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Archive for Emotionally Unavailable Men

Stop Selling Your Self Short

STOP SELLING YOURSELF SHORT!

Posted by Jaki Sabourin 
· February 4, 2020 
· No Comments

Stop Selling Your Self ShortSomething has been puzzling me. Why do I know so many women who won’t settle for less than the best in everything they do – caring for their family, their career, how they present themselves to the world – yet will continue to make excuses for the men they date who continually disappoint them?

I had a friend who, in her 20’s, had a boyfriend who would call her on the spur of the moment, and she would jump at the chance to spend time with him even though he hadn’t given her any notice. His birthday gift to her one year was a collection of stuffed animals from a smoky bar’s “claw machine,” and they smelled like it too. She explained away this kind of thoughtlessness by saying he was so busy; he was saving his money for a house, etc. etc. etc. Mind you, and this was a woman who had a graduate degree, a good job, great looks – the whole package. She was (is!) thoughtful and kind and would never treat anyone the way this guy treated her. Yet she hung on for several years, thinking she would be the one to change his behavior. Spoiler alert – she didn’t.

(Click here to take the 2020 Love Forecast and find out what’s in store for your Love Life and who your celebrity Soul Sisters are!)

No matter how many times her friends and family told her he was not good for her, it wasn’t until she finally realized she was worth more than that she finally cut him loose. 

It’s one thing to put up with that kind of behavior from a man when you’re young and naïve. Quite another to be in your 40’s or beyond, mature, successful, and accomplished!

I want to challenge you this year to honor the woman you are today!  

Raise both your standards and your self-esteem by refusing to spend your precious time on men who clearly aren’t interested in a long-term, mutually beneficial, and authentic relationship. Look closely at your dating pattern. Does any of this behavior sound familiar in your partners, past or present? If so…time to re-examine!

  • He always wants you to come to him – meeting at the restaurant near him or driving his way for the evening.
  • He has no interest in planning anything to delight or surprises you, let alone impress you, with a date (in fact, often says, “Whatever you feel like doing is fine”)
  • He sees you when it’s convenient – for HIM
  • He is hesitant to introduce you to his friends, let alone his family
  • Your last “gift” was purchased thoughtlessly, and at the last minute (or worse, your birthday/anniversary/big promotion was forgotten altogether!)

If you saw a friend dealing with this kind of garbage in her relationship, wouldn’t you be fed up for her? Wouldn’t you tell her to move on? Of course, you would.

Be a friend to yourself, and repeat that you deserve nothing less than the best. Then start working on finding it!

(Click here to take the 2020 Love Forecast and find out what’s in store for your Love Life and who your celebrity Soul Sisters are!)

 

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Categories : All About You
Tags : Boundaries, communication, confidence, connection, dating, Emotionally Unavailable Men, Men, relationships, Self-worth
EAA 20 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Men

Posted by Jaki Sabourin 
· September 24, 2019 
· No Comments

EAA 20 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

 

Nothing makes a relationship better than to be able to connect with the person you are with on a deeper and intimate level. To those who are not as fortunate to come by with this connection, we may find ourselves going around attracting emotionally unavailable men. Go past this and start attracting those that are truly available emotionally as Jaki leads you to find that intimacy within yourself first. As the saying goes, we attract what we are. Deep dive within and self-examine as you reclaim self-love and eventually attract the right person.

—

Watch the episode here:

Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Men

I want to talk to you about how to stop attracting emotionally unavailable men because it’s a big topic. A lot of women complain that there are no emotionally available men. I want to have a candid discussion about it. I love talking about emotional availability because it is like heaven on Earth when you meet with a man and you can connect with him on a deeper intimate level. Let’s start out with defining what is intimacy? What is real intimacy? Intimacy is into me I see. It is your ability to see and look deep within yourself regardless of whether you display less than perfect behavior. What I mean by that is no matter what you’ve done or what you say or what you did in the past or you’re doing now, you’re not afraid to self-examine. You’re not afraid to ask those deep questions of yourself so that you get the answers. You can become more intimate with yourself and stop listening to your mind’s rationalizations about situations that happened.

Intimacy is your ability to see and look deep within yourself regardless of whether you display less than perfect behavior. Click To Tweet

It’s you being completely emotionally honest and open with yourself about what’s going on without rationalizing. You can only be emotionally intimate with a man to the degree that you are emotionally intimate with your own self because you can’t give away what you don’t have inside. If you haven’t done that deep inner work to go in and explore the blocks you have or the painful experiences you’ve had and heal them, you’re not meeting a man from that authentic place. You’re meeting him from the place of those painful experiences because those painful experiences act as blocks and barriers. They are protecting you from experiencing any more pain, but they’re also keeping you from being intimate because they act as a barrier. That’s why it’s important to self-examine and self-inquire. Ask yourself a lot of questions, “What am I feeling? What is this anchored to? Why am I feeling this way,” so you can understand yourself. When you are intimate with yourself and you can understand yourself, then that’s when you have the ability to be in a relationship with an emotionally available man.

If you’re attracting emotionally unavailable men, then it’s a sign. Don’t take this the wrong way please because you know I love you. It’s a sign that you are not being emotionally available on some level. Here’s the good part about this. You’re getting instant feedback from the men that you’re dating because dating provides a mirror. It’s like looking in the mirror. However, he’s acting is a response to how you’re acting. Likes attract likes. We attract men into our lives to help us grow, to help us see how we’re showing up. That’s why this is so exciting. It’s such a beautiful work. Look at dating as an opportunity to grow yourself and through that process, you will attract an emotionally available man. I want to mention what happens when a man withdraws his emotional intimacy. You’re dating a man and he doesn’t call you back and you’ve been seeing him for a couple of weeks or a month or longer. He doesn’t get back to you or he doesn’t answer your questions when you ask him or he avoids topics.

Take the Soulmate Assessment and find out what frequency you are sending out and how close you are to attracting your Soulmate!

Those are all signs of emotional unavailability and that he’s distancing himself. He’s demonstrating to you that he’s emotionally not available. I don’t know why that is, but I can speculate. How I can speculate is I would look at his past. It’s important when you get involved with a man, especially if you want a long-term relationship with him, that you discover what experiences he’s had in his history that has caused him pain. Those are going to be clues into why he withdraws because he might be triggered. Men go through painful experiences like we do and they hide it. They hide it from not only you but they hide it from themselves. They may not even be aware that they’re doing that. That’s why it’s so important for you to do the inner work on yourself and become more emotionally intimate with yourself. You have the capacity to signal your man when he drifts, when he withdraws emotionally. You can signal him in a way that he can respond to you without feeling defensive or withdrawing even further.

How do you do that? Very carefully, for one. You use responsible communication. That’s how you do it. Responsible communication is a communication technique that is based on sharing from a place, coming from love, but also with the utmost respect and conscious listening and also being able to share how you feel and being heard by both parties. I recommend you set an appointment. If something occurs and you want to create more intimacy, you need to reach out and set an appointment. It sounds something like this, “On Friday, you said something to me that I didn’t quite understand,” and you would always mention what it was because you don’t want your man to worry about what it is you want to talk to him about it. Because anytime you tell them and you want to talk, his red flag goes up and he starts to retreat. You want to put him at ease right away by explaining to him what it is you want to share with him.

EAA 20 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

Emotionally Unavailable Men: The amount of emotional honesty and truth that you want from a man is directly proportionate to how much you’re willing to share with how you feel.

 

You say, “When we were out Friday night, you said something about the trip. I was wondering if we can talk about that more on Sunday.” You’re not putting him on the spot right now. You’re giving him a heads-up notice that you want to have a deeper discussion about a comment he made and what the comment is and the topic is and when you want to talk about it. Then he’ll say, “That will be fine.” At least he’s set up so that he can think about what he said and he’s prepared to talk to you so he doesn’t feel sabotaged. He doesn’t feel attacked. He doesn’t feel taken off guard. You’re giving him the benefit of the doubt. You’re also showing respect by not dumping that on him like, “I want to talk to you,” and maybe it’s not the right time. Maybe you’re in the car going to someplace. If you start that conversation, it’s going to result in an argument. That’s why you want to use responsible communication, to create more intimacy, to create more emotional availability.

You can do this together, you can build this relationship together. Even if you start off with a little emotional unavailability, you can build it together, but you need to know the signs. If he withdraws, it’s a sign that something’s going on and you can signal him by asking him for an appointment to talk about it so that he can share what’s going on with him. When he does that, you want to be careful not to interrupt him, not to take it personal, and not to make any assumptions. You need to let him talk until he’s done talking. I always recommend repeating back what he shared with you until he feels that he was heard. When you do that, you’re going to develop so much intimacy that he’s going to be reluctant to withdraw again. You’ve made it safe for him to stay in the relationship and share how he feels because you are going to become defensive or accusatory. You’re not going to interrupt him. You’re going to make it safe for him to share. That’s how you create intimacy fast.

Take the Soulmate Assessment and find out what frequency you are sending out and how close you are to attracting your Soulmate!

What you don’t want to do is withdraw or retaliate using childish ego-based defensive reaction, like not talking to him for a couple of days. That’s called a violation of emotional distance. That’s very harmful. When somebody withdraws their affection or their attention from you, for the level of intimacy you share. If you’re in a relationship, it’s very painful. It’s like giving somebody the cold shoulder. It’s dysfunctional, it’s immature and it has to stop. You cannot do that in a relationship if you want it to last. You need to respect each other’s boundaries by asking for those appointments when you feel that he’s withdrawing. Another way to tell if a man’s emotionally unavailable is if he’s reluctant to share on a deeper level about anything at all. If he wants to keep things on the surface. If he avoids talking about things that are important to you, then that would be a sign that he’s choosing not to be emotionally available or he doesn’t know how to be emotionally available.

If he doesn’t know how to be emotionally available, you can go first by making yourself more available. I’ll tell you how to do that right now. The amount of emotional honesty and truth that you want from a man is directly proportionate by how much you’re willing to share with how you feel, about your feelings. If you want to experience more emotional intimacy with the man, you need to be more emotionally honest and intimate with him. That means sharing things that are scary for you to share like your fears around whatever is coming up for you. Your fears about moving in together. Your fears around the future or maybe some insecurities you’re feeling. It’s highly functional to share intimate details about how you’re feeling so that he can see that vulnerable side of you and so that you can bond and get closer.

It's healthy to agree to disagree, especially if you're in a relationship. Click To Tweet

Another piece of that is if you don’t share those things, he’s going to see you like a cold fish. He’s going to see you as not having any warmth and not having any depth. Men are looking for warmth. They are looking for depth. Don’t look at that as a weakness. That’s a strength. Being vulnerable has so much strength in it. Make sure that you don’t hesitate to share those vulnerable feelings because it will endear him to you. The more you want emotional intimacy, the more truth you must be willing to share. Which is why it’s very emotionally mature to agree to disagree because you’re not going to agree on everything. You don’t want to hold back because you don’t agree with him. You certainly don’t want to argue about it, but you can say things like, “That’s an interesting perspective. I don’t have that same perspective at all. I think very differently about that, but I respect where you’re coming from.” You’re agreeing to disagree with him. You don’t have to agree with everything he says, but you don’t want to suppress your true feelings and be a doormat and turn yourself into a pretzel and be so agreeable that you don’t even have an opinion. It’s how you do it, how you say things and how you express yourself is the most important part that I want you to hear.

Using a soft tone when you’re saying that or even a playful fun tone like, “I don’t know about that. I am not buying into that. I think that’s more your way of thinking but not mine. I respect your opinion but this is the way I feel.” You say that not needing them to approve of you and not needing them to accept your opinion, but definitely needing them to hear you out. If you use the right tone in the right way, they will hear you out and they will respect you for it. It’s healthy to agree to disagree, especially if you’re in a relationship because you’re not these two halves coming together to make a whole. That’s a dysfunctional relationship paradigm. What you are is two holes coming together, standing side by side like the infinity symbol. That’s what we’re going for. Two holes side by side, not overlapping, not being codependent, not meshing with each other, but having a lot of emotional intimacy right next to each other. I want to close with this. It takes a lot of courage to be emotionally intimate and you have plenty of courage. You have to use enough of it and it takes practice. Practice leads to mastery in any area of your life. Don’t be afraid to stick your neck out because the worst thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to learn something and you’re going to grow and expand because of it.

Thank you for tuning in. If you like the content, please like, share and subscribe to my channel. Share it with your friends so that they can get in on the information as well and you can create a tribe of emotionally available women and practice that intimacy with them.

Be sure to take the Soulmate Assessment and find out what frequency you are sending out and how close you are to attracting your Soulmate!

I’m sending you lots of love. Thanks for being here.

Jaki

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Categories : Episodes
Tags : connection, Emotionally Unavailable Men, intimacy, relationship, self-love
EAA 24 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

Dating Advice On How To Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Men

Posted by Jaki Sabourin 
· May 14, 2019 
· No Comments

EAA 24 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

 

In our dating history, we may have encountered men who, after making you feel multiple possibilities, ghost you. They stop turning up and eventually disappear and leave, making you see how emotionally unavailable they were. If this continues to go on, you may not find yourself becoming committed soon. How then do you stop attracting emotionally unavailable men? Jaki has the answers as she takes us to look from the inside out. She asks us to look within ourselves and identify whether or not we are also emotionally unavailable, as she shares some signs of emotional unavailability that you can figure out and address with your partner.

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Watch the episode here:

 

Dating Advice On How To Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Men

I wanted to talk about how to stop attracting emotionally unavailable men. I hear this a lot. These men are emotionally unavailable and it seems to be a big complaint with women and I get it. In fact, I used to say that quite a bit in my own life and in my own experiences. I was constantly thinking that men are emotionally unavailable. In fact, I wanted to share a little story with you because it’s going to help make it more “relatable” to you. I don’t know if you’ve ever been ghosted or even know what that term means. It means when the man disappears and doesn’t bother to let you know that he left the relationship and that can be painful. He leaves you to feel that he wasn’t emotionally available. That happened to me. What happened was I was seeing somebody for a couple of months and we were having a wonderful time. I was thinking that this could be something special and we had spent the weekend together.

What happened was after that weekend that I thought was wonderful, I never heard from him again. That really stung. I was thinking I cannot believe that I got ghosted that this guy just disappeared because I didn’t see that coming. I was trying to draw my conclusions around him being emotionally unavailable and why would anyone do that to another person. When I started to examine what was behind that, I did that by the process of asking myself some questions. After I got out of blaming him, I started to look at a deeper connection to what I was doing and how I was showing up. I want you to ask yourself this question, “What are the ways that I’m being unavailable in this relationship?” I want you to ask yourself a question, “What are the ways that you’re being unavailable in your dating experience? What beliefs are keeping you from fully committing to the process?” There are a lot of things that you can be doing that are causing you to be emotionally unavailable. When you’re emotionally unavailable, you’re not going to be connecting with these men because you’re not available to make that connection.

When you're emotionally unavailable, you also attract those who are. Click To Tweet

For example, I have a client that is dating a nice guy. She’s been on about six dates with him and she had told me that she’s going to stop seeing him because all he does is talk about himself. She said he’s a good guy. He’s very nice but he goes on and on and on. I was listening to her and she’s complaining that he’s not emotionally available because he’s so preoccupied with his own story and what’s going on in his life that he never asked her anything. I started to ask her, “What patterns do you see repeating in this experience?” I asked her about her history and she went to share with me about her history but here’s the thing that she meant. I said, “What’s the common denominator in these previous relationships?” She started to go into the details and I said, “You’re missing the point. The common denominator in the relationships is you. You’re the consistent theme in the relationship so I want you to look at what pattern is repeating itself in this relationship.”

She wanted to withdraw and stopped dating him and that’s her coping mechanism. Instead of being able to address the fact that he was not listening to her, she’s going to withdraw. In that moment and in these relationships, she’s the one who’s being emotionally unavailable. I would say they both are but here’s a golden opportunity. It’s an opportunity for her to reverse that pattern, to stop the pattern and turn it around. What that is going to require is for her to become emotionally available. She’s going to have to be vulnerable and intimate at that moment with that man, emotionally speaking, and give him an opportunity to step up into being more emotionally available. I would encourage all of you to take a deep look at how you’re showing up and check in with the pattern that you have in your past. Here’s what I told her to do. I told her when he starts talking and he’s going on and on, I told her to lean forward, put your hand on his forearm and just say his name over and over until he stops talking.

Intervene and lean in and say, “Are you open to hearing what I want to share? I’ve enjoyed hearing about what you’ve been talking about but I’d like the opportunity to share a little bit.” Then pause. Lean and put your hand. If the man’s talking and he’s going on and on, a part of that is nervousness, part of that is that he isn’t emotionally available. You have this golden opportunity to create this emotional intimate moment where at that moment he can step into it so you can lead the way. You do that by holding a boundary around what it is that you want. What she was doing is she was putting his needs before hers and in an attempt to fill the need, she’s going to withdraw. That’s what she’s been doing all along and that’s getting her the same thing that she’s been getting, which is no relationships which is emotional unavailability.

By her addressing it at that moment and by leaning in and saying, “I love what you’re saying but I would like the opportunity to share a little bit. Are you open to hearing what I have to say?” You do that again with the feather. Everything that I teach is about being very gentle about how you present things because it’s not what you say, it’s how you’re saying it and how it’s being perceived that gets people to shut down. If she was to be more assertive, he’ll back up and stop telling her anything altogether but you don’t want that. You want him to notice that he’s going on his monologue and be able to stop and focus on what you have to say and believe me, he will realize. That’s like with anyone if someone does that to you at that moment, you’re going to go, “Yes, of course. I want to hear what you have to say.” Inside, he’s going to be, “Yeah, I was talking. I was rambling.” It’s a golden opportunity to address these unconscious patterns that are sabotaging you.

EAA 24 | Emotionally Unavailable Men

Emotionally Unavailable Men: It’s not what you say, it’s how you’re saying it and how it’s being perceived.

Another big one is fear. Here’s a big fear that I had and it especially happens when you’re single for a long time, is the fear of commitment or fear of being found out. I realized looking back on that relationship that I had, I was the one that was emotionally unavailable. I had been watching the signs all along. He was sending me signs. He wasn’t doing certain things that I wanted to do but I was ignoring those because I was afraid that one, I wouldn’t meet anybody else and two, that it was a little too intimate. I wasn’t ready to be that intimate with someone, so I wasn’t willing to address what he was doing and letting him know what my needs were because I was too afraid to do that. Subsequently what that did for him is it turned him off. I turned myself into a pretzel for him and it wasn’t attractive. He abandoned the relationship. I was the one who was emotionally unavailable and so was he because he didn’t go to me. It isn’t a very mature thing to do but it’s one way to solve the problem. What was coming up for me was ahead of all this fear around he’s going to find out. You may not be connecting to this in a conscious way but sometimes we have a deep fear to be accepted.

We don’t want anyone to see those deep fears, so we have this protection in place that all the good men are taken. These rational lies that we tell ourselves to keep us safe but to keep us stuck because looking at the truth or maybe I’m not lovable or I’m not good enough is much harder to look at. It’s going deeper and getting behind what’s going on. Looking at your pattern that’s repeating in your relationships and looking at what belief or fear about the relationship that’s keeping you stuck in a pattern. Also looking at what you need to do and to believe in order to change this experience you’re having because experiences come from your beliefs. You have a belief and then you created an experience that aligns with it. In order for you to change the experience, you got to back up. You’ve got to examine your unconscious beliefs that are running this experience. For me, I had an unconscious belief that I wasn’t good enough and I had a lot of fear. When I analyzed it and got in there and did this deep work that I’ve done is, I was afraid that someone would discover that it was true. That I’m not good enough. I had to do that work to repair that relationship with myself that was keeping me from being emotionally available.

I had so much fear around someone seeing me and accepting me for who I was because I hadn’t accepted myself for who I was. Everything that I talk about is interrelated. It’s all connected. It all goes back to these approvals and us hiding behind these patterns in an attempt to stay safe and to not be hurt. In the process of staying safe and not being hurt, we’re keeping out the love that we long for. I know that one of the biggest regrets that you will ever have in life is to not have love in your life and recognizing that you could be the problem. In recognizing that you could be the problem, you also are the solution. That’s why this is so exciting for you to have this awareness because healing accompanies awareness. The more awareness that you bring to these patterns, to this emotional unavailability and skills so that you can address it on a date across from this man and present it in a way that he can hear it is going to help you rapidly change. You’re going to start seeing a different type of man show up because you’ve shifted.

When you shift, others can shift. It just takes recognizing, bringing awareness to it and then using some different skills. Having more boundaries around what it is that you want and being able to articulate that to the man that you’re sitting across from but you are doing it in a way that invites more trust. You’re not going to hammer him with like, “You know what would make me really happy? I would love it if we could have another appetizer. I’m starving.” You can ask for that or, “I don’t like salad. I like some pasta.” Just letting your needs be known, putting your needs above his and then seeing if he will step up and meet that need. You have to present it and you have to present it in a way that it gives him an opportunity.

The rational lies we tell ourselves keep us safe but also keep us stuck because looking at the truth is much harder to do. Click To Tweet

If you think about when you’re online and you’re like, “I’m not attracting any good men online.” You have to look at how you’re showing up and how you’re presenting it. When your profile talks all about yourself and all the things you’ve done and everything you want, it’s like a, “Me, me, me,” story. You got to look at it from a man’s perspective. He sees that he doesn’t know where he’s going to fit in your life because you haven’t given him a vision of what role he would play. It starts by looking at your profile. Is it speaking to the men in a way that he’s like, “She loves men and she’s interested in making me a priority and making me her biggest fan.” You want to lead with what that looks like for him and adding in those pieces about yourself but you do need to get his attention. Some of your profiles are showing up emotionally unavailable because it’s all about you and he doesn’t see where he fits into that. Taking another look at how you’re showing up, what you’re saying in those emails and those instant messages that are causing some disconnect and creating a little more intimacy. Go ahead and take some more risks because the bigger the risk, the bigger the game.

Take more risks emotionally speaking so that you will have the experience of stepping out of that. It always helps to have support to do that. You’re going to be getting a lot of support from me because I’m launching my next interview series. We’re going to be talking at a much deeper level about all these topics, about sabotaging, about the fears that are associated with dating, and about the fear of commitment. That’s a big one. You wouldn’t think that when you go to get committed, you would have all this fear. Much fear comes up because you’re confronted with changing your life and merging your life with the man. All of these fear-based thinking is going to surface so that you can heal it. A lot of times what happened is so much fear surfaces that you push back and you sabotage it. We’re going to be diving into all of that in that interview series. Make sure you’re signed up for that and also, I love getting your questions and comments and the emails. A lot of you have been sending me a lot of emails and comments and I would love to continue to get those so that I can answer these questions. It was so great to connect with all of you.

Don’t forget that life is so much better when you have love in it. Don’t give up on your dreams. Never ever give up on your dreams because love happens fast. One minute you’re single and the next minute you’re planning your honeymoon and your weekend retreat. You’ve got to be diligent. You have to be consistent and you have to be deliberate in everything you do. You have to be consistent with that so you can start to get some traction here and you can start to shift and things will start to show up in your life. Thank you for being here. Lots of love to you.

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Categories : Episodes
Tags : Attraction, dating, Emotionally Unavailable Men, love, relationships

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