Good men — they work hard at their jobs to support their families. They do the dishes. They change diapers.
This particular variety of ‘good man’ goes to the grocery store any time his beloved has forgotten something. He does laundry. He changes the oil in the cars. He does his share of the cooking and cleaning and child-rearing. He fetches her tampons for god’s sake.
He gets estimates to see how much it’s going to cost to get the dead tree cut down, then he works overtime so y’all can afford to get the dead tree cut down.
He’s every woman’s wet dream.
Yet one day, his woman comes to him and says, “I need more.”
What the…?!
He is so tired all the time because he works so hard at his job and so hard at home. He already does so dang much for her and their life together, and…it’s not enough?!
Now we’re all criticizing this woman, telling her she’s too dang needy. She needs too much. She is ‘too much’. She should be grateful to have such a good, hard-working man who does so much for her.
But before long, he’s served divorce papers, and she’s off, he assumes, to be with a ‘bad guy’, because of course if a woman doesn’t stay with a good man who does all this, it must be because she needs the thrill and excitement of a bad guy, right?
Not so fast.
If you’re a good man, and this has happened to you, it may to help to learn that not all women who dump good men are sucky ingrates or chasing the whole ‘bad boy’ thing. There are other reasons good women dump hard-working men.
Knowing what’s going on may help prevent you from getting dumped again — at least for this reason.
To get started, let’s first look at a reason these good men may be doing so much for women in the first place.
Why He Does So Dang Much For Her
Did you notice what this guy was doing for the woman he loved? All the work…the effort…the chores…the errands?
Some of you reading this recognize that this particular brand of ‘good man’ who works so hard likely has acts of service as a love language.
If you’re not up on love languages, check these out for a primer:
Men Who Like Sex: Stop Saying Physical Touch Is Your Love Language
Part 1: Dating and Love Languages
leebidoski.medium.com
Men: Here’s the Operator’s Manual for Women
Part 2: How to speak love languages fluently
leebidoski.medium.com
Being loved by a guy who has acts of service has his love language makes domestic life 1000x easier. In the early days of being loved by him, you’ll never have to complain about him not doing his share of the domestic work — the cleaning, the cooking, the child-raising.
A good woman knows she’s lucky to have a guy who does so much. So imagine her confusion when, despite all he does, she ends up, mysteriously, not feeling loved.
If she gathers up the courage to tell him, “Honey, I’m just not sure I’m getting what I need. I need…more,” he and everyone else are left thinking “Holy crap! How greedy are you?!”
Basically, they don’t understand what she means when she says, “I want more.”
Without understanding what she means, he decides how to handle her request for more. That’s what we’ll look at next — three typical ways these guys who use acts of service to express love may handle women who express that they need or want more.
When you learn these ways, you may recognize that these ways aren’t helping matters.
“Go Elsewhere”
So this guy does so much for the woman he cares about — as many good men do. When she comes to him saying, “I need more”, he may respond by ever-so-gently explaining to her that she seems to be depending on him too much.
He tells her she needs to ‘go elsewhere’ to get some of her needs met.
On the surface, that sounds fair enough. I’ll be the first to tell you that the person you’re in a relationship with isn’t responsible for meeting all of your needs. It’s healthy to have a good support network so your needs are met via multiple sources.
She certainly has a responsibility to make sure she’s developed other aspects of her life so she’s not depending on him and their relationship to provide her with everything she wants and needs in life. She can spend time on her own hobbies and interests so she’s not completely relying on him to keep her entertained.
Maybe she does get a lot of emotional needs met by her friends. If her language is quality time, she’ll spend quality time with them. After all, her good man is too busy doing yard work to spend quality time with her.
So…she has a rich, emotional connection with her friends who speak her love language.
Maybe, after time, we see that her friendships are richer than her relationship.
Oh. That doesn’t sound good.
So what we’re talking about here isn’t actually a case of “She’s expecting too much from her guy.”
Unfortunately, her need to feel loved in the romantic sense can only come from him. She can feel loved by family and friends, but, if she’s monogamous, there’s only one person who can supply her with this particular brand of love, who can meet this particular emotional need.
She can’t exactly go to her mom or cousin to get her need for romantic love met. (Ewwww, but you get the point.)
When her guy is telling her, “I already give you plenty of other stuff. You’ll need to go elsewhere to get your other needs met”, where is she supposed to go? Where is she supposed to go to have someone speak her love language so that she feels loved in the romantic sense?
To the arms of a man waiting in the wings, eager to speak her love language and ‘fill her love tank’?
Other people can mop her floor. Other people can change the baby’s diaper.
But…if she’s monogamous, no one else can provide her with that romantic love that can only come from…the person she’s in a romantic relationship with.
If you tell her to not rely on you for this particular thing she needs, that she needs to go elsewhere to get her needs met…well…it’s possible she’ll do just as you suggest.
“Go Without”
People tend to speak the love language they’re comfortable speaking.
These good men whose love language is act of service are not too busy to text to coordinate who is picking up the sick kid from school. But these hard-working good men may be too busy to regularly and frequently compose thoughtful texts even though his beloved’s love language is words of affirmation.
It’s the equivalent of saying, “Be happy with what I give you. Don’t ask for more.”
If the woman he cares about says she’s unhappy, he may double down on acts of service.
He keeps giving to her in the form that he is comfortable giving. He keeps loving her in the language that comes easy to him. He keeps asking her to just understand that this is how he is. He keeps asking her to not want ‘more’.
He is, essentially, asking her to ‘go without’. “Be ok with what I give you. Go without the thing you think you want and need.”
And when she still isn’t happy? When she still seems to want something more of him? He feels unappreciated.
That’s a common complaint of people whose love language is acts of service. They do a lot for their partners, but when their partner’s language isn’t acts of service, their partners end up saying “I want…more.”
He feels unappreciated.
If she’s a good woman, she’ll feel like crap for not simply appreciating what he gives, even though…it’s not what she really needs most from him. She knows he’s done so much. She’ll feel like she’s wrong to ask for more. She’ll feel guilty for asking for more.
So she’ll stop asking.
But…will she stop wanting?
Maybe you can live in a constant, low-level state of deprivation for, say, a week, a year, even a decade.
When I was going through graduate school for about 7 years, I was so broke. So incredibly broke.
When my car broke down, I couldn’t afford the repair, so I sold it and just walked and biked the last 3 years. Many weeks, I’d be down to $10 left to cover groceries for the week. (You’d be amazed at how much spaghetti, rice, potatoes, and bread you can eat when you’re broke.)
I cut out everything. No more luxuries. As the budget got tighter and tighter, I made the last sacrifice: No more wine. Nope, not even the cheapest of bottles.
You realize, of course, that all those years of not having wine didn’t make me stop wanting wine. I wanted it all the more, but I bided my time, knowing eventually I would have it again.
I couldn’t wait until my circumstances changed so that I could finally afford to buy wine on the regular again.
(As I write this, I’m very appreciatively sipping a glass of limoncello and prosecco, nectar of the heavenly beings, so give me a break on the typos, ok?!)
But that’s wine. Wine isn’t a necessity. It’s a treat I give myself. But going years without something vital — years without having that thing in you that just feels empty — that’s different.
Have you ever gone 10 years without something that feels vital to you? 20 years?
If her love language is gifts, she wants gifts. If he mops for her instead of giving her a necklace, he’s saying, “You shouldn’t want what you want. Be ok going without something that may feel vital to you because I refuse to give you that. Instead I’ll give you what I think you should have.”
Strangely, that doesn’t sound like what you’d think a ‘good man’ would say. And strangely, she might be thankful that he mopped, but she doesn’t stop wishing for gifts.
“Appreciate What You Get…Even If You Didn’t Want It”
So now we’ve got a good man doing a lot for a woman. If she’s not satisfied with all the acts of service he does, she’s labeled unappreciative.
Say you’ve got a job, a job that makes you work 70-hour weeks. Sometimes when a project is urgent or something important is coming up, it’s all hands on deck. You and your team spend a frenzied week at the office, sometimes staying ’til 2am to meet deadlines or resolve the crisis.
It’s not a 9-to-5 job at all, but say you’re good at this job, and your boss keeps giving you raises. Raise after raise. And you’re grateful, but say you get to the point where you’re making plenty of money, way more than you even need.
By this time, say you’ve started a family, and sure you’re able to afford the nicest things for them, but you’re hardly ever home to spend time with them. When you’re supposed to go pick them up from school, you can’t. Tucking them into bed? Nope, gotta stay at the office to get something done.
Say at some point, what you’d prefer as a reward for what good work you do is time off, or more flexibility time-wise. You wish that, instead of giving you another raise, the boss would thank you in the form of letting you leave early at 3pm some days to go pick your kid up from school.
But the boss won’t. He’ll give you another raise, but he won’t say thank you in the form you want.
He’s willing to pay you tons. So…aren’t you supposed to just be grateful? Aren’t you ungrateful if you don’t take the money and keep working? Wouldn’t you be ungrateful if you quit that job to go take a job that makes less money but give you more time off?
It’s not that you weren’t grateful for the raises. But…
A marriage or relationship isn’t much different. You keep telling her to just appreciate that you’re giving her ice cream, that you’re giving her raises. You’re telling her to appreciate getting something that doesn’t actually meet her needs.
If you need another lame analogy, how about this: She needs vegetables, but you’re giving her ice cream.
If you keep giving someone ice cream when they need vegetables, they may stop thanking you for the ice cream.
He can argue that she should just understand that when he does these acts of service, that’s him saying “I love you”. She can consciously understand that. And, consciously, she can very much appreciate that.
Yet unconsciously, over time, she feels unloved. She feels deep in her that something in her isn’t getting what it needs. She can suck it up for a long time…but decades?!
What to Do
At the bottom of this ‘good guy getting dumped despite his best efforts’ is a mis-match in love languages. It sucks. But all his mopping isn’t going to make her feel loved if that’s not her love language.
So what do they do?
Well, the most obvious thing these good men could do is only pick women who also have acts of service as their love language. No translation needed.
When he mops the floor, she feels loved. When she washes the car, he’ll be in rapture. When they work hard at their jobs, they’ll both swoon. When they both work hard to compose a poem about a deer frolicking in the meadow, they’ll get married.
Sounds like an easy fix, right? Well…hang on. First, it turns out that two people who have the same love language still have problems. You can read about that here:
Why Love Languages Are a Load of B.S.
Part 3: How to speak love languages fluently
leebidoski.medium.com
Plus, love languages can change over time, so even if you both start with the same love language, get ready to deal with problems when they change.
So let’s pretend like you’re not going to try to fix all this by only picking women who speak your acts of service love language.
Maybe you’re already into someone who doesn’t have that love language. Or maybe it’s hard enough to find someone in the dating market who has all the other features you want, like matching your preferences on wit and physical attraction. Good luck matching on love languages, too!
But for you good men who work so dang hard, here’s the bottom line:
If she’s not seeming to appreciate all that you do, she may not be asking you to do MORE on top of what you already do. She may be asking you to do something DIFFERENT from what you’re doing.
Do different, not more.
If her language is quality time, you could work a job that is 40 hours a week and 5 figures instead of 70 hours a week and 6 figures. Or if you’re gonna keep those hours, hire someone to do the mopping and vacuuming. Or…vacuum less often even if dog hair on the rugs bothers you.
Now you’ve freed up time and energy to go speak her love language of quality time, so you’re not going to mind that dog hair. Right?
But if, in truth, you want to keep vacuuming and mopping instead of figuring out what you need to do so you can speak her language…
Perhaps she isn’t ungrateful. Perhaps you’re inflexible.
Are you a good man? Sure. But…if you’re only willing to do the things that are easier for you (though it is a lot of ‘hard’ work), if you’re not willing to learn what she wants and needs you to do and how to do those things…maybe you’re an inflexible good man.
Final Thoughts
This mis-match in love languages is just one explanation for why, in some cases, good women dump good men despite how hard the good men work.
There are other explanations. For example, people with an avoidant attachment style tend to express love in a practical fashion — mopping, doing dishes — rather than by giving emotional support.
This article by Noemia Akopian is one of the best I’ve seen at explaining how this avoidant dynamic works:
Understanding the Avoidant Attachment Style — 7 Signs You’re Avoidantly Attached in Relationships
The Dismissive Avoidant attachment style is marked by a strong desire for independence and self-reliance in…
medium.com
You can keep saying the women are bad. They’re the ones with the problem because they’re expecting too much or they want bad boys instead of appreciating good men.
But that mindset may not help you achieve your goal if your goal is to have a good woman stay with you for a long-lasting, happy, healthy relationship.
You know the phrase “Work smart, not hard”? If you’re working hard for the person you love, check it. That may be admirable, but that may not be what gets you what you want.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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