When the love is gone in a woman, you're dead to her

[ClearWater]

One of the great rules about apologies I was ever taught was this:
If the apology comes first, then reasons(s) come as the last thing you say, it is actually an excuse.
If the reason are explained first, then the apology is the last thing you say, you may have actually made an apology.
In other words, always make the most important point the summation, but especially in an apology. (This could be why confession lists your sins in kind and number, *without *extenuating background information such as provocations?)

Example:
Excuse: I’m sorry I yelled at you, I shouldn’t have done that, but you were driving me crazy.
Apology: You were driving me crazy, but I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry.

Don’t make excuses and then expect to have those counted as apologies. That doesn’t fly.

To that, one could respond, “Thank you…I think”!

 

[ClearWater]

To a man who would ask about women, who think women, in general, think one is “dead” when the love is gone, I’d basically want to know if he’s doing something.

Minimum, I think he’s probably ignoring signs something’s wrong, possibly more.

I’d recommend he LISTEN and take seriously concerns, when they are small. If men would listen to their ladies early on, I really think we cut down on the divorce rate.

Further, if you are serious about your relationship or marriage, if she asks you to accompany her to marriage counseling, do it! Don’t wait till she’s moved out of the house and is then filing for divorce.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I don’t know if you guys have noticed this, and perhaps it’s just my anecdotal experiences, but from reading the break-up stories here and from other experiences, I notice that women are very adept at considering you as dead to them if their love/romance for you is gone. Like the song, she becomes “as cold as ice” when it comes to the man whose heart she has just broken. I hope I’m conveying the phenomenon I’m thinking of here.

How come women are so good at this?

Why do you feel this is gender specific. It seems as if a woman is cold if she does that but a man would be considered “strong”

I think you may have some gender issues.

 

[ClearWater]

It also takes great humility for us to admit that we are even partly at fault for what’s going on, accept correction.

 

[Xantippe]

I think I’d also draw a distinction between a dating relationship and a marriage.

When you’re married, it’s worthwhile to move mountains to improve your relationship with your spouse. Almost anything moral that might work is worth trying.

When you’re not married to each other, there shouldn’t be any mountains to move. They should be at most molehills that can be quickly transported via shovel.

Also, for a Catholic the primary purpose of a dating relationship is to see if marriage between these two parties is feasible. A “no” is just as valuable as data as a “yes” is. As my old friend the Russian physics teacher used to say, “A negative result is also a result.”

It’s merciful not to drag a boyfriend or girlfriend through some sort of multi-month or even multi-year, humiliating soul-searching process that ends with you telling them, “Nope! I don’t love you and I don’t want to marry you.”

 

[ClearWater]

I think I’d also draw a distinction between a dating relationship and a marriage.

When you’re married, it’s worthwhile to move mountains to improve your relationship with your spouse. Almost anything moral that might work is worth trying.

When you’re not married to each other, there shouldn’t be any mountains to move. They should be at most molehills that can be quickly transported via shovel.

Also, for a Catholic the primary purpose of a dating relationship is to see if marriage between these two parties is feasible. A “no” is just as valuable as data as a “yes” is. As my old friend the Russian physics teacher used to say, “A negative result is also a result.”

It’s merciful not to drag a boyfriend or girlfriend through some sort of multi-month or even multi-year, humiliating soul-searching process that ends with you telling them, “Nope! I don’t love you and I don’t want to marry you.”

One needs to be honest. If it’s not going anywhere, that marriage isn’t a possibility on the horizon, that needs to be upfront, that it’s friendship, no future.

Although, I’ve had guys say that to me, and I’ve thought, “I can change his mind”, but no, I couldn’t.

 

[ClearWater]

Also, with BOTH parties, if they aren’t saying the following, “I’m sorry”, “I don’t know”, and “I made a mistake”, there is also an issue of pridefulness at work.

Again, since we are imperfect, at least on occasion, we should ALL be admitting to all of the above, at least on occasion.

If not, THAT would be another problem.

We need to be humble, apologize when wrong and ask for forgiveness, admit when we are wrong, not think we will always be right, and when we don’t know, admit it.

An apology in time would also help so many relationships and marriages. Sometimes, some will NEVER apologize, ever!

Some will never admit to not knowing, never admit to a mistake.

Be humble. Do the above on occasion, as needed, and it is NOT a sign of weakness, but strength.

Sometimes, men, especially, are prideful, will go around hours lost, refusing to admit the obvious, that he doesn’t know where he is. He thinks to admit this, the truth, he will be a laughing stock, a fool. However, which is worse, spending hours driving around, wasting gas, time, and frustrating everyone else, or to admit the truth, that he doesn’t know where he is at that time?

Men, by having a little humility in this, and other things, you’d go farther in relationships. Nobody expects you to know it all. We pretty much all get lost on occasion, and to admit the truth is …wonderful.

Women normally have no problem with it. Most women can be lost, stop at a gas station, say, “I’m lost. Where is…?” without a problem.

Men…be humble.

Also, sometimes, you might even need to ask for…God forbid…HELP! Maybe that’s why some men can´t find it in themselves to ask for counseling in time. They keep trying to “go it alone”!

There’s nothing wrong with asking for help.

 

[Luvz2travel]

I don’t know if you guys have noticed this, and perhaps it’s just my anecdotal experiences, but from reading the break-up stories here and from other experiences, I notice that women are very adept at considering you as dead to them if their love/romance for you is gone. Like the song, she becomes “as cold as ice” when it comes to the man whose heart she has just broken. I hope I’m conveying the phenomenon I’m thinking of here.

How come women are so good at this?

That’s a very harsh thing to say. I’m sorry if you’ve been hurt but like anything else it’s never a good idea to general about people. Just because one person hurt you doesn’t mean that all people are bad. I can say that having experienced so rocky a romantic past that I don’t thing I’ll ever take the the journey again the last 3 guys were progressively worse with the first of the 3 breaking my heart into shards…long story. The other two just did their best to hurt me. I don’t believe all guys are bad because of this I just choose to believe that for whatever reason GOD wishes be to be single and good guys just aren’t interested in me. Time and time again the ones overlook me or just plainly aren’t interest so I’m not even looking anymore. Maybe you need to take a break from the journey too. I’m a lot happier since I have. Prayers.

 

[sw85]

I don’t know if you guys have noticed this, and perhaps it’s just my anecdotal experiences, but from reading the break-up stories here and from other experiences, I notice that women are very adept at considering you as dead to them if their love/romance for you is gone. Like the song, she becomes “as cold as ice” when it comes to the man whose heart she has just broken. I hope I’m conveying the phenomenon I’m thinking of here.

How come women are so good at this?

If the love “is gone” and a man becomes “dead” to a woman as a result, it is very likely that she simply stopped respecting him. And if she stopped respecting him it is very likely, in my experience, that this was because he was contemptible: servile, subservient, apologetic, emotionally incontinent, indecisive, etc. Not true in every case, obviously, but true in many.

Note that, in such cases (which are, again, not all possible cases), ClearWater’s advice is probably not applicable.

 

[ClearWater]

If the love “is gone” and a man becomes “dead” to a woman as a result,** it is very likely that she simply stopped respecting him**. And if she stopped respecting him it is very likely, in my experience, that this was because he was contemptible: servile, subservient, apologetic, emotionally incontinent, indecisive, etc. Not true in every case, obviously, but true in many.

Note that, in such cases (which are, again, not all possible cases), ClearWater’s advice is probably not applicable.

Yes…could also be that.

 

[LongingSoul]

If the love “is gone” and a man becomes “dead” to a woman as a result, it is very likely that she simply stopped respecting him. And if she stopped respecting him it is very likely, in my experience, that this was because he was contemptible: servile, subservient, apologetic, emotionally incontinent, indecisive, etc. Not true in every case, obviously, but true in many.

Note that, in such cases (which are, again, not all possible cases), ClearWater’s advice is probably not applicable.

In my experience, we females don’t experience that sort of ‘he’s not good enough, has too many faults’ in this situation. It’s just that there isn’t the spark. We try and give it a chance for quite a long time before we make that decision that leads the guy to think he’s dead to her. Really it’s not that. It’s just that making the decision and knowing it has to be done, you just want to make the cut clean for both your sakes.

 

[ClearWater]

There reaches a point when the woman has tried, tried, tried, and she gives up, “throws in the towel”, and when she reaches that point, it’s generally over.

It’s as if something has died, that she can’t force herself to feel something, now.

I think she feels like it’s gone on too long, that she can’t go on like that any longer, wants out.

She can get to a point where she basically can’t stand to even be around her partner, doesn’t want to look at him, possibly ashamed of him, doesn’t want to even know him.

So, at that point, the idea of his changing and suddenly acting like a gentleman and lovey dovy is not going to work. Earlier on in the breakup, it might have.

I know I’ve had it where I was ashamed of my husband, found it easier to just avoid him.

The LAST thing I wanted was for him to touch me or be intimate with me.

If I would have wanted to try it, despite all that, I would have, at the very least needed an extended vacation from him. I felt I just absolutely couldn’t stand him.

The more he later tried to be affectionate, request sex and affection, the more disgusted I felt.

I wanted him to tend to the problems before I wanted to even think about intimacy.

 

[ClearWater]

Often, if the woman feels like she’s doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship, it gets tiring. Even if the man finally agrees at the last minute, he will, on pain of divorce, help, it’s just not enough.

Not enough and too late.

 

[ClearWater]

In one book I was reading a summary of, I think on infidelity, was talking about stages of breakup.

Again, if it’s at Stage 4, (last stage…the end), it feels like a woman doesn’t want to try any more, that she’s emotionally tapped out. I got to a point I was so stressed out, I felt I was literally starting to go crazy, had to get out in order to maintain what was left of my sanity.

I began to be unable to concentrate, make mistakes in my work I had never ever made.

I developed a nervous tic. One of my clients I interpreted for, in mental health, leveled with me, said she saw that it looked like I wanted to cry much of the time, was repressing it, exactly the same as her son was doing!

Even if I had wanted to stay (which I didn’t), I felt, in my heart, I could not even have FORCED myself to have feelings towards him, that it wouldn’t have worked. I COULDN’T do it!

Breaking free of that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I don’t regret a thing. It was…as they say in Spanish, “cortar por lo sano”…which literally means, “cut” for health.

It’s like having a leg with gangrene, amputating the infected part so that it doesn’t kill the patient. It’s a matter of emotional survival, protecting one’s self, selfish or no.

My supervisor also at my volunteer position said I used to be decisive, and with all the problems, she noticed I had become indecisive, something she said in the years of knowing me, I wasn’t.

She saw this was bringing out the worst in me. For a time, she encouraged me to stay married, until, even she, who was Catholic, pro-marriage, said even she had to advise me to get out.

 

[ClearWater]

Ann Landers, or Dear Abby, one of those two used to help people with whether to stay in a relationship. She used to say…“Are you better off with him or without him?”

I remember thinking in my “marriage”, “Why am I in this? I have all the drawbacks of marriage with almost none of the benefits!”

I began to think, “I’m better off alone”. “All he does is pull me down, not help me”.

Actually, I began seeing a individual counselor. He was unwilling to do marriage counseling even after years of my asking and begging, pleading with him.

I went alone, and the counselor (with 30 years experience), said that given everything, said she was actually really surprised I had lasted as long as I had!

 

[EasterJoy]

Often, if the woman feels like she’s doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship, it gets tiring. Even if the man finally agrees at the last minute, he will, on pain of divorce, help, it’s just not enough.

Not enough and too late.

It goes both ways, too. I know a man who finally decided he couldn’t tolerate any more. He’d talked to his wife about communication and habits his wife had in treating him that his friends found even more abusive than he did. No physical abuse–“only” verbal. They had counselling, she gave some lip service to “doing better,” but the effort was always too weak, too short-lived and riddled with excuses and counter-complaints as a defense. Her last effort was far too little and far too late. He felt he had to get out in order to be able to live his life in something like relative peace.

This example is getting away from what I think the OP is complaining about, but when someone gets out of an extinguished romantic relationship, they aren’t necessarily treating the ex “as if he/she were dead” to them. Sometimes, they don’t know what they feel. Sometimes, they’re finally feeling alive again. That weight they have been carrying around is gone; that band around their chest is gone. They can’t help but act happier and want to plunge into the life they’ve been missing out on. This can also happen just because they’re happy to be out of the conflict that lead to the break-up. That initial relief and the desire to be as far as possible from all reminders of the break-up can lead to a temporary “high” that the other person can find really painful to watch. They may also put in distance because they are afraid they’ll agree to a reconciliation that they would jump at but that would be a bad idea.

**It is important when you break off a relationship not to take the way the other person seems to be handling it personally. **You may as well take it as a sign that your cousins “didn’t love Grandpa” when they aren’t obviously grief-stricken at his funeral. We all deal with these things in different ways and on different time lines. We use different ways to cope. Not many conclusions about what is happening on the inside can be drawn from what appears on the outside. That’s OK…just let it go and keep your mind on taking care of your own feelings, whatever those are.

She’s got her life and you have yours, they aren’t the same life any more, and that is plenty for you to cope with, without concerning yourself with how she is handling herself. When you find yourself putting yourself in God’s hands (as we hope you will), then put her there, too. Then let go.

 

[Xantippe]

I was just reading the following by Captain Awkward (she’s giving advice about a situation where a date went nowhere because she wants kids and he doesn’t):

**What you have here is an example of “dating” working well. Exactly as it should, in fact. Let me explain:

Two people with some things in common like the look of each other. They decide to hang out more.
Through the course of hanging out, they find out some things that make them less interested in each other than they were initially, so they part ways after a date or two.
This is a happy outcome. That is a successful date. These two people put on clean shirts, got out of the house, and tried. They learned that they have different priorities and should not be together. Now they know. They both had lucky escapes!**

captainawkward.com/2014/10/06/632-my-friend-thinks-its-unfair-when-his-dates-bring-up-the-possibility-of-having-kids-someday/#more-7288

Sometimes not wasting time with the wrong person is all the success we’re going to get.

 

[LongingSoul]

I was just reading the following by Captain Awkward (she’s giving advice about a situation where a date went nowhere because she wants kids and he doesn’t):

**What you have here is an example of “dating” working well. Exactly as it should, in fact. Let me explain:

Two people with some things in common like the look of each other. They decide to hang out more.
Through the course of hanging out, they find out some things that make them less interested in each other than they were initially, so they part ways after a date or two.
This is a happy outcome. That is a successful date. These two people put on clean shirts, got out of the house, and tried. They learned that they have different priorities and should not be together. Now they know. They both had lucky escapes!**

captainawkward.com/2014/10/06/632-my-friend-thinks-its-unfair-when-his-dates-bring-up-the-possibility-of-having-kids-someday/#more-7288

Sometimes not wasting time with the wrong person is all the success we’re going to get.

That glaringly demonstrates why the powerful nature of sexual bonding should only begin after all the decisions and commitments have been sealed. Sexual bonding gives a false sense of unity that can never hold incompatible units together for life.

 

[Groo]

:tiphat: Thanks!

You’re welcome. I made the same observation as Estevao over a decade ago. I knew there was some crossover point where it was over, but I never understood why until you explained. Now (finally) I think I’m starting to get it.

I’ve been busy today and haven’t read the rest of the thread yet, but I’ll be reading and re-reading it over and over. This is very helpful for me at least, and I think a lot of other men could benefit too. I truly have not seen this information in any material from the Church, retreats, books, or anywhere else.

 

[ClearWater]

You’re welcome. I made the same observation as Estevao over a decade ago. I knew there was some crossover point where it was over, but I never understood why until you explained. Now (finally) I think I’m starting to get it.

I’ve been busy today and haven’t read the rest of the thread yet, but I’ll be reading and re-reading it over and over. This is very helpful for me at least, and I think a lot of other men could benefit too. I truly have not seen this information in any material from the Church, retreats, books, or anywhere else.

Really? Wow!

I’ve been through a lot, myself, with relationships, went out, read through books, looked for answers. I’ve been past that point of no return, myself. I was probably one of the women like that, as a matter of fact, but it’s different coming from a woman’s perspective.

I take this as a compliment.

Glad my mistakes could be of help to someone else!