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

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Xantippe said:
Why is this a gendered thing? Couldn’t you replace “woman” with “man” and be just as right (or wrong)?

I actually don’t think it’s correct for either gender–the world is full of mismatched dating couples who break up, get back together, break up, get back together so many times that it makes their friends and families sick to see them get back together again.

Even when breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend is the very best thing to do (and it often is), it takes considerable will-power to stay broken up. Looking “cold as ice” is often just self-protection to keep a safe distance from a person that is objectively wrong for you but that you have a lot of chemistry and/or a physical relationship with.

It’s very destructive to keep talking and texting and hanging out with someone that you still have feelings for but that you know is wrong for you. In that case, the nuclear option is the safest–no phone calls, no texting, no social media, no hanging out, block everything, no nothing either forever or until the fires have safely burnt out.

That’s just good dating hygiene.
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Yep. Besides, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who is still nurturing their ex’s emotional needs or who feels that they owe their ex time and energy? To move forward in life and have a family, it’s often necessary to leave the past behind you.

Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes, exes make great lifelong friends. But it’s the exeception, not the rule.
 
Groo said:
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.
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Oh, one question if I may…

Which part of what I said was what finally “got through” to you, helped you to understand?
 
There are actually many different reasons a woman can behave this way…dead, cold as ice.

It could be, as pointed out, the woman still may have feelings for the man but doesn’t want to keep yo-yoing back and forth, wants to end the relationship. One of the easiest ways is by being cold…that’s one way instead of screaming and yelling or some other ways.

Then, sometimes, the woman may still have feelings but does what they refer to in psychology as “reaction formation”. So, she can do exactly opposite of what she feels.

For instance, someone who feels deeply in love, might do the **opposite, **act cold, even sort of cruel, to …trying to think how to explain it…

Well, take a case where a woman falls in love with a married man. She may act cold and almost mean to him but not because she hates him, because she LOVES him, but realizes that love can never be…tries to put on this cold act so that the relationship doesn’t go any farther.

Also, women can do this “cold” act for other reasons, even if she is in love but realizes for other reasons, it’s not going to work, best not to continue, best to stop before it gets yet more emotionally involved. So, she does the opposite of what she feels…another explanation.
 
If you want to see an example of “Reaction formation” in action, watch the movie, “Twilight”. There is a point where Edward is REALLY rude and mean to Bella, but it’s because he LOVES her but is trying to stop the relationship, push her away, despite his great feelings towards her.

In that case, the man is acting cold, but often, women use this, as well…reaction formation.
 
I have Borderline Personality Disorder, and though I didn’t know it until recently, I’ve noticed that when I’ve driven women away, they’ve stayed away. Since people with BPD feel things more intensely than others, I believe that in normal relationships women just can’t open up and love anymore b/c it hurts too much. So you’re dead to them because you have to be. With a BPD person it is just a faster result, I think. If I could go back and change things with a couple of women, I would. But they don’t return my email/texts. Hurts, but it was expected.

I think it is a predictable response to being hurt.
Estevao said:
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?
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Several folks here have given a good discription of what happens to bring a couple to try his point of a wife checking out and husband suddenly realizing that and trying to fix things.

So my question is, where do they go from there? They made their vows, received sacrament and are now in a relationship they no longer want to be.

What do they do now, as a faithful catholic ?

One other comment I’ll make is, many people tend to dish out advise of “get out” while never even have spoken to or know anything about the other party, other than what they were told by the offended. As we all know there is usually much more to the situation than either one will admit to.
 
SED said:
Several folks here have given a good discription of what happens to bring a couple to try his point of a wife checking out and husband suddenly realizing that and trying to fix things.

So my question is, where do they go from there? They made their vows, received sacrament and are now in a relationship they no longer want to be.

What do they do now, as a faithful catholic ?

One other comment I’ll make is, many people tend to dish out advise of “get out” while never even have spoken to or know anything about the other party.
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I don’t know what you do then, but as others have pointed out upthread, there are usually literally hundreds of exit ramps for de-escalating before you get to that point.
 
SED said:
Several folks here have given a good discription of what happens to bring a couple to try his point of a wife checking out and husband suddenly realizing that and trying to fix things.

So my question is, where do they go from there? They made their vows, received sacrament and are now in a relationship they no longer want to be.

What do they do now, as a faithful catholic ?

One other comment I’ll make is, many people tend to dish out advise of “get out” while never even have spoken to or know anything about the other party, other than what they were told by the offended. As we all know there is usually much more to the situation than either one will admit to.
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If marriage counselling cannot resolve the problems, many Catholics in this situation have lived together separately under the one roof running the family as a businesslike situation. There is some satisfaction in holding the family unit together and it avoids complications of divorce that impact on generations to come. It does involve sacrifice and suffering, but the family unit is so important. My parents in law and my paternal grandparents lived this way for the majority of their marriages. I admire them to be honest.
 
There are also some men who don’t get it even if they’re told to their faces.

“Wait why won’t you talk to me all of a sudden? I don’t understand, what’s going on?”
The exact same thing that was going on the last 12 times I explained the problem.

Sorry, just had a few men act like being cut off is all of a sudden because they didn’t think anything prior to that was serious. 😃
 
DarkLight said:
There are also some men who don’t get it even if they’re told to their faces.

“Wait why won’t you talk to me all of a sudden? I don’t understand, what’s going on?”
The exact same thing that was going on the last 12 times I explained the problem.

Sorry, just had a few men act like being cut off is all of a sudden because they didn’t think anything prior to that was serious. 😃
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Right.
 
Actual conversation I’ve had:

Me: “I need some space. I don’t want to talk right now.”
Guy: comes over “I don’t understand, why won’t you talk to me?”
Me: “I’m having problems with your inability to handle boundaries. Now I need some space, I don’t want to talk about this.”
Guy: “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.” continues talking at me

The only thing I wish there is that I’d gotten that clue about, oh, 2 years earlier than I did!
 
DarkLight said:
There are also some men who don’t get it even if they’re told to their faces.

“Wait why won’t you talk to me all of a sudden? I don’t understand, what’s going on?”
The exact same thing that was going on the last 12 times I explained the problem.

Sorry, just had a few men act like being cut off is all of a sudden because they didn’t think anything prior to that was serious. 😃
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Yes. There are people, male and female, who beg to be told, “I’m really sorry, but as nearly as I could tell, there was nothing other than breaking up with you that I could have done to get your attention without being brought up on charges. I told you I would not put up with X any more, but X kept happening. I do not make threats. I explain what I’m going to do, and then I do it. I’m sorry you doubted that.”

Then there are other people who set up what I call “invisible flaming hoops.” They decide to themselves: he/she should know to act in such-and-such-a-way, I shouldn’t have to tell him/her that, so if he/she ever does that, I’m out of here. We’re not talking about dating two girls at the same time without telling either one of them about the other or discovering a non-negotiable that you just hadn’t gotten around to talking about yet. We’re not talking about discovering an insurmountable non-negotiable in the course of getting to know each other. (You can meet the guy’s mom and say, “I’m out of here,” if you want; that is your choice.) No, we’re talking about things that are matters that different couples negotiate in different ways. To have someone unilaterally cut you off for not doing something they have never asked you to do is hard to take. That is what I mean by being found “guilty” of missing an “invisible flaming hoop.” That’s not a fair thing to do to somebody.
 
i think the OP is on to something. fifteen years after the end of a very serious relationship, i ran into my ex-girlfriend in an airport. i was very warm and cordial towards her. she was cold and aloof.
 
captainmike said:
i think the OP is on to something. fifteen years after the end of a very serious relationship, i ran into my ex-girlfriend in an airport. i was very warm and cordial towards her. she was cold and aloof.
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I have run into guys I formerly dated, and it often became clear after a short period of “warm” conversation that they were inquiring to see whether I was available for another go-round. It is unfortunate she wasn’t at least polite, but she may have had some bad experiences in that area. It is also possible that she had not moved beyond whatever it was that broke you up in the first place, that she moved on with the help of some sour grapes concerning her memories of you, or that she has had a series of bad relationships since breaking up with you and was in no mood at all to hear about how you had fared, one way or the other.
 
EasterJoy said:
I have run into guys I formerly dated, and it often became clear after a short period of “warm” conversation that they were inquiring to see whether I was available for another go-round. It is unfortunate she wasn’t at least polite, but she may have had some bad experiences in that area. It is also possible that she had not moved beyond whatever it was that broke you up in the first place, that she moved on with the help of some sour grapes concerning her memories of you, or that she has had a series of bad relationships since breaking up with you and was in no mood at all to hear about how you had fared, one way or the other.
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She might also be seeing somebody, and might feel that it would be disloyal to her boyfriend to be buddy buddy with her ex.
 
Xantippe said:
She might also be seeing somebody, and might feel that it would be disloyal to her boyfriend to be buddy buddy with her ex.
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However your “ex” acts towards you, don’t take it personally. That is his or her problem. The feedback you ought to pay attention to is the feedback you are getting from those you still have a relationship with, not the ones who pulled up stakes and moved on.

That is another reason that people can treat "ex"s in a way that might make the “ex” feel like an outcast: they don’t want to give current or future romantic prospects any cause to be concerned that the former relationship is a skeleton in the closet or something that will cause any problems in the future. They don’t want someone they are interested to think, “Well, I saw her talking it up with her old boyfriend, and I don’t want to get in his way if he’s trying to patch things up.” When you’re the “ex,” it hurts to hear “he’s nothing to me.” When you’re the next guy or someone debating whether this person is worth a try, that same attitude can be extremely reassuring. Well, sorry, but the current/next guy is the guy to be concerned with, not the guy who has no future with you. Who knows, if you’re too chummy with him, it could even hurt his chances of finding a woman, since that woman could see you talking and think, “His ex is still in the picture? No Thank You!!”
 
EasterJoy said:
Yes. There are people, male and female, who beg to be told, “I’m really sorry, but as nearly as I could tell, there was nothing other than breaking up with you that I could have done to get your attention without being brought up on charges. I told you I would not put up with X any more, but X kept happening. I do not make threats. I explain what I’m going to do, and then I do it. I’m sorry you doubted that.”

Then there are other people who set up what I call “invisible flaming hoops.” They decide to themselves: he/she should know to act in such-and-such-a-way, I shouldn’t have to tell him/her that, so if he/she ever does that, I’m out of here. We’re not talking about dating two girls at the same time without telling either one of them about the other or discovering a non-negotiable that you just hadn’t gotten around to talking about yet. We’re not talking about discovering an insurmountable non-negotiable in the course of getting to know each other. (You can meet the guy’s mom and say, “I’m out of here,” if you want; that is your choice.) No, we’re talking about things that are matters that different couples negotiate in different ways. To have someone unilaterally cut you off for not doing something they have never asked you to do is hard to take. That is what I mean by being found “guilty” of missing an “invisible flaming hoop.” That’s not a fair thing to do to somebody.
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There’s one invisible flaming hoop that I think is justified and indeed prudent. Let’s say that you’re a grownup woman and you’ve been dating a guy for a while (1+ years) and there’s not a single word about engagement or marriage. It’s standard advice to set a kill date (six months or 1 year later, for instance) and then break up with the guy if he hasn’t made a proposal by that point. That’s reasonable, I think, because no woman wants to feel that she is dragging a guy to the altar and that he wouldn’t be interested in marriage if she weren’t making an ultimatum. It’s also very unwise to marry somebody who isn’t passionately committed to the idea.

Of course, you should have talked about marriage in a general way before doing that (“I would like to get married and start having children in the next few years. What’s your timeline?”)
 
Xantippe said:
There’s one invisible flaming hoop that I think is justified and indeed prudent. Let’s say that you’re a grownup woman and you’ve been dating a guy for a while (1+ years) and there’s not a single word about engagement or marriage. It’s standard advice to set a kill date (six months or 1 year later, for instance) and then break up with the guy if he hasn’t made a proposal by that point. That’s reasonable, I think, because no woman wants to feel that she is dragging a guy to the altar and that he wouldn’t be interested in marriage if she weren’t making an ultimatum. It’s also very unwise to marry somebody who isn’t passionately committed to the idea.

Of course, you should have talked about marriage in a general way before doing that (“I would like to get married and start having children in the next few years. What’s your timeline?”)
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The problem is that if a man has a similar invisible flaming hoop, then nobody ever brings up engagement or marriage because no one is willing to be the first to broach the subject. That’s produces a relationship that comes with an expiration date.

Now, if you were to decide that you would bring up the subject of marriage a certain number of times, but drop it if he never shows any enthusiasm, I wouldn’t call that an invisible flaming hoop. You let him know the topic interested you, and by letting the subject just lie there he indicated that it did not interest him. He can’t complain he didn’t know you really wanted to talk about it. Thanks for that clarification, because I did not mean you have to always draw a picture for the other person! There is a certain amount of social intelligence required in order to be a decent prospect for marriage, after all!
 
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