As you read these lines, many are wondering if they made the right choice. They have doubts. They question whether the woman they are seeing, with whom they are supposedly on the brink of building something, is the right one. Whether they might not end up suffering, feeling suffocated, or whether there might not be someone else in the future who will make them experience different emotions. Many men go through this phase of doubts, and many women suffer from it, wondering about the right behavior to adopt to get out of this slow torture.
Waiting is a bad idea
If he has shared his doubts and the fact that he is thinking about your romantic future, waiting for him to decide is a bad idea.
I’m sure you’ve already experienced this kind of hesitation in your life. Take the time to think about it: you were about to make a choice with significant consequences for your future. It may have been about accepting a job offer, moving to another city, or buying a house, and you stayed still, unable to decide. When an important decision frightens us, we say “I need to think about it,” and that’s what he is doing, isn’t he?
But are we really thinking? In most cases, we don’t sit down and reflect for hours. We don’t make small diagrams, calculations, or other scribbles that accompany intense intellectual activity. No, most of the time, we simply use the time we have available to us, waiting for an event to intervene positively to push us in the right direction. Otherwise, we continue on our way. It’s not reflection that pushes us to move, it’s life and what happens in it. I think of all those people who moved or started a new project “after a breakup.”
So waiting for him to decide is indeed a bad idea.
Oh time, suspend your flight.
So he finds himself at a crossroads, a road lies before him but it seems uncertain. There are missing elements that push him to go down that path. Perhaps there is something important that you haven’t had the chance to show him yet, my book (“How to Put a Man in Your Pocket”) will help you to reflect on this.
But maybe he’s simply torn about commitment and as we saw earlier, time is key. He imagines that he has time and it’s precisely by offering it to him that you risk detaching from each other.
How can you make him understand that his time for reflection is limited?
It’s a matter of reversing the way you see things. You are a valuable woman, and a valuable woman doesn’t resign herself to a waiting posture. She is an unstoppable force of nature that moves forward relentlessly. So, you’re not going to wait on the dock while giving him a deadline to decide. The locomotive that you are will slowly get moving (in reality, it never stopped). If he doesn’t decide to jump on the moving train, you will disappear over the horizon.
Therefore, in the first place, you need to stop reacting according to him. But act for yourself, without him. Naturally, your availability will decrease, and he will feel it. He will feel that you’re moving, but without him. And that this movement is the same one that will take you away from him.
Giving an ultimatum and saying, “I’ll give you until the 25th at midnight to decide” may seem like an act of strength. And many women who have the intuition that they need to do something choose this path. Except that the ultimatum will work against you because it’s a threat and an order. However, I know of few men who react positively to both. “Oh yeah? Is that how it is? I’m out of here,” and instead of having a positive sign that pushes him into your arms, he discovers a negative sign that confirms his decision to give up.
The attitude to adopt
The first step is to fill your calendar. And shift your focus not on him, but on yourself. Your time to dedicate to him must naturally decrease. Don’t give him the time you would give your boyfriend but rather that of a date (he’s not sure, so you shouldn’t be either).
The second point concerns your attitude towards the situation. Don’t dive into fearful silence about him (the attitude of someone afraid of making a mistake). And don’t bring up the subject in a soothing voice asking him if “he’s had time to think” as if he had a terminal illness. By acting this way, he perceives that you’re not sure of your worth, which will not make him want to take the plunge but rather to validate his doubts about you.
Keep sharing with him but leave him wanting more.
Keep his doubts. Don’t offer, but reward. Make him invest in you, for example, if you need to see each other. Let him come to you (there’s no turning back on the train). In this dynamic where it’s him who sends his energy towards you, he’s already walking in your direction. Don’t prevent other opportunities from manifesting themselves. It’s a global movement that will be felt in a multitude of small details that, as a whole, will worry him, which is an excellent thing.
Don’t explain your approach, don’t demystify things by showing him the behind-the-scenes of your own questioning, doubts, and actions because by understanding a mystery, we release a force that attracted us to it.
And finally, give yourself a reasonable amount of time after which you will actually move on. About a few weeks, no more than 3. He doesn’t need time to decide; he already knows.
