 So, he's pulled away or he's walked away from the relationship. I think the biggest mistake humans make is that we take it personally as if something is wrong with us. Now, we're going to spend a few minutes talking about when someone starts to energetically pull away from a relationship versus those who have actually walked away from a relationship. And I think it's important to also establish what is a relationship? I think today it is so confusing to determine what is a relationship today because when we look back in the past, if two people wanted to have sex, they got married. They made an ultimate commitment to one another. And today we don't see much of a commitment in the current dating process. Now, let's first understand that dating is a process of getting to know someone with the intent of exploring a relationship with them. I'm going to repeat that. Dating is a process of getting to know someone. It's a vetting process to determine if you want to be in a relationship with them. And a relationship, so that's the purpose of dating. The purpose of a relationship should be the exploration of wanting to explore something more significant. The challenge with those in midlife is we don't know what more significant means because when we're in our 20s and 30s, more significant meant getting married, making babies, raising a family. It was something really tangible to hold on to. The challenge for those of us in midlife and given that roughly 75% of singles who are over 45 years are divorced and a significant percentage of those divorced people have children, the challenge becomes blending lives together in the commonality. Okay, so if you have young children, it's raising children. Are we bonding together to raise our mutual children together? And for those who are empty nesters, what are we really bonding together to? Why are we doing this? Now, you might be going, how does this relate to he's pulled away? Well, I think it's important to understand that we have to go connect the dots backwards and really establish what is the relationship someone may have walked away from or pulled away from. And I think today, sadly, most humans don't really understand the mechanics to a healthy, happy relationship. And in many cases, we're oftentimes more focused on the entertainment aspect of the dating process instead of the real vetting process. So what happens is we become attached to another human being. And in many cases, we give our power away to another human being. And so when they're pulling away or they've pulled away, we take it personally. In fact, let me read something I shared with that I recently wrote. Whenever one person ends a relationship for whatever reason, the other person tends to look at themselves and ask, what did I do wrong? Why don't they see my value? And then they begin to bargain with the other person to change their mind. We feel crushed because most people look inward saying, I'm a failure. And then they crucify themselves on the cross. Literally, I mean, I'm not saying literally, but metaphorically speaking, they crucify themselves, which is why it's so painful. Not to mention the attachment we have towards another person. And going from an us back to a me is uncomfortable. It feels like a hole has been ripped out of your chest. And the mistake we make is we take it personally. And then we start to crucify the other person, making them out to be bad. We start to focus, for some of us, we either hyper-focus on what was good, hoping that they'll change their mind, or we hyper-focus on the bad as a way, as a self-protection mechanism. As many of you know, my relationship has ended. And I've chosen to grieve with love. I'm going to repeat that. I'm choosing to grieve with love. Now, I learned this when my son passed away. See, I thought, you know what? I could grieve with suffering, or I could grieve with love. What does that mean? Well, first and foremost, is nurturing my own soul. Whatever that looks like for me, and whatever that looks like for you, what does it mean to nurture your soul? And you go through the phases of grief, the anger, the bargaining, the depression, all that stuff. But we don't have to sit in that when we come to a place of acceptance. See, when we can actually come from a place of accepting that this relationship wasn't meant to go the distance, then it's an invitation to ask, why did I have this experience? As some of you might be asking, well, what happens in abusive relationship? What happens in physically abusive relationships? Well, certainly, if you've ever in your relationship, I want to say this right now, if you've ever had to call a doctor, an attorney or a policeman, I got that from Dr. Pat Allen, if you have to call one of those three things, address that sooner rather than later. What's fascinating to me is I've talked to women who have been in a relationship where the man walked away and they've been in a relationship for several years, and it turns out that most of the latter part of the relationship was unhappy. And so what the pain is coming from is going from a pseudo-we to back to the me, back to the I. See, it's important that we, and this is just an invitation for everyone, I say this to myself particularly, it's important to develop a strong I. What does that mean? That's where self-love comes in. I wrote a book about it. Self-love simply means self-word, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance. The minute we give our, the minute we stop in ourselves and we make the other person responsible for our happiness, we have given our power away. So now I want to address that the person is pulling away from the relationship versus pulled away from the relationship. Why does someone begin to pull away from a relationship? Let's go back to the beginning of what I talked about. What is a relationship? If you're in the dating process of getting to know one another, they probably didn't fall in love with you. They care, they might like you. They certainly might appreciate the companionship, the connection, the sex. They might appreciate those things. They might like those things, but they like those things. Did they really like you? Did they really like you or did they like what you gave for them? That's one thing. Another reason why someone's pulled away is they've fallen out of love with you. This happens when couples rely too much on entertainment or the glue of keeping it together. Instead of the real understanding that you have to build something together for it to last. And most of us are swimming in a sea of uncertainty because we don't know what that looks like in midlife. And so men in particular focus on if it isn't easy, it's time to replace you. There, I said it. If the relationship isn't easy, it's time to replace you. Now those are unconscious men, awakened in a light and men, men that look beyond the surface, men who have built and trust with you. They recognize that the bumps in the road is how you build a stronger relationship with one another. Only the men who operate from more of an unhealthy egoic place don't cultivate and work on the relationship. And we repeat that those men who are unconscious, they're working from lower vibration. Those are the ones that don't know how to cultivate a relationship. But many of you don't know how to cultivate a healthy happy relationship. We weren't taught this stuff. Many of you were following the programming like I had. Go to college, get a job, meet a person, get married, buy a house, start a family. That was the programming. I know I followed that program. Did you follow that programming you might have? And if you're watching my channel, chances are you followed that program in your single right now, you've gone through a divorce. See, if we don't understand the mechanics to a healthy happy relationship, but more important, do we genuinely want a fully committed relationship? I shared recently a video where I had Dr. Rabbi Manus on. Dr. Rabbi Manus, okay? Manus Friedman, excuse me. He talked the importance of marriage. See, it occurred to me that in the container of marriage's full commitment, it's a desire to give of oneself to another human being. That's what marriage, I think, in essence means. And so in a casual relationship, which most everything below marriage is a casual relationship to some degree. Now, certainly, I would say moving in together is a more significant commitment to one another than not living together. But for the most part, even that has elements of casualness because there isn't unless there is a true agreement, a true agreement to explore the long-term relationship. And remember, the first year is the getting to know you period with someone. It takes a good year to really start to get to know a person. And it's much harder to do that in the dating process because it's a protracted way of getting to know someone. I've said this before, I'll say it again. I'm not so certain that living together isn't an accelerated way to get to know someone. And two people can find out very quickly that they're not compatible with one another, which causes one or both people to start pulling away from the relationship. But wouldn't you rather find out sooner rather than later? You know, it saddens me how many of you are in relationship with years for someone. And you're strictly dating, you're in a casual relationship for years. And certainly there are many of you that have gotten married a second time and that's not working out because I believe the real challenge, I think that the real challenge is we don't know how to make relationships work, the second or third go around. Most people don't know how to make marriages work a second or third go around. Why do you think divorce rates are so high the second or third go around? I think we just don't learn how the mechanics to build a healthy, happy relationship. This is why I recommend the book. It's a book just to get some perspective, but I recommend the book, The Seven Principles of Making a Marriage Work. Well, okay, take out the word marriage. You can replace it with relationship but at least this gives you some foundation to go beyond the surface. And yet we sadly are swimming in a sea of human beings who are practically winging it out there in the dating process and they're winging it out there in the relationship process. And the hard part for many of you is trying to decipher who really wants a fully committed relationship. I was reading a text from a client yesterday and the man says, I want an LTR. I want a long-term relationship. And she said she wanted marriage, okay? Is there a difference between the two? I think so because a long-term relationship means you can walk away from whatever you want. At least in a marriage it's harder to walk away. I'm not saying it isn't, people can walk away. There's no doubt you can walk away, but it's much harder. And ideally it's really the idea of marriage is to really sit with those vows and really say I am declaring to do this. Our vows are our mission statement in this relationship. What are we committing to? And do we have a daily practice to commit to our vows? See that's consciousness to really be intentional. Sadly, most people in the dating process see companionship, connection, and sex. And men wanted that their beck and call for the most part. A lot of unconscious men. They're not agreeing too much. Maybe they might agree to some monogamy and exclusivity, but how real intentional are they? And it's so easy today because of our apps that we can replace someone with little or no effort by simply pulling, ghosting, or just walking away. Okay, I started to talk about those guys who have pulled away. They're pulling away from the relationship. What can you do in those particular cases? Some dating coaches will say, just lead your full life. Show them you're leading your full life. Post lots of pictures on your Instagram how you're leading a full life. And they'll get jealous. And they'll miss you. How healthy is that? How healthy it is to make, to intentionally make someone jealous or think you're making them jealous, believing that they're going to value you. See, I think women know right the moment when a guy starts to energetically pull away. You know right in that moment. And what should be done, at least in my opinion, is have a conversation. Have a conversation. You recognize someone is pulling away. And dive into the conversation. I did this in my most recent relationship. I noticed, I literally noticed within a 30 day period, there was a shift. There was a shift energetically. When you spend a lot of time with someone, you can feel the energetic shift. It's a lot harder when you live in separate places to feel the shift. It takes a little bit longer. But when you're living with someone, you really see, you feel the shift right away. And I addressed the shift. And through that addressing it, the conclusion was made that this wasn't the right relation for us. If it's not right for one person, it's not right for both people. And that's really hard when you get attached to someone. I get it. But at the same time, I'm here to explore that there is a more spiritual aspect to relationships. I want to read to you a meme I posted on Instagram. And I want you to share something with you. This was from Elizabeth Gilbert. She says, a soulmate's purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate, and out of control that you have to transform your life. You see, what I recognize now for me in this experience is it was in my relationship, I needed to break open. And to do more healing, to do more self-love work. As much as I thought I'd arrived, this is the arrogance, you know, as much as I thought I arrived, there was more work to do. And what did the universe do? They brought in someone into my life to help me recognize that. So I asked myself, what positive things did I learn about myself in this experience? And I invite you to ask yourself the same question. What have you healed during this experience with this other person? I'm not using the word relationship, I'm simply saying experience. What was good about this experience? What were the good things in your relationship? What was really good about it? Really, really dive into what was good. And then lastly, what are you most grateful for? See, if you're tipping the scales towards anger, resentment, judgment about the other person, then why would you want to stay with them? Why is this so painful? Someone that you're angry towards, you're resentful towards, you have contempt for this person. Why are you then angry? And by the way, there's a misplaced anger that happens when we, what happens is when we give our power away to another human being, we make them respond to it. Them responsible for our happiness. Please avoid that mistake, because when someone wants to end a relationship, most likely there wasn't a strong enough foundation built, or the foundation that was once built wasn't being nurtured. It's like buying a plant, watering it for a few years, and then you stop watering it. What's going to happen? The plant will wither. See, that's, think about watering a plant. How many of you really understand the mechanics to building a healthy happy relationship? Very few of you. Why do I recommend book after book after book? Here's a good book. You may want to consider Spiritual Partnership by Gary Zucca. Those are for those of you that really want to elevate to more a conscious, co-creative experience. By the way, all the books I recommend are listing below. Now, one thing I didn't touch upon and something I talk about in my private coaching is really centered around doing a better job vetting people. Yeah. Given that we have all these options on dating apps, it's important to vet people soon around and later. And by asking the deeper question, what does a relationship look like for you? What does commitment look like for you? And more importantly, do you want to get married or remarried, and do you love the institution of marriage? Now, what these questions do is it reveals how they really feel about full commitment. And when two people enter into the dating process, understanding what each other means, and by the way, it's a crapshoot. Because even in my relationship, we went in with the best intentions. It still doesn't mean it's going to work out, but the more you are intentional, the less likely you're going to feel pain if it ends. And more importantly, if it does end, you see the gift or the gift of what you've learned and what you're most grateful for at the other end of this experience. Is this stinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know if it is. Please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel. If you're in my group called Midlife Love Mastery, please tell your friends about the group. Send them to my website, jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group. And I'm going to sign up this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big, gigantic Jonathon Barrett of self-love. I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love. I'm going to ask you to turn to someone, a Pat, a teddy bear pillow, and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye now.