We see a lot of men – both at our events and on our YouTube channel and other social media – complain about women not explaining themselves or being direct like the men wish they would.
One recent question on YouTube:
“Why don’t women say: “I can’t connect with you because you’re angry/awkward etc” – why don’t they tell us, in words.”
First of all, women generally tend to be drawn to men who “get them” emotionally – have high emotional intelligence, understand emotional subtleties, and are in tune with their partner’s emotions without her constantly having to voice every single feeling or change in emotions she has – because it makes her feel seen, more deeply understood, safe, and comfortable being herself and being free around the man. (And being free includes being flirtatious, feminine, and sexual.)
But going into the above YouTube commenter’s question, specifically, there are many reasons for why women don’t usually explain why they aren’t attracted to you or can’t connect with you “in words.”
Here are six that come to mind – keep in mind that “the reason” can be a mix of any or all of these:
1. They just want to get away from people that don’t make them feel good. And if you think about it, this isn’t just true of women. There are plenty of times men don’t like being around someone but they don’t say it directly – they’ll just try to get away or be distant.
2. Codependent (“nice guy” or “nice girl” syndrome) conditioning that we should censor ourselves to avoid being “mean” to people. If that’s where someone’s at, they’re probably not gonna be direct with you about it.
3. Not knowing how to communicate an unpleasant truth to someone in a respectful, non-embarrassing way that doesn’t “hurt” someone’s self-esteem. (Though “hurt” really = trigger because if you have really solid self-esteem, you won’t get “hurt” by someone pointing out a shortcoming or why they can’t connect with you or aren’t attracted to you.)
4. People – women and men – don’t even always consciously, much less analytically, compute why exactly they’re turned off by someone. They just, again, don’t feel good around that person. You may have heard someone say (or even experienced yourself), “I don’t know why. I just got bad vibes from him/her.” That is, if it’s even that conscious, which sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you may just find yourself moving away from someone, ignoring them, or avoiding them without even thinking about it. Without even being aware you’re doing it.
5. To avoid potential problems with someone because they don’t know how they’ll react. This is even more real for women who tend to feel much more vulnerable than us guys do to being attacked (physically, emotionally, or both) if they make a man angry.
6. It can just take a lot of emotional energy to call it out every time you’re interacting with someone you don’t like. Now, there is a blurry line here: Censoring yourself or avoiding conflict can be an avoidance of tension, not being real, and not being free. But constantly “being in the tension” calling out or confronting people about every little thing quickly becomes an energetic and emotional drain. And it’s also just not your responsibility to coach everyone else on their blind spots, or vice versa.
That’s what finding a good coach, a focused personal development support group, or like-minded people to surround yourself with is for. But even then, boundaries often have to be set about when focused personal development time is over and when everyone can “chill” a little (or a lotta) bit, because all this pointing out of blindspots and weaknesses just gets draining by it’s nature.
What women say: We want to be approached.
What women mean: but not by YOU!!!