Why Do Men Withdraw?

Has this happened to you?

You meet a man, you have so much in common, you finish each other's sentences, you have a love like no other. You KNOW he feels the same way. You can't be away from each other. He tells you how he feels, and wants to know how you feel. This is it!! He's the one. The one you've been waiting for. At last you've finally found him.

And then......

He wants to spend a night with his mates. He gets overtime at work and asks to do double shifts. There's a really great football game on TV he wants to watch.

You're left wondering what hes feeling because he doesn't share that anymore.

And you notice that his belching after dinner which used to look manly and make you laugh, now seems disgusting, but you grapple with saying anything because you remember how you shared a laugh over it.

And the way he takes up 3/4 of the bed, which used to make you feel wanted and cosy, now makes you feel squashed and annoyed.

So what's happening?

How could he go from spunk to punk when he was the love of your life?

For the first six months of your relationship your brain is awash with all sorts of chemicals, dopamine particularly, euphoric, as powerful as heroin. You're so high you don't need a lot of sleep or food. You're blissed out.

Then around the 6 month mark, the dopamine starts to wear off. You both start to look normal in each others eyes again. The things you saw through rose coloured glasses look 3D now and not so inviting. You don't just see his good qualities, you see what the dopamine didn't allow you to take notice of.

You could bond with just about any man and the lamp post in this chemically induced state.

You're also not trying so hard to impress anymore, putting your best foot forward is tiring and you just want to be yourself.

This is where the real work of a relationship begins.