There are three (3) core reasons women leave:
- Their current man is not sexy, dominant, and attractive enough
- Their current man makes them feel too unstable and insecure
- Progress in the relationship has stalled out
All other reasons are secondary to these. For instance:
- She met some really sexy guy and ran off with him? You weren’t attractive enough, or progress in your relationship had stalled out
- She told you she needed someone more serious, more willing to commit? You made her feel too unstable/insecure, or progress in your relationship had stalled out
- She faded you out and disappeared, or grew cold and stopped talking to you? You made her feel too unstable/insecure, or progress in your relationship had stalled out
- She told you it just wasn’t working out and she wanted to take a break? You weren’t attractive enough, or progress in the relationship had stalled out
There’s a common belief among the (inexperienced and unempathetic) men and women of the world that people of the opposite sex “don’t make sense” or “are irrational.”
But all these behaviors we exhibit in our relationships are the product of eons natural selection. Everything we do makes perfect sense, and is perfectly rational. It only seems irrational if you don’t understand the ultimate aim of it… that is to say, if your mental model of the thing is flawed.
Men and women do the things they do because the things they do move them closer to their romantic and sexual objectives. And understanding where the differences lie in those objectives can allow you to see why the behavior differs between the sexes.
Differences in Objectives Between the Sexes
You’re familiar of course with the usual clichés, like that men want sex and women want relationships, and men want freedom and woman want closeness and intimacy. As you doubtless realize, it’s not as simple as this; men want relationships and women want sex too, and women want freedom and men want closeness and intimacy as well.
However, there are some very distinct differences in the mating goals of the sexes that lead to conflict, disharmony, and discord, and when you have trouble in your relationships it almost boils down to one of these mismatches between the relationship objective desired and the reality of the relationship situation:
- Women lack time for ongoing non-commitment. This is more a subconscious program running in girls’ heads than it is a conscious awareness. It doesn’t start becoming conscious until somewhere around age 30 in the modern West; the more conservative she is the earlier it does, and the more liberal she is, the later it does. Regardless of her degree of consciousness of it or not, all women – even teenage girls – are operating on a relationship deadline. A relationship that doesn’t produce children and/or commitment within just a couple of years almost invariably falls prey to the 2 year drop, and things change and women make increasingly more demands and, if these aren’t met, leave.
- Women need commitment for social acceptance. Even in the West, where women have made so many gains in removing old social norms, women still feel social pressure to get commitment out of long-term partners. The longer a relationship progresses without commitment, the more jittery a woman tends to become, as she starts to feel more and more like she “hasn’t got it” or that her man “isn’t committed to her enough,” and as family, peers, and the media begin to pressure her to get her man to commit – or find one who will.
- Women need commitment for support. One of the things that happens with long-term relationships is that, much of the time, eventually, children happen. Aside from the biological urges pushing her down that path, a woman also asks herself logical questions, like, “If we have an accident and I get pregnant, is he going to support me or not?” If she starts feeling like the answer is or might be “no,” that’s a major problem for a relationship.
What it really comes down to is women need men to take care of them and deliver them the kind of relationship progress they require.
This is not the issue for some categories of breakups, which we’ll discuss more in detail in just a moment. However, these are the differences contributing to the type of breakup where women leave in frustration at not being able to achieve relationship goals – and you need to understand them.
Forget “female empowerment” or “women’s liberation” or any of that other talk. That’s 20-something girl talk and spinster talk. Most women outside the blogosphere aren’t talking that way. Most women today ultimately still want the same thing their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers wanted: a happy, stable, committed relationship, with a strong, attractive man to call their own.
And if a girl starts feeling like she can’t get that with you, she leaves.
Of course, there are a few other reasons she may leave, as well.
How to Get Your Girlfriend Back When She Hates Your Guts
When a girl hates your guts and thinks you’re a jerk, it’s because she wanted to be with you, but eventually figured she could not be.
That’s not to say you wouldn’t have “stuck around”… it is to say you wouldn’t have stuck around in the capacity she needed you to stick around in.
You may well have been perfectly happy having things stay the way they were.
But she wasn’t.
She needed more. More from you.
And eventually she decided you couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver, and left.
The keys to getting her back are thus:
You must engage with her in the rebound or longing phases. Her emotions for you are still running high in the rebound phase, and you can swing them back in your direction if you hit the right note. And in the longing phase, she already wants to be back together with you again anyway. Steer clear of the cool off phase though – she thinks well of you, but almost in a matronly, maternal way… not the same as sexual or romantic desire. That will return when she moves into longing, though, if she’s already in cool off.
You must stress your desire to commit. And you need to stress that this was your intention all along, and you just hadn’t told her yet. Important: DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU DO NOT MEAN IT. It will be bad for you, and worse for her. If you don’t want to offer her commitment, don’t try to get back a girl who wants commitment with you. Instead, let her go – and find a girl more in line with your own goals. I’m warning you (from unfortunate experience) – this is ugly for both of you if you do it from the wrong place in your heart (fear of loss rather than desire to give her the progress or commitment she wants). Be honest with yourself and her about what you want – only pursue if both of your goals are in alignment. If they aren’t, don’t deepen the wound by getting her back only to have her leave again.
You must continue to be the strong man she loved. Just because you’re going to give her progress in the relationship, and probably pass a commitment point, that doesn’t mean you become a big softie or a clingy emotional guy. Leave that aside and be a strong man – just with a touch more grudging openness to settling down. And, there are ways to do marriage in a strong, productive way – I have a post on it (having been married myself) on the discussion boards here.
The best recommendation for communicating what you need to communicate in this instance, assuming you don’t run into her much socially, is writing a “farewell for now” style email to explain your position, to tell her:
- You hadn’t told her, but you’d been planning to get serious / commit / ask her to move in, whatever was the next logical step (don’t say unless you mean it, though, because if you do get her back, it’s put up or shut up time)
- You’re sorry things didn’t work out
- You know she’s going to find someone absolutely fantastic, and you will always be her friend
The tone of the email is tragic, like a love lost. The objective is to show her that she was just about to get what she wanted when she gave up, threw the towel in, and stormed off (or you let her go).
Don’t be overly melodramatic in the email… it’s sad, it’s a tragedy that we can’t be together, but don’t chase after her in it either, and say, “You can have this if we get back together”; instead, the tone is, “We were almost there… but it just didn’t last.”
The emotion you want her feeling is if she’d just held out a little longer, she would’ve had you. The emotion you’re trying to inspire is the one you’d feel as if you’d been holding a stock for a couple of years, hoping it would go up a lot in value and you’d make a lot of money, and decided to give up on it and sell it at a loss… and then a few days later, the stock exploded in value and you realized if you’d only waited, you’d have had that fortune you’d been hoping for so long to get and gave up on in the eleventh hour.
The emotion is oh CRAP I’m an idiot!
Take your time to write and rewrite this… wording is key here. Word it wrong, and it sounds faked, or, worse, like you’re pleading and offering her something only now that she’s already left. It must be worded perfectly. I advise writing it, saving it, walking away, and then coming back and reading it again later and seeing what you think of it before sending it.
The reason you’re going this route is because she left for want of being able to get what she wanted with you… and now you need to tell her she can have what she wants.
A written note is the best way for you to get everything you want to say out at once without her stopping you or breaking the mood (as she may in person or over the phone). However, if you’re much better at speaking than you are at writing, you may do this in person as well.
I once planned out and spent an entire day to take a former partner of mine who’d parted ways with me and thoroughly detested me through my entire thought processes, why I was who I was, and why I couldn’t give her what she wanted, and how I’d always cared about her but never wanted to hurt her, because I didn’t want her to think ill of me or to have her powerful sense of self damaged from spending so long trying to get commitment out of me and failing. The result of this (very long) day of explanation of the fact that I did care about her, I simply had to do the things I had to do in life and that made it impossible for me to be the kind of man most women expect men to be in relationships, led to her warming right back up to me again (and her getting me back a week later, which was not my intention at all… I made my partings with exes a lot less dramatic after this to stop ex-girlfriends from trying too hard to get back together with me).
Again, and I can’t say it enough, don’t do this unless you mean what you’re saying.
Otherwise, you and her both are going to end up very unhappy (and you’ll be to blame).
How to Get a Girlfriend Back When Life Intervened
If the both of you left each other sadly but mutually, agreeing that the relationship could not continue on because life had intervened, it’ll be relatively straightforward to get back together again, provided two things are the case:
- The situation has naturally resolved or she’s resolved it, and
- She isn’t otherwise engaged in a relationship she wants to remain in
The rules are:
- You can’t resolve the situation just to be with her. If, for instance, the two of you went away to different universities after high school, or you took a job in London while she stayed in New York (a la The Family Man), it’s too much for you to suddenly switch jobs or schools to be with her. Even if you claim that isn’t the reason… it’s still transparent. And it looks weak and changeable – you decided something before, then completely uprooted your life after changing your mind to go be with her. You must not do this, even if you start thinking that maybe it’d have been better had the two of you stayed on. Women don’t respect men who flip-flop. Ever.
- You must, then, prompt or let her resolve things, or wait for things to resolve naturally. If you had to leave town to go to school or work overseas, then return back home later on and she’s still there, that’s a natural resolution. Or, if you start talking to her via phone or email, and the feel is good and she starts talking about moving to where you are, tell her to come, and let her come to you. Or if she suddenly tells you she’s moving to where you are, take that as a clear indication she’s (probably) in pursuit – and be there to welcome her to town.
- You must be curious about starting back up with her. When the two of you explore getting together again, be thoughtful and warm but relatively nonplussed about it. Treat like a “good idea,” and one that you like, but don’t gush… gushing is not especially attractive in men. Give her just enough that she feels excited about moving ahead with things, but not so much that she starts to wonder if you “got desperate” while apart.
The way you want things to progress here is “natural life obstacle naturally resolved, and two partners curious about being together again calmly but curiously starting up once more.” Once you’re back together with her, of course, you can give her some passionate nights in bed, but stay calm afterward. Once the effect of being back together again wears off, you’ll be glad you didn’t lose your head earlier on.
There’s one other consideration to think on aside from your effects on her life and mental and emotional health by getting back together with her, however.
And that consideration is the effects on you of this.
Do you really want an ex-girlfriend back?
I’m not asking whether or not you “need” her; when you’re emotionally distraught and you feel like women are scarce resources and you think your one girl is the only special girl in the world like her, of course you feel like you need her.
But if you’re thinking that way, your thinking is flawed, clouded by emotion and focused on the short-term and the details, instead of the long-term and the big picture.
And the big picture in the long-term is, by reinventing yourself – as you’ll need to do for most of these – you become more attractive to other women, and better able to get both greater quantities and better qualities of women in your life.
You become able to not chase, but replace.
