The Authentic Love Podcast

Why Men Get Distant When You Don't Say How You Feel

• Season 1 • Episode 4

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Have you ever wondered why your man gets distant on you? Chooses work/tv/hobbies instead of you? Or why (even when you haven't said anything) he gets grumpy and claims you're being moody? Then this episode is for you! Discover men's super power as an empath, how this affects Conscious Alpha Men particularly and what steps you need to take for a much smoother relationship success story. Join me, Natalie Ford - dating and relationship expert - to explore this fascinating subject!

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[Intro music] Hello and welcome. I am Natalie Ford, founder and CEO of Enchanted Academy For Love and you are listening to The Enchanted Love Podcast. I am here to help strong, independent women let down their defences that have caused them to reject, repel and sabotage love so that they can transform these and finally call in the happy ever after that they have been longing for. Please help me get this message out there by liking, subscribing and sharing our material. And I hope you enjoy this week's edition of The Enchanted Love Podcast. Before we start today, I've got a small celebration to share that this podcast has received over fifty downloads in just the first three weeks. So thank you so much to everyone who is watching, listening, subscribing, liking and forwarding these episodes. Today we are looking at the subject of, 'Just because you're not saying it, doesn't mean he can't feel it.' So we've all been there... Our partner says or does something that upsets us, or perhaps they don't say or don't do something that we were hoping that they would do, and it hurts us. We don't really know how to speak to it in the moment, so we hold it inside and it festers. And all the things run through our head that we've heard in the past around not wanting to bother your partner with your troubles... Men don't really want to listen... And we start to tell ourselves, 'Oh, it's just an insecurity...''Don't give your insecurities your power...''I'm just being silly, it's not important...''Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.' And so we don't say anything. But the truth is, men are actually very empathic beings. They can pick up on what we are not saying. So when we hold things inside, they can feel it, and it creates a disconnect in our connection. We end up with the men backing off, choosing to make themselves busy elsewhere and we end up feeling abandoned. It inflames our insecurities and it generally makes the whole situation worse. So today I'm going to be looking at how can we break this cycle so that when these situations occur, we can come back into connection, trust and intimacy once more with our partner. Now, last episode we looked at how to transform your relationship with anger and tame your wild temper. In that episode, there's a lot of tools about releasing the pressure valve when things get too much, and how to let off steam in a healthy way. So if you haven't already checked that one out, make sure you do, because you'll get a lot out of that. And today, I also want to mention that there's a free giveaway in the description for my guide on 'How to Become a Better Queen for Your King.' This is going to be really pertinent to listen to after this episode. So listen through and then click on that link to go grab your freebie guide and put into action everything I've been teaching. Today we are going to talk about the empathic nature of men. And what we're going to look at today is the ways that this trips us up as women who are in relationship with conscious alpha men and the reasons why we get tripped up, and the reasons why men are so sensitive to this specific area of relationship, and what we can do about it. So, this has actually been something that has tripped me up a number of times and it amazes me how incredibly sensitive my partner is. My partner is a conscious alpha male. He is very connected to his emotions, but he's very masculine in his presence as well. So I did not expect for him to be as sensitive as he is, but he actually tells me that he knew right from his teenage years that he was an empath. Even knowing this, it still amazes me how incredibly sensitive he is to the nuances in my energy and the problems I get into if I don't speak to what's going on for me and let him know basically where I'm at. So, today I'm going to be exploring from a relationship psychology point of view as to why is he so sensitive to these things, and what exactly is it in me that's stopping me speaking to them or being completely transparent, and also extending just beyond for me, but also what I imagine you, my listener, might be going through as well. So, I want to give you a couple of really recent examples. I've been on this personal development journey for 15 years, and I'm really, really good at processing my triggers now to the point where I can keep my energy self contained and I can process quietly, silently, in my mind what has triggered me, why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, and get down to the core wound in me that's been activated, the negative voice that's there. And then I can clear it out. I can do all of this within a five to ten minute period. And I thought that this was great. I thought that me processing silently, not sharing with my beloved, not putting anything onto him, I thought this was great. I thought I was doing him a service, and, basically, removing the burden of needing to process with him... I was removing that from our relationship and taking it internally, which is absolutely encouraged. But there was a missing ingredient that I did not realise. So, we were on holiday recently and my partner and I had decided to go out for the day and I was really excited about the fact that we were going to walk to our destination and that we would have to go on a real adventure to get there. Going the route that I wanted to go, it was not even certain that we would actually get to the destination. But for me, the act of trying, the act of going the adventurous route, and seeing if it was possible to overcome the challenges and be like really intrepid soldiers, reaching to the end destination, that, for me, was far more enjoyable than actually getting to the end destination. The end destination was a beautiful beach, but a beach is a beach. For me, the adventure and overcoming the hurdles and particularly overcoming the odds, because we didn't think we could do it, so the idea of achieving something that we thought wasn't possible, that, for me, far outweighed whether or not we actually got to the beach. It turns out my partner wasn't quite on the same page as me. So, his primary concern was just getting to the beach. He had agreed to go the route I had suggested because he thought that was the only route possible. Now, I thought I'd made it clear that there were other routes available that were easier. Like, there was a train we could take. You rock up to the train station, you sit on a train, it arrives you at your destination, you end up on the beach. To me, that is boring as fuck. Great, you get the day on the beach, but the whole sense of adventure is missing. And that is what I was really up for. However, I did not communicate this to him. I'm pretty sure I told him about the train. In fact, I'm certain I told him about the train, but he doesn't recall that. So he thought that us walking across this intrepid path, which, as I say, we didn't know if we could get there or not, he thought that would be the only route to get there. Anyway, we start out on our journey

having only really established and communicated that:

One, we were going to the beach. And two, that we were taking the slightly challenging walking route to get there. The rest of what I've just told you was not shared between us because you know how you do this with your partner? You just assume that you're on the same page and a lot of stuff doesn't get fully communicated and then you get tripped up, like we did. So, we literally stepped out of the door. We walked probably about twenty metres in the direction of the intrepid route and we came across a local person. Now, my partner speaks the local language and so they had a quick conversation in the local language and suddenly he said, 'Oh, babe, we're going a different way.' And he grabbed my hand, walked me across the road and said,'Oh, we're going to get the train.' Now, I was livid. I was absolutely livid. For me, I was so excited about taking this difficult walking route that meant adventure and trials and tribulations. And for me, getting the train was the boring group. If we had agreed at the start of the day that we were going to get the train, I would have been totally on board with that. But I felt like we had made an agreement to go the adventurous route, and now suddenly my partner was bailing on me and I felt deeply betrayed. I didn't know this at the time. All I knew was that I was really angry. I was so angry that I couldn't say anything. I walked with him and all I could think was...'Ok, process quietly, process silently. I need to work out why it is I'm so angry.' Because for me, the level of relationship that I'm at with my partner, it's not appropriate for me to just say..'Hey! I'm angry! You have to do it my way!' That's just not the level of communication that I have in my relationship. I want to only bring the best to my partner. I want to not pollute my relationship with shadowy baggage that doesn't need to be there. So, for me, it's very much in my integrity to only bring my vulnerability out. And that would have been an attack, right? So, what I wanted to do was get to my deeper layers and my vulnerability so that I could share with my open heart. And I needed a bit of time to do that because it wasn't apparent to me why I was so triggered. I just knew that I was really mad. So I went very inwards. Not intentionally, but subconsciously. I pulled all my energy inwards because I was working deeply in myself, and I needed to do that to have the resources inside of me. And my partner felt this, and he said something like...'Oh! You seem to be putting a lot of energy into this walk.' And what he really meant, although I didn't fully understand it at the time, but what he really meant was, although I didn't know it at the time,'You've disappeared on me, and I don't know where you've gone.''That's not what he said. But this is the coded interpretation, which I realised later. So I didn't really think much of it because I was like...'Yeah, we're walking uphill. It is pretty tough.' I felt that what he had said was accurate, even though I missed the deeper levels available. And we eventually got towards waiting for the train. And he said something like, 'You've gone really quiet. What's up?' And I said, 'I'm really angry with you.' And he was like, 'Why!?' And I said, 'I can't fully explain it, but I feel like you've betrayed me.' And he's like, 'What on earth are you talking about?' And so I explained. I said, 'You know, I thought we had an agreement about the route we were going to take to the beach.' And he's like, 'What does it matter, as long as we get to the beach?''Like, how does it matter how we get there?' Now, this was the bit I couldn't explain to him because I hadn't got to the root of my vulnerability. So I said, 'I'm still processing. I need time.' And I continued to process, and we got on the train, and I sat very silently and I was working with the deeper parts of myself. So, my partner knew what was going on but he didn't really know why. And also I hadn't been fully transparent from the beginning about what was going on for me. I'd done it silently without telling him that I was triggered and that I was processing. So, by the time I'd actually got to the parts of me that were struggling... the deeper parts, the vulnerable parts... and I was ready to come back into connection, to talk to my partner, to share with him what was going on for me and what my vulnerable parts had to say, he was now triggered. He was now triggered because I had withdrawn from the connection for a period of about maybe 20 minutes whilst I was processing, and this had triggered his abandonment stuff. So, we were in a bit of a pickle. We were in a bit of a situation where I had been triggered, I had got to the parts of me that were ready to speak now and I was ready to come back into connection, but he was now not in connection with me because he was triggered by the fact that I had withdrawn from the connection. Anyway, nonetheless, we did eventually manage to work it out, but it probably took us about 2 hours, which is insane, but we to-and-froed between him getting triggered and then me getting triggered because he was still triggered and because I felt like I was being punished for being triggered in the first place. And anyway, the whole thing just escalated. So our two hours on the beach were pretty shit, to be honest with you, because, yes, we got to the beach, but most of the time we were not really talking to each other because he was upset with me. And then I was upset because he was upset, but he was actually upset because I had been upset. It was all crazy. So what is it that I want to share with you from this experience that is good learning for you? Conscious Alpha men are highly empathic. The minute I got triggered and withdrew my energy so that I could focus on processing myself, he felt it. I did not say a thing. I did not realise he felt it. And so there was me just happily sort of trying to be with my own energy, be with my own emotions and work out what was going on for myself. Meanwhile, he is experiencing abandonment. He is experiencing my relationship withdrawing from him and our connection, albeit momentarily and albeit not permanently, but it has caused his inner world, his more vulnerable parts, shall we say, to feel, first of all, abandoned. But secondly, he picked up that I was not comfortable with him. So as well as feeling abandoned, he is now also fearing that he is in trouble with me and he doesn't know why. As far as he's concerned, he's done nothing wrong. He has done literally nothing to upset me. He's got no understanding at all as to what's going on for me. So he's left with the experience of subconsciously feeling abandoned and potentially in trouble, so at some sense of a threat, and he does not know why. That's a very, very destabilising feeling. If you're ever in a situation where you just suddenly feel like...'Shit, I'm in trouble, I've done something wrong and I don't know why!' It's a very, very unsettling feeling. The fact that I had not spoken to it made it more unsettling because he didn't know if he was imagining it or if it was really happening.

So, lesson number one:

The minute you get triggered, own it. If I had said to him straight away...'Wow! That move that you just did has really stirred something in me, I'm going to go inwards to process it.' First of all, he would have had a heads up. He would not have experienced abandonment because he would have known what I was doing. And, okay, he might be sensing that he was in trouble, but he would also know that I was owning it, which means I'm not about to suddenly come out and blame and project and attack him verbally in some way. So it would have made the whole situation a whole lot safer for his nervous system. Now, the second thing is, 'Why did he get so triggered by me withdrawing from the connection?' Yes, there's abandonment. Yes, there's a sense of trouble. But actually, for alpha men, it goes much deeper. And this is the relationship psychology that you need to know about. So, alpha men by definition are leaders of the pack. They are considered 'top dog', the best at what they do and they are respected and looked up to. This is just literally the definition of alpha, right? If you think about a lion leading his pride, all of this applies to him. So I'm just extracting that for the human equivalent. So, intertwined with that is a real sense of succeeding. And so alpha men are hardwired to try in every single situation to succeed. And this includes with you. Your man wants to feel as though he is succeeding with you at all times. If he feels like he is not succeeding with you, he will feel like he is failing. It's literally black and white. If he's not succeeding, he's failing. And if he is failing with you, it is questioning his position as alpha and it is causing him to feel a huge sense of not good enough. Essentially, he feels like he's failing at his role of leading the tribe. So when he experiences that you are harbouring some emotions, which means that you are unhappy with him, he immediately perceives that he has failed you. And this immediately hits into his not good enough wound and his natural instincts are to leave the situation that is causing him to feel not good enough and to go and be in a situation where he feels like he's succeeding again. Now, this will typically look like men giving you a wide berth, maybe going into a different room. Maybe they suddenly decide that there's work that they need to do, or building, or some sort of DIY chores that need to happen. Or he might just go into his cave and channel you out and start watching TV, or go down to the pub, or hang out with his mates. Whatever it is, he will try to find some place where he can feel like he is succeeding rather than be with you, where he currently feels like he is failing. So, what can you do about this?

Well, number one:

owning it is the first step. As soon as you are triggered, let your partner know. Don't talk about what it is that is going on for you, just let them know...'Hey! Something has been activated inside of me!''I'm going to go away and process it.''But I want you to know that there's something going on for me''because I know that you're going to feel it and I don't want you to worry about what that is.''I will come back to you when I can share with you from a place of vulnerability what that is.'

Number two:

you need to go away and process it. Now, if you are at a level where you can process it unaided, brilliant. Go do that. Go do your work. Get down to your vulnerability. Ultimately, you want to get down to the place where you can work out what your unmet need is. Now, for me, my unmet need was a desire to go on an adventure, a desire to be met with my partner and accompanied by my partner on an adventure that felt really exciting for me. Now, that need went unmet the minute that we got on a train. In addition to that, I felt betrayed because I felt like we had had an agreement to meet this underlying need of mine, my desire for adventure. And I felt as though that agreement was broken without involving me in the discussion. So when I eventually got to my partner and was able to share with him vulnerably what it was. I would say to him, 'Hey! I did not realise it at the time.''But I actually had a young part of me that was really excited about going on this intrepid walking adventure''where we were going to face trials and tribulations''and it feels as though you made an agreement with that part of me''that you were going to come along for that journey''and support me in that or even embellish me in that''to see if we could go this intrepid route.''And it feels as though all of that was taken away from me very rapidly''without involving me in the decision to change the direction that we were going.' So when I did eventually bring this to me sorry to him, he was very confused. He was like, 'But we were going to the beach, and as long as we got to the beach, why did it matter?' And all I could say was, 'I'm really sorry that I didn't manage to communicate to you''how excited I was about the fact that we were taking the difficult route rather than the easy route,' And really work through the conversation from that place. So, number two; process what's going on for you so you can get to that vulnerable place and communicate without any charge what is going on for you. Now, I appreciate not everybody is in a place where they can do that unaided. So that's exactly the sort of thing that I can help you as a coach, or you can come into Enchanted Academy for love.

And either in our 1:

1 containers with me or in our group containers, this is something that we can help you process. This is exactly what we do in the groups. You come, you share, you're like..'Help, I'm triggered! This is what's going on for me!' And we help you work through how to get to those vulnerable parts so that you can go back into your relationship and say...'Actually, I've processed with my coach, and this is what's going on for me.'

Now, number three is:

You want to clear it. Now, clear it means removing all the emotional charge from it. So on this occasion, once I'd worked out what my vulnerable parts were, I actually didn't have any emotional charge left. Like, once I got to the part of me that felt really, really sad because it was so excited about having this adventure, and it had felt like it had that ripped away...once I got to that part, I was no longer angry. The feeling of livid and all of that had gone. However, that's not always the case. So if you are left with some sense of unresolved emotion, then you do need to clear that from your system. This is something that you can do using the emotional release tools which I referenced in my previous podcast, episode three, which I'm trying to remember the name of episode three.. which was called, 'How to Transform Your Relationship with Anger and Tame Your Wild Temper.' In there, I referenced the emotional release tools, which you can use, which will help you clear your energy. But again, this is stuff that we teach inside of the academy. And of course, if you're on a one to one with me, I can support you through that directly. So clear your energy. And even though in the example I gave you, I said that I shared with my partner at the processing stage. But actually that was because I didn't need to do any clearing.

What I would always say is go through all three steps, which are:

own it, process it, and clear it before you talk to your partner. You want, when you're communicating with your partner, to be able to have zero emotional charge in your words. You just want to be able to talk in the way that I'm talking to you right now, having a conversation. Of course you might have some feelings come up when you're in the conversation, but you don't want to have a lot of emotional charge behind it because if you do, your partner will only react to your combative energy and they will not actually be able to hear the words that you are saying. So it's really, really important to be able to get to this place where you are clear in your energy and you can just say, 'Hey, this is what went on for me.' And then of course, you have a conversation about...'How can we do this better next time?' And for me and my partner, the first thing we discovered was that if I'm triggered, I need to own it immediately. I need to say, 'Hey, okay, I'm triggered something's going on for me''I'm going to process.' So that he is not left wondering what the hell is going on. The second thing we discovered is that we need to check in with each other what our intentions are when we plan these type of things. Because if he'd have said, 'Is your intention just getting to the beach?' I would have said, 'No, my intention is to go on this exciting adventure''and cross all this terrain and challenge myself physically.' Whereas if I just checked in with him, 'What's your intention today?' He'd be like, 'Well, I want to go to the beach and I want to chill out.' So we would have realised that we were misaligned and that would have uncovered the problem. So, you learn and you grow from these things. I want to be really clear and say that a conscious relationship is not without its challenges. It's just that the challenges are much, much easier and energetically cleaner to deal with. So, in a relationship where we don't have these tools and we don't have this communication, what typically goes on is... You get triggered. You get super upset, or angry, or frustrated, and you don't know how to communicate it to your partner. Or you are scared that he doesn't want to listen, or that somehow, because it's coming up from an insecurity, that it's not valid or it's unimportant, or that you're just being silly, or you feel like maybe you're making a mountain out of a molehill. So, whatever your reasoning is, you hold back and you don't express it to him. Perhaps you're also aware that you've got a huge amount of emotional charge behind this and you know that if you were going to speak to him, you would just start a fight, right? And of course, nobody wants to intentionally start a fight with their partner. So you hold all of this inside of you and your partner senses it. He knows immediately that he is somehow failing with you. He doesn't know why and he doesn't know what the cause is. But he immediately senses, 'I am no longer winning with my partner. I am now failing.' And as soon as he senses this, he will no longer want to be around this energy. So he will withdraw. You have probably noticed this when you get a little bit antsy when there's stuff going on for you, your partner will avoid you. He will step away and go find something else to do that basically is away from you. However, this then causes you to feel abandoned because he is now taking distance in the connection. And you can feel that, even though he may not say anything or you may not be consciously aware, subconsciously you are going to start to feel anxious and insecure and worrying like, 'Where has he gone?' And you might even be thinking...'Well, I haven't said anything, I haven't told him that I'm angry. So why is he disappearing?''Why is he acting weird on me?' And so this adds to your emotional experience. Not only are you triggered in the first place, but you are now triggered again because you're feeling this distance and abandonment in your connection, which then fuels your emotional experience, which then creates this difficult cycle to break. Because the more you are feeling negative towards your partner, the more he can sense that he is failing with you and he doesn't know why and he doesn't know how to fix it. So you end up with this catch 22 of him creating distance, you getting more angry, him creating distance, you getting more angry, right? So the way that you need to shift this is to set it up so that he can feel like he is succeeding with you. This is why it's important to do the three step process.

So, to recap:

own it, process it, clear it. Now, if you want my free guide for 'How to Become a Better Queen for Your King,' then click on the link in the description of this episode. Now, it would normally be at this point in the episode that I let you know a preview as to what the next episode is going to be... But I'm actually going to change things up because I'm finding that predicting in advance what my episodes are going to be is causing me to feel restricted and unable to flow with what feels alive in the moment. And I want to be able to bring you the content that feels the most fresh and the most alive in me, each and every episode. So, what I can tell you is that I have another episode that is recorded, that is all about appropriate bonding in relationship and how hyper independence is keeping you single because it stops you being able to form those deeper bonds and deeper intimacy that is required to make a relationship last long term. Now, I think that's going to be my next episode, but I can't guarantee for certain. So, join me again in two weeks to find out, with a surprise, what my next episode is going to be! And meanwhile, I hope you click on the link in the description so that you can get your free guide to 'Become a Better Queen for Your King.' Thank you for listening. Thank you for being open and receptive to what I'm teaching. Please do like subscribe and share to get this message out there so that ultimately more women can have their Happy Ever After, because that's exactly what this channel is all about. If you've got any questions or comments, check us out on YouTube, 'The Enchanted Love Podcast.' You can leave questions or comments there and we will read those. I hope you have enjoyed this episode and I look forward to connecting with on the Next one.