Category: Male Bonding

On the brink of being a lost art.

Why is it so prevalent?

“I’d rather be friends and alone, than alone with intimacy.”

“I’d rather be unattached than bound to a man I cannot trust to be faithful to me.”

“Why would you think your telling me this would make me happy?

Especially since your offer of friendship with me was a lie?”

They may be
Accelerating

But I go
Farther…

Still, they
Are better

Than older men
Who stop trying.

“I am not sure that it is possible that I will find a worthy partner whom I can trust and who will work well with me.

I have just not seen any good candidates in my generation, while I have witnessed the decline of valuing values in our society.”

He’d experienced the damage his mother had done and felt she should live alone.

Then pushed aside his own loving bride, ensuring she, too, would atone.

“It keeps everything in the air when one was never there to comfort me.”

“Do you ever miss me?” he asked, uncertain if he had a right to.

“Of course, I do. All of the time,” she replied. “But, I got my heart, mind, and soul back by breaking things off with you.”

“I’m so done with ‘paying it forward.'”

“I do not like having to walk in it, as if deserving of purgatory.”

“You know those cues a woman looks for to figure out how her man is doing and what he needs – and then, she needs him to, in return, be attuned to her?

Well, every time the cues would come up for reciprocal caring, my ex made sure to avoid them and go in the opposite directoon.”

“Why does a guy at the gym wide range on the far outskirts of my perimeter, but when he has a woman with him, he displays in front of me and looks in my direction -?”

Someone I can believe in.

“Because I gave so much – and he just left, after years of receiving.”

“Having a guy mistreat me when I am worth so much more is hard to disentangle from and get over on my own.”

“No, you don’t get to have me as your ‘side piece.'”

When a man passes over a woman for another, the one he discarded really does not want to know how he’s doing.

Because others had hurt him, he closed off his heart – and thus, hurt others.

I’d rather be alone with my truth than be caught in a web of someone else’s lies.

One day, in his “affable innocence” mode, he sought her out to present his family of wife and child(ren) to her.

“Hey, I just want to thank you for helping to set me right on my path!” he exclaimed, proud of his accomplishments.

And in this act, he completely ignored the fact that her own heart had been broken and was being torn open – yet again – in this societal expectation of her to be gracious and flattered by his flaunting appreciation.

(Title play on phrase “No, thank you.”)

In an orchard of rot, how to find a good one?

As she walked into the restaurant to have lunch with her friend, she glanced around and noticed the guy on a date with a young woman.

Reflecting on the brief history they’d had together where he had pigeonholed her away from friendship, isolated and limited their interactions to only short texts and intimacy in the bedroom, and abruptly pushed her away energetically when they briefly encountered each other in public, she realized that breaking things off with him had been the best thing for her to do to reclaim her own sense of power, sanctity, and emotional security.

She was newly married again and trying to tell her husband that she needed his help to grow and learn with him in their styles of communication when his mother, sister, and grandmother suddenly appeared and began roaming around outside of the house, peeking in through and tapping loudly on the windows, insisting that he join them for plans and ignoring her requests for them to wait in front while she spoke with him.

The couple was already caught in a point of deep misunderstanding because her husband had taken her attempt to clarify how she was feeling as criticism that he was doing something wrong – which she was trying hard to show that her asking for help did not imply a lack of adequacy on his side, but rather, that she wanted to build a wonderful relationship with him.

However, he had responded by shutting down with wounded feelings to where she now felt stuck in the role of pursuing while he kept retreating – whereupon the women had shown up and were making a mess of her hard-challenged attempts to rebridge with him.

Then the house burst into noise and chaos as the women entered the house using a key that her husband had given them to access caring for pets and plants while the couple had been away on honeymoon.

They began monopolizing and demanding his attention.

He turned away from his wife, completely missing her point, and focused on this new distraction as his wife felt outnumbered four-to-one as her efforts were squashed.

Flustered as the other women now dominated the couple’s home, the wife raised her voice and began asserting her own firmness that the women must give her the key; that they couldn’t just burst into the newlyweds’ home without prior agreement; and that they had to leave now and give her and her husband time to finish their conversation to ensure their solid rebonding before the women could integrate into the couple’s new relationship.

This caused a resistant outburst reaction by the women and her husband, and she felt labeled as controlling – when in fact, the women were running all over her and her husband’s situation, expecting their prior family interactions to be as they had always been, with maybe now the wife included as a side-kick.

Then, her husband defaulted to just giving into his relatives’ demands, seeming relieved to shift back to this “known” and no longer talk with his wife about difficult and confusing, personal subjects.

As he left with them to mollify their ruffled pride and egos, the wife could not take the crushing, isolated position they’d all placed and left her in and soon began packing to return to her prior solace living singly that she had learned long ago she could always depend upon.

“I need a man who is good for me and wants me.”

“A guy is out there looking for whatever he is looking for.

And if that ain’t you, it doesn’t matter how good or even better you are than what he seeks, he’s gonna treat you like trash.

So don’t pursue him or give him access to you.”

When a guy does not care for her and keeps her on hold for his own selfish reasons.

Sometimes, a girl has just gotta quit a guy as if he is one.

He was off playing the field while she was fighting for Maslow’s.

“You hold me up when I’m falling down.”

A good way to discourage a man who is an anti-commitment “player” is to remind him that there could be accidental paternity.