Being avoidant in romantic relationships
What the hell are we so fearful of?
I was recently on The Karnjanaprakorn Show podcast to talk about Protocol Daddies, the future of male role models, and my favorite emotional intelligence protocols. It was a ton of fun. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
This newsletter talks a lot about shame given Gen Z and millennial men are riddled with it. One of the strongest ways this shows up is in avoidant behavior in the early days of romantic relationships. We don’t send the text. We speak half truths. We’re holding back. Eventually someone on the receiving end of this gets pissed off and demands to address it. This newsletter is dedicated to this exact moment.
Avoidance 1.0 and 2.0
In an informal poll of dude friends, the single most feared text message is something along the lines of “we need to talk” from a significant other. There’s a hint of threat to it. I know I’m about to enter the ring, but I’m never quite sure what combo they’re coming out with. On the other hand, for a solid chunk of my past, my opening combo was likely to fall into one of two camps:
“Everything is fine.” An ex-girlfriend and I were going to “check in,” and I agreed to cook dinner. I knew I had to break up with her. I knew what I had to say. I also acted like everything was totally normal to the point where I brought groceries to her apartment, had the breakup conversation, and then had to awkwardly take the groceries back because what the hell was she going to do with these taco ingredients. Another form of this is acting like the other person is making a big deal out of nothing instead of digging into what’s irking them. This is avoidance in its pure form.
Shame pig. Whatever she throws at me, I’m going to swallow it and blame it on me being a shitty person. Anytime she tries to prod into my psyche I’m going to go back to rolling around in shame while she sits there, watching me blabber on, feeling kind of annoyed. My girlfriend calls this “the shame pig.” The tricky thing about this is it can feel like I’m owning and being accountable for my actions. Sometimes it’s a step in the right direction, but shame is a paralyzing emotion that results in diddly-squat getting done so lolling about in it is avoidance by another name.
I’d wonder why these conversations took so long. In hindsight, it’s less confusing. I’d sit there throwing apology spaghetti at the wall until I found something that she’d take for an answer. I felt tense and my goal was to feel normal again. Meanwhile she would sit there, prodding, not getting new information. All of this was me dancing around the one thing I wasn’t saying: what I actually wanted.
And what did I want? Usually a different kind of relationship. If an ounce of doubt crept in that the person I was seeing wasn’t “the one,” I’d simply grow more avoidant as opposed to being honest about the kind of relationship I did want to have with that person. I didn’t want to break up. I didn’t want to marry her. I wasn’t clear on what label I was seeking, and so I’d turn that middle ground into an avoidant limbo.
Follow the feeling
My not-so-hot take is that these feelings that we’re avoiding - the shame, the tension, etc - they’re good things. It means that somewhere inside of me, I know what I want, and that it’s potentially in conflict with someone else. And then, for whatever reason, I’m wimping out on asking for what I want, and so it comes out sideways as tension and avoidance.
What’s that fear about? Sure, there can be a general fear of risking peace, risking hurting someone else’s feelings, and risking not getting laid. But I also think there’s a fear that if I give someone an inch of honesty, they’ll dig for more, find me out as a fraud, and the whole schtick is up. Being honest in those situations is risking my identity as a “good guy,” and man do I guard that jealously. Apologizing never risked that identity. Saying what I wanted did.
Being a good guy is a cage. It’s a virtue caught up in someone else’s opinion. It gets in the way of me asking for what I want, and slowly over time it erodes my agency. If I could teach young Johnny a lesson, it’s to prioritize being honest and earnest over being “good.” It would have saved me and my partners time and dignity in the long run.
I’m not the first person to rant about the downsides of being a “good guy.” It’s a whole thing in men’s groups. One men’s group leader even wrote a book about it. I think good guy syndrome becomes particularly intense in reaction to feminist waves, so it’s been particularly relevant for men in their 20s and 30s, and the effects last long beyond early romantic encounters. As I’m writing this newsletter I realize I’m pulling the same avoidant act with my drum teacher. I duck him whenever I feel too busy to have a lesson that week, as opposed to asking to meet less often. So he has to chase me until I finally respond with a “how about next Friday.”
Get what you want
So back to this question of “what do I want.” I think it’s the hardest question to answer in our modern era. I think answering it is the one and only key to success in life. And so anytime we get an answer to that question, it’s worth its metaphorical weight in gold. We should actively strip ourselves of things that prevent us from acting on that intuition. Good guy syndrome is a part of that. Shame is a part of that. My next post will discuss a protocol for how to go about doing that.
New online course for emotional intelligence
I’ve created an online course for men’s emotional intelligence tools. It’s cheaper than therapy and in my opinion the ability to practice this stuff with a group of dudes is way more effective than learning solo. The focus is foundational skills to emotional intelligence: being present with someone else, reframing internal narratives, and emotional self-awareness. The first cohort kicks off December 5th, and subscribers to this newsletter get $50 off by clicking the button below.