So it's not like she has nothing to do and that's the reason why we have this.

Her personality or the role she typically plays in these moments is that she wants to keep connecting and I want to keep separating.

And it's mostly tension for me because I'm the one trying to separate from this thing that feels good otherwise.

And I don't mind that.

And I brought this up with her.

I shared that I think it's actually a mark of a healthy relationship that we play these roles.

And she took a little bit of offense.

I mean,

As I mentioned,

It's not like she's a housewife.

It's not like she has nothing to do.

She's a busy entrepreneur as well.

But I brought up that I think it's healthy and a mark of a secure relationship that these are the roles that we play in these moments.

You may already be familiar with attachment theory.

If you're not,

I'm going to try to summarize it in under a minute.

Basically,

Attachment theory states that when a person is feeling insecure in relationship,

That insecurity comes out in one of two ways.

And actually,

When two insecure people or two people that are feeling insecure are together,

Usually one plays both roles.

One insecure role is the anxious style,

Anxious attachment.

This is the person who's overly clingy,

Won't let go,

Is holding on a little bit too tight.

Men and women can play this role.

I'm sure you could think of either you've been this person or you've dated this person or both in your relationships.

And the other side is the avoidance.

The avoidant person is the extra cold person.

They're always pulling away,

They're acting detached,

They're uncomfortable with intimacy so they go off and do their own thing.

They're always trying to separate.

And there's other words for these.

Gay and Katie Hendricks call these the glommers and the splitters.

Glommers try to glom on,

They're anxious.

The splitters try to split away their avoidance.

And both of these play out.

And most of the time when you hear about attachment theory being spoken about,

People are trying to get to this mythical thing of secure where they have no anxious avoidance attachments going on.

They have no glomming or splitting.

Everything somehow fits perfectly in this super abstract perfect reality that almost sounds like enlightenment sometimes.

And I've coached many people.

Around the relationships I've heard the intimate stories of,

I don't know,

Close to a thousand different relationships of varying degrees of security.

And I'm very confident,

At least from whatever perspective I can have,

That something like this still happens in a secure relationship.

And I would say,

Even further,

To maybe the controversial point,

That in a relationship between a masculine person and a feminine person,

Whether they're male or female or whatever,

In a secure relationship,

It's still the masculine's role to pull away when pulling away needs to happen.

And it's still the feminine's role to hold on.

Because both of these things are important,

Right?

Like if both people are not letting go of each other,

What do you have?

Codependence.

They end up not living their lives instead they just cuddle all day or they never leave each other's side and it's actually a detriment to both of their lives.

When to avoid people to get together,

Which does happen sometimes,

They end up just being cold to each other.

They usually end up both cheating on each other and both pretending like they don't care.

That's really like the ultimate avoid and avoid in a relationship.

Because both this glomming and splitting is important.

Connection is super important.

The pulling together is super important in a relationship.

And also the having independent time is also super important.

So why do I feel like it's important that I'm the one who pulls away and she's the one who connects versus the other way around?

Well,

As I mentioned,

Through the hundreds and hundreds of relationships I've seen,

Particularly between men and women,

This is where it's healthiest.

Obviously it can be done in an extreme way where he's being an asshole and she's being needy.

That's not what we're talking about here.

I'm saying that it's actually the feminine's role to foster connection.

So if you can buy the idea that a woman who's in a relationship with a man is happiest when she's in her feminine,

In her feminine in quotes,

Whatever that means to you,

I'm sure it means something.

If you can buy that.

And if you agree that the seeking connection and cuddling is a result of oxytocin,

Right?

It's pretty much scientifically accepted.

And you can agree that the behaviors that most of us call feminine,

Or many of the behaviors that most of us call feminine,

Are related to oxytocin.

I mean,

If you listen to my podcast,

They often refer to feminine behaviors as oxytocin-driven behaviors just to be super specific and not get people caught up in gender stuff.

Let's keep it as objective as we can,

Speaking about hormones and biology.

If you can buy that feminine behavior comes from oxytocin and oxytocin drives things like cuddling and seeking more connection and women are the happiest when they're in their feminine,

Then you put all those statements together.

And certainly when a woman is the happiest,

She's the one driving connection.

Now,

On the male side,

We could talk about where masculine behaviors come from or not,

But let's just accept the fact that in a healthy relationship,

In a secure relationship where they're interdependent and not codependent and not assholes to each other,

Both independence and connection is important,

Well then it's the man's role to do the opposite.

And I just want to be clear,

It's not like I push her off or tell her to leave me alone and respect my boundaries or anything.

Those harsh behaviors are usually results of insecurity.

People only hold violent boundaries when they're bad at holding them.

It's not even a boundaries thing.

That word gets thrown around a lot.

So here's where this becomes a responsibility of the masculine person in a secure relationship.

So she's a busy person too,

Right?

My partner.

She's got stuff to do that day,

Right?

If I'm not the one who ensures that we go both core separate ways,

That we temporarily split up,

Not break the connection in terms of our actual connection,

But in the moment,

Like we stop cuddling as an example.

If I don't hold that,

If I don't do that for both of us,

Then she needs to do that.

She needs to become aware.

She needs to be thinking of like,

Oh shit,

Have we been cuddling too long?

If she has to think about that,

If she has to be aware of,

Okay,

Is it time for me to start my workday?

Then she's not in her feminine anymore.

She can't fully enjoy the experience of being fully in that oxytocin-driven feeling of like just more cuddling,

More cuddling,

More fun,

More like forget about time,

Time doesn't matter.

If I don't do that for her,

She's not able to enjoy that.

So it's actually my responsibility to her for her to enjoy that experience of being super surrendered and just like,

You know,

Just being a cuddle bunny and doing what feels good to her.

If I don't hold that,

If she doesn't know on some conscious or subconscious level that when the time is right,

I'm going to insist that we both get out of bed,

Then she doesn't get to be in the most pleasurable experience that she can be in while we're cuddling.

So it's actually a gift I'm giving her as opposed to in a anxious avoidant insecure relationship,

The avoidant person might have the right impulse of like,

Okay,

It's time to get up,

We got to do our day,

But he's not secure about it.

So he doesn't do it for her,

He doesn't do it for them as a unit,

He does it selfishly for himself and he blames her because he's not secure enough to know that he actually has a handle on the situation.

Typically when people are assholes to their partners is because they don't trust themselves,

They're blaming someone else,

That's a whole other thing.

But in a secure relationship,

I'm doing it for us,

Right?

I'm doing it for us because yes,

I have to do my own stuff,

Right?

There's a selfish part of it.

But also I know she's got to do her stuff and also we need to as a unit do our things for the world,

Like we have a family together,

Like we have to do stuff,

Right?

It's a really important role just like being in an oxytocin mode of like her generating the feel.

I mean,

She's largely the source of the happiness we feel from cuddling,

That can be super specific in a secure relationship between a masculine person and a feminine person,

Perhaps a man and a woman.

It is actually the man's role to be the one who ensures they go their independent ways at times.

Even the moment is right,

Just like it's the feminine's role to inspire both of them to continue to connect.

And I'm using cuddling as an example because it's visual,

It's obvious,

It's concrete.

But this goes for things that are beyond just physical cuddling.

The source of connection is the woman,

Is the feminine,

Is oxytocin.

The source of direction and protection and independence is testosterone,

Where male behaviors come from.

Thanks for watching and listening to this episode.

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Goodbye.