“She just didn’t get that I needed time to myself,” my guy friend complained after a break-up.
In his mind, the problem was that the women he dated were just SO. DANG. CLINGY!
He’d start dating a woman. He’d be into her, and things were good. She didn’t start out being clingy but then…inevitably, it started. The woman would want to spend more and more time with him, and then he’d start feeling itchy.
If he took the solo time he so desperately craved, he could tell that she was disappointed in him for not spending that time with her.
The woman would resent him for wanting so much solo time. He’d resent her for not being ok with his need for solo time.
If the woman would just be understanding that he needed some alone time, everything would be ok.
But the woman didn’t get it. She’d get clingier. He’d get more claustrophobic. And so went the downward spiral til the inevitable break-up.
To be clear, we’re not talking about psycho, stage 4 clingers. This is a guy who starts out liking a woman, but then she seems to get more and more clingy over time. And there’s a pattern for him — to need a lot of time away from his partner which wreaks a bit of havoc in his relationships.
If this sounds like something you’re dealing with, let’s zoom in. Let’s try to understand:
- when this guy’s need for alone time is (and isn’t) legitimate
- why the women are being clingy, and
- what can be done to stop the cling.
Note: Yes, men can be clingy too. I’m just presenting this as a man dealing with clingy women for ease of writing.
She’s Just Someone to Bang
First, think about this: When do you need alone time? For my friend, this is when he especially wanted alone time:
- When something was stressing him out at work.
- When the woman in his life was doing something that bothered him.
- Any time he had a lot of thoughts boiling in in his head.
- Any time he had lumps of emotions piling up.
So, basically, any time something was bothering him.
This guy sure needed a lot of time to himself. I can almost see these women, over time, wondering, “Hey buddy…tell me again why we’re bothering to be together if you go solo every chance you get?!”
We all know that it’s healthy for people in a relationship to have down time. For sure!
But this guy is missing something vital:
When we talk about having me-time, or away-from-her time, in a healthy relationship, that time is meant for self-care or for maintaining an important personal identity.
Taking me-time every time you’re struggling with a knot of thoughts or feelings isn’t a healthy version of me-time.
I mean, I guess the women are supposed to be grateful for the glimpses they get of him when things are going hunky dory. Right? Just be glad that he takes care of the heavy emotional lifting himself and doesn’t bother them with that, right?
Nah. She starts thinking, “Well I guess all he needs me for is to have someone to read the cereal box with in the morning. He just keeps me around to have someone to go to a concert with.”
This is what he’s accidentally conveying to her: All she’s good for is banging and joking with.
They’re not really interacting about anything meaningful or important because he tends to that stuff all by himself.
She starts feeling like the relationship is…quite superficial.
That’s what a relationship can start feeling like with these ‘need a lot of me-time’ people. After all, he’s not confiding his pain. He’s not sharing his innermost worries.
When she’s intruding into his me-time, is she being clingy, or is she trying to get a bit more depth in the relationship?
Here’s a way for you to know if your need for me-time is legitimate: If you’re feeling trouble-free, and that’s when you want to spend some me-time on a hobby, ok.
Is your need for me-time most urgent when you feel bothered by something? Then your person might not be a stage 4 clinger after all. You’ve got some figuring out to do, so move on to the next section.
I’m Saving Her from Me
Why did my friend need so much alone time? He believed he needed the down time to calm himself down so that when he did eventually talk to his partner, he’d be composed.
In his mind, the woman should be grateful. In his mind, he should be getting credit for being so considerate as to remove himself from her vicinity so he doesn’t take his frustration out on her.
“I’m saving her from me,” he believes.
Sounds legitimate, right?
Well…not so quick.
It’s definitely a skill to be able to express your thoughts and feelings without taking your frustration out on others.
If we can’t learn emotional regulation, we’re going to end up looking a bit shifty when we bump and yell at a 65-year-old man to express our amped-up emotions, a la our guy Travis Kelce.
(Then again, some of his fans might see that as evidence that he hasn’t gone completely soft when seen mouthing the words of Taylor Swift’s song, “Love Story”, to his girlfriend.)
But c’mon. Much of the stuff you’re upset about isn’t exactly the equivalent of being upset that you might lose the SuperBowl. If you occasionally, once in a blue moon, get that amped up, fair enough. Thank you for having the good sense to retreat to the me-time closet to calm down.
But…needing to go into the me-time closet fairly often for fear of unleashing your emotions about stuff that isn’t even SuperBowl level? To save your woman from you?
For sure it’s healthy and valid to not talk when we’re feeling heated, to take a time-out instead of taking our frustration out on someone we love.
But my friend needs to be able to distinguish when he legitimately needs to take a time-out to calm down versus when he’s using ‘time-out to calm down’ as an excuse for something else.
One way to tell is asking this: How long you need? If you need a few hours to calm down, go right ahead. But days? No. If you need more than, say, a day ‘to calm down’ — if you can’t get your emotions under control in 24 hours — something else is going on.
Another way to tell whether you’re using your me-time legitimately to calm down is to answer this: What do you talk about after you’re done taking me-time?
If you go and talk with your person about what was bothering you, discussing it to a degree that you’re both satisfied with, ok.
If you don’t or won’t talk about the stuff that was bothering you — the stuff that caused you to go into the me-time closet in the first place — then you weren’t using your me-time to prevent yourself from taking your frustration out on her.
By the way: If you’re an introvert, you may need more alone-time than most. But if, after your alone time, you’re not talking with your person about the problems, then you being an introvert isn’t entirely what your alone time in a relationship is about. Something else is.
So now we learn what that ‘something else’ is.
I’m Attending a Masquerade Ball
If my friend isn’t truly using his alone time to calm down (though he claims and believes that’s the reason), what is he doing with that alone time?
Well, he’s sifting through his raw thoughts and feelings. He’s refining them. He gets rid of the ones that make him feel ashamed or guilty. He’d never want his honey to see those.
Good thing he took this time away from her. If he really told her those — if he blurted out his true thoughts and feelings — she may not like him.
Hell, she might even leave him if she knew what he really thought and felt, if he didn’t carefully edit himself, didn’t carefully censor himself, didn’t carefully decide what to say or not say…
Ding ding ding ding!
And there you have it — the big reveal. A main reason for spending time by yourself when you’re feeling bothered is a fear of revealing your true self, because others might not like or approve of who you really are. (Hint: You may not even approve of you.)
I won’t go into the ‘why’ of this. This piece is already way too long. But here’s something to learn:
- If you’re saying to the people you care about, “I need to take some breaths and calm down then we’ll talk about this thing that I’m upset about”, that’s good. That’s emotional management.
- If, after you calm down, life goes on like nothing happened, without acknowledging that there were some bad feelings, without talking through what happened, without exposing your true thoughts and feelings about what happened, that’s not good. That’s emotional suppression.
If you tend to do the emotional suppression thing, you may tend to believe (unconsciously) that you need to do that — need to hide your true self — in order to get the time, attention, and approval of people.
My friend believes that it’s a good thing to only show his woman the calm, edited, abridged, composed, censored, well-behaved, appropriate version of himself. After all, if he does that, she’s more apt to like and accept him. Right?
Ummm…not right.
So the only thing he wants the women in his life to see is this…Ken doll version of who he is. He only wants to display his well-coifed, manicured emotions. God forbid she get to see his mussed, uncombed thoughts.
Maybe this isn’t true of all guys, but some men have a thing about women wearing make-up. It’s not that they mind, per se. After all, some women do look better with it on, to be fair.
(Lawd knows I’d look better without my dark under-eye bags from staying up too late to hammer out one of these articles!)
But some men want to at least know what a woman looks like without her make-up on before he agrees to be with her on some sort of permanent basis. At the very least he knows what he’s getting, even if he’d rather she put the make-up back on.
When this guy will only talk to a woman in his life after a day or two or three of carefully composing himself, he’s making sure that his woman never gets to see his thoughts and feelings without make-up.
Sounds like…she only gets to see the made-up version of him.
(Hm — I wonder if this in part explains why some people gravitate to texting over talking on the phone.)
He’s basically saying, “I need to go be alone so I can have enough time to put my mask on, so you can never see what I’m truly thinking and feeling. You’ll only see the inauthentic version I’ll show you after I’ve had time alone to tamp down what I fear are the unattractive parts of me.”
Maybe these women weren’t saying, “I can’t bear for you to be out of my sight for a minute because I’m massively clingy!”
Maybe these women were saying, “Please show me your real self. I’m so tired of you disappearing and then coming back just showing me a fake you. I have no idea who you are — what you really think, what you really feel.”
It’s All Good — According to Him
When my friend comes out of his alone-time closet, he’s usually ‘over it’, whatever the ‘it’ was that was bothering him.
The woman in his life — she doesn’t know what the ‘it’ was. She doesn’t know why he disappeared. She doesn’t know what happened.
To him, nothing more needs to be discussed. He thinks she should just be happy he’s back, that she should be fine with not knowing anything. Why is she bugging him about something that he’s over and done with?!
If this man’s furnace stopped working for 3 days, then suddenly started working again, would he just be happy that it’s working again?
Would he make no effort to try and learn what went wrong with the furnace? Is he going to just cross his fingers and hope that whatever happened to the furnace won’t happen again when it’s freezing temps and he really needs that furnace to be functioning when it matters most?
Either way, he’s over it, but then he’s annoyed because she’s still pestering him about it. She won’t let it just drop when he says, “I just needed some alone time. Everything is fine now.” Gawd she’s so clingy.
I Proclaim This to Be So
So when my guy friend is in his quiet vacuum, he thinks his own thoughts. He processes his own feelings. And then…he starts making his own decisions about what to do. Oh boy.
When he emerges from his alone time, calm was restored for him, and he proclaims his decision. Or, he just starts taking action on the decision he made, without his woman even knowing he made some decisions.
Ok. Seems legit. After all, he’s a grown man. He could figure his stuff out on his own.
Here’s what he’s not getting: Since the woman in his life wasn’t privy to the feelings and thoughts that led to this decision, she’s stuck with the effects of whatever decision he made that she didn’t understand and had no input into.
Intuitively, we understand this isn’t cool. Suppose I give you a strange glob of food.
You don’t know what the ingredients are. You don’t know how it was made. You don’t know if I let the cats run around on the kitchen counters with their litter-yucked-feet, then prepared the food on the unwashed, kitty-litter-bedecked counters. You don’t know anything about this food.
All you know is what I’m telling you: “You may not know anything about it, but just eat it. Oh, you don’t like how it tastes? Too bad. That’s what I’ve decided is good for us. By the way, you should just be glad that I spared you the effort. You’re welcome.”
C’mon now.
If you’re coming out of the me-time closet ready to start discussing what’s been going on and the decisions you’ve formulated, ok. But if you emerge with the decision made, unwilling or unable to discuss why this is the decision you think is best, or get her input…is she clingy or…
Maybe she’s trying to barge into your me-time closet because she knows that’s where the decisions are made, and she’s tired of eating weird-tasting blobs of food.
He’s a Flake
These people who need time away from their loved person to deal with things that bother them…you’d think their best bet is to just pair up with someone who handles their stress in this same way.
Whenever either of them gets turbulent feelings, off they’d both go to their me-time caves. And they emerge just fine. No need to even discuss anything because it’s all a-ok.
Strangely, that’s not what happens.
Imagine this. Imagine my guy friend emerges from the 2 or 3 days of me-time that he needed to sift through and quiet all his turbulent feelings. Imagine he’s now ready to play with the woman that he actually does really love.
But imagine…she’s not there for him. “Sorry, dear, but I need MY alone time now, and uh, yeah, I’m not here and available for you just because you’re now ready for couple time.”
Ouch. He wants the together time when he wants it. He’s not going to provide it when he doesn’t want it, but he certainly doesn’t want to be denied it when he does want it.
He wants warmth, support, nurturing. After all, every woman my friend has dated started out as these warm, supportive, nurturing women. That’s why he started dating them in the first place. He just isn’t able to return the favor consistently.
That’s what my friend doesn’t realize: After a while, he just seems like a very moody, unreliable guy.
The woman in his life doesn’t really know when he is or isn’t going to be available to her. She can’t count on him.
He wants a woman to be ok with how unreliable and moody he is — disguised as his extreme need for alone time — but he certainly doesn’t want to be with someone who is moody and unreliable.
If a woman sticks it out, she eventually tries to drag him out of his me-time closet. The woman he once saw as supportive now just seems so dang clingy.
So he dumps her.
That is, if she doesn’t beat him to the punch.
Off She Goes
Let’s think about what was going on with his women while he was away in his me-cave. Since he wasn’t available to support his woman should she have any struggles while he’s away, she had to handle everything on her own.
That should work out ok, right? He doesn’t need her when he’s struggling so she, too, could just work through her own stuff without him. She should just be ‘independent’. (Oh, how he loves that word.)
Except, if she’s healthy, if she has a secure attachment style, she knows it’s ok for independent people to want, need, and get support from others during stressful times rather than being expected to hole up by herself when she’s stressed.
(It’s interesting how a person with an avoidant attachment style can view the needs of a person with a secure attachment style as ‘clingy’ and then dub that person as having an anxious attachment style. But let’s save that discussion for another day.)
So imagine he’s done this to her for years, going to his self-imposed vacuum almost any time he’s bothered by something, and she’s left alone. Fortunately, she may have a support network to rely on, so she gets along fine without him.
After time…she gets in the habit of going to other people to get her needs met. Not him. Guess she only needs him for banging and joking too, or for child-rearing and financial support. She certainly doesn’t need him as a consistent source of emotional support because if she did, she’d be SOL.
To her, he seemed like such a ‘good guy’ at the start, but eventually she gets fed up with how moody and unreliable he is. And then…she may even start recognizing that someone else is more able to meet her needs and…he’s losing her. Or lost her.
How To Stop the Cling
Take it for what it’s worth. If you’re going to keep saying the problem is that the women are clingy, you can certainly do that.
But if you’re with a so-called clingy woman, and you want to experiment this time instead of burying yet another failed relationship, try this:
When you feel bothered by something and are feeling the strong need to take some alone time, let your honey know you need up to 24 hours to deal with it before talking to her about what’s bothering yourself. Cap yourself at 24 hours.
After time is up, you talk about it. But the way you talk about it matters — no brief mention and check it off that you’ve done it. Here’s a broad agenda you can use:
1. Let her know the details of what happened that was bothering you. If it’s something she did, you still gotta tell her. Tell her even and especially when you’re afraid she isn’t going to like what you’re going to say. Tell her even when you fear she’ll see you as being weak for being bothered by whatever you’re bothered by.
2. Let her know what you thought and felt about what happened — your uncensored thoughts and feelings. Not just the ones you think that make you look right or good, and not just the ones that you think she’ll admire you for.
3. Ask her what she thought and felt about what happened.
4. Let her know some suggestions you have for what you think you — and her, if you need her in on the solution — need to do to deal with it.
5. Ask her what she thinks should be done. Even if it was a work thing, something you think she’s clueless about, you still listen to her input.
6. Ask what she thinks or feels about your suggestions.
It may be uncomfortable. It may be messy.
Hell, maybe now the woman will want to give you more alone time because she’s hating your guts when she learns what you’re truly thinking and feeling. But you know there’s substance to the saying “Better to be loved for who you are…”
Let’s say she doesn’t bail. Let’s say you keep at it…keep intentionally sharing what you’re thinking and feeling when you’re bothered…keep showing the raw version of you…keep being consistent and reliable in coming back in 24 hours or less instead of disappearing longer than that…
Here’s what might happen:
- She stops constantly being in your grill.
- She slowly starts to trust that she’ll benefit from your me-time.
- She believes that you’re not just using me-time to sweep problems under a rug.
- She complains less about you needing so much me-time.
- She encourages you to take the 24-hour me-time, because she knows you’re going to come back, ready to figure it out — together.
By God, are you seeing what I’m seeing?! She’s less clingy than she used to be.
And she may even stop fussing about your cats walking all over the kitchen counters.
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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