 Why do men act interested but they can't seem to commit? This is a question I keep pondering over and over and over again. And I think it's because of dating. That's right, dating. Now, give me a minute to explain this in a little more detail. But what I mean to say is dating is no long, dating today rarely has a purpose behind it because when men, and this is looking back in history, when men were in their 20s and 30s and they were single, they oftentimes wanted a wife, they wanted the mother of their children, they wanted to start a family with someone. So there was a definitive purpose in the process of getting to know someone and they wouldn't waste time with someone that wasn't a fit for them because they were driven by this purpose. So now let's fast forward a bit and we'll think about men over 40, men and women over 40. The vast majority of people over 40 are divorced. And most of those divorced people have children. So that drive to start a family with someone, that drive to build a life, to have the Christmases together and be grow old and having the grandchildren come over is no longer in the blueprint. And I think one of the challenges for men in particular that there's no real blueprint of what a relationship should look like in midlife. There's no real understanding. So what's happened is I said earlier, dating and what is dating? The purpose of dating should be to decide if you want to be in relationship with someone, but more importantly, if you want to eventually get married to this person, I think that should be the purpose of dating. The challenge is today, the purpose of dating is purely about entertaining one another being each other's company in some cases being each other's therapist. I think for those in midlife, I see a significant amount of relationships where they're actually therapists to one another. And I'm guilty of doing this myself, quite frankly, it kind of innately built into my profession of being a professional listener and talker. So I'm guilty of this. And what I mean to say is relationships today lack a sense of purpose. So here's what happens. A man can genuinely care for you. He might be attached to you, but the same time, is he actually in love with you? I think when a person lacks a sense of relationship purpose. So let me, I wanna dive into this relationship purpose for a moment, because this is critically important. Relationship purpose, I want you to think about this ladies, men who lack direction in their life, they don't have a purpose. They're oftentimes the least attractive of men because if a man doesn't have a purpose, he can't really be the leader in a relationship. Not that men should be the leader, but he can't necessarily direct or be a co-participant because his life needs a sense of purpose. And quite frankly, ladies, you need a sense of purpose. Now the old sense of purpose was the man was the provider protector and the woman was the homemaker. They each had a role. There was a mutual exchange going on. Now for those of us in midlife, where many of us both are struggling financially to take care of ourselves. I want you to think about this for a moment. Roughly 80% of Americans, those here in the United States obviously I'm saying, are, I don't have enough savings to really cover them should there be a financial disaster in their life. Why I'm bringing this up is, it's hard to support yourself, right? One of the benefits of being coupled is you can share expenses with one another. So you're struggling to take care of yourself and he's struggling. And what I mean by struggling is, I don't mean that the water is up to here and you're constantly doing this, but it's like here, okay, the water, okay? You're not, you know, when you can literally stand on ground and don't feel like you need money to support yourself, it's a lot easier than those that are in the water trying to make a living. Okay, now, why it's important to understand this if you're both in this, I need to work mode to support myself. And there's no benefit. You're not commingling funds to support, you know, to support the we. Oftentimes the relationship has a purpose to it and their mode, because two people are in their mode of their own taking care of themselves. They really haven't co-created this we relationship with a sense of purpose because relationships that have purpose oftentimes have a stronger direction. Now you might be thinking, well, what purpose is there, Jonathan? Well, I think the main purpose of a co-creative, let's just call it a spiritual relationship is to help each other heal childhood wounds and traumas, help each other get past your individual triggers, go through the experience of sometimes butting head so you can get through it. And to become more of a, what's called a self-actualized person, a more evolved person, a more awakened person, whatever term fits your boat, I think that's the real purpose of a relationship. A relationship can wake us up and some relationships don't go the distance because of this and that's okay too. Now, one thing I've contemplated recently for myself and I really coming back to this marriage or coming back to this piece of what, the dating is the problem. See, dating today oftentimes leads to just a following few things. It leads to either just hooking up. So a lot of people are dating just for hooking up purposes. Sometimes one person is the hooking up purpose and the other person has a desire to get married, but there's a lot of convoluted stuff going on in between. The other aspect is many people are finding themselves in what's called a situation shift. They're spending time together, they're having sex together, but there's no real direction or they even find themselves in casual relationships. Which means again, you're spending time together, you're enjoying each other's company, maybe not enjoying each other's company, you're connecting, you're having sex, but there lacks a real purpose behind it. You see, when a person is intentional about commitment, they're really intentional. And I learned something in my most recent experience is that when I really decided I wanted to be a husband, when I stopped thinking about, I think for the longest time I was, well, first off, after my divorce, the last thing I wanted to do was get married. I mean, like so many people, okay? And a lot of you feel this way, I don't wanna get married again. And then for a while I was looking for, when I decided I wanted to get married again, I was looking for a wife. And what that means was, or what that meant to me was, I wanted someone who would make me feel happy. I wanted someone who would make me feel happy. In other words, she would do all these, when I was looking for a wife, I was looking for someone to do all these things to make me happy. And I realized that I was almost dependent on someone else for my happiness. I wasn't really in a state of happiness and joy. I learned to enjoy my own company. I was okay with my own company. Not, let me reframe that. I was okay with my own company. I don't know if I necessarily enjoyed my own company. So I was looking for, I was basically looking for a girlfriend, a wife, someone to fit a role because I wasn't really fully complete within myself. And what I learned in this experience is that it's not about being, you know, looking for a wife. It's actually, could I be a husband to someone? Could I be a true partner? Do I want to be a partner to someone? In other words, can I come from a place of giving? Okay. And can I meet someone who also comes from a place of giving? So if they're giving, I have to be able to receive. And if I'm giving, they have to be able to receive. And this is where a lot of angst happens in the relationship dynamic. So I think the problem today is dating is that if most people aren't dating with a purpose, a sense of intentionality. And this made me really think about how we choose people in our lives because I think for the most part most humans have a broken picker. They don't know how to pick a good partner in their life. Those at least that have options. In other words, they get enough emails in their inbox, you know, from dating sites and they get, for women if you're getting asked out, if you're at least have, it's on a scale from one to 10, if it's, if you're capable of a six, seven, eight or nine, in other words, you're getting attention from men that are interested in you, then it's all about picking. And the same goes for men as well. The problem is, and I've been really contemplating a question that came up in my most recent live stream was most everybody starts off dating as kind of they're on their best behavior. Okay. As Chris Rock calls it, the ambassador of their best selves. Okay. And I've been thinking a lot about this best behavior. So how can you get, how can you quickly determine someone's emotional IQ, if you will, emotional intelligence, emotional maturity. And one of the women in a recent live stream brought up a question that she was asked on a first date and she was rather put off by it. But, and I really thought about this, I think it actually has some validity to it. And the question was by a man to the woman, he asked who filed for divorce? He asked this on a first date. And she thought that was way too deep of a question to ask on a first date. Okay. And I can see how someone feels that way and they may not want to give the details of what happened. Okay. But I want you to think about this for a question or for a moment, excuse me. Let's say you asked a man the same question on a first date. You're having nice chit chat. You're just like, hey, I'm really kind of curious. You know, you were, you said you were married for 12 years or you were married for 20 years. You know, who actually filed for divorce between the two of you? Now, 70 to 80% of the time it's women. Okay. So most likely he will say my wife filed for divorce. Now, if he, no, that's all you asked was, but if he starts to go into the details of what happened, I want you to really pay attention to what might happen because most of the time people do this after a divorce. It was his fault. It was her fault. They do this, okay? They point the finger at the other person. This particular deep question, and I'm gonna say deep question, you know, the fact that she thought it was inappropriate means that there's some, there, it's, you know, at most people like to date on the surface level and this is going below the surface, right? If, and these are, you know, it could be a challenging question too. There's some depth to it. Who filed for divorce first? And if he starts to say something like my ex-wife filed for divorce and he begins to throw her under the bus, you know what, she didn't, you know, she was a difficult person. She was an angry person. She was, she wasn't a good mother. You know, she, you know, the children, you know, like she was a cheater, you know, all the different things that, and by the way, or she might, by the way, most of the time when the woman's filing for divorce, it's because the man is the cheater or the man was emotionally unavailable. I mean, those are the real reasons. But if he begins to throw under the bus, pay clear attention to the tone that he's describing. This woman who is most likely the mother of his children, but Tony's describing about her. This can reveal toxicity. This can reveal narcissism or this can reveal woundedness. In most cases, when someone starts talking about their previous relationships, it oftentimes reveals woundedness, okay? When a person enters into the process of dating and exploring a relationship with someone, if they are deeply wounded and they've done no work healing, okay? This will be a problematic condition in this dynamic the two of you are engaged in. So he can act interested. He can be, you know, he can find you attractive. He may physically want to be with you. However, this woundedness is going to preclude him from actually committing down the road. And in addition, if he doesn't have a clear idea of what he wants down the road, and more importantly, if he's not in a position to be a quote unquote partner or husband to someone, you might find yourself, you know, in a position where am I willing to accept? Should I accept this person for where they're at in their life at my own potential expense? See, many of you want to figure this. You're trying to avoid getting hurt, right? And I don't like the idea of avoiding getting hurt. What I invite you all to do is to be more of a detective because you have your own emotional well-being at stake. And because we've so adopted attraction chemistry as the driver for a relationship success without, you know, really understand, do we share the same values? Are our lifestyles compatible with one another and more importantly, is this person emotionally mature enough? Do they have the skills to actually be in a fully committed relationship? This is why I am such an advocate for radical honesty, laying your cards on the table and the rules of engagement sooner rather than later. And I think the drive, particularly for men, the drive to be physically intimate with someone outweighs their consciousness of, are they capable of actually being in a relationship with someone? Have they healed from their wounds and do they actually want to be a partner with someone? And now that I have this awareness about, I, you know, and I invite you all to look at it from your own vantage point too. You know, a, and by the way, I use the term do you want to be a wife or do you want to be a husband? What I'm really saying is, do you want to be a partner to someone else? Does the relationship have a partnership purpose associated to it? Whatever that looks like, I know a couple who are in their 60s, they met and they fully integrated into each other's lives. They each have grandchildren, they have children that they support in each other's lives and they fully integrated into each other's lives as partners. That is their purpose because they fully integrated each life into this and now their purpose is partnership for this unity. Now, this is challenging for many of us in midlife because a significant percentage, let's just say those early divorced people, those that get divorced in their 40s, oftentimes have young children. Okay. And in many cases, men don't want to be the financial support to someone else's children. I mean, I'm not saying it's always the case, but that's the case and they have their own children to raise. Now, some of those couples get into, integrate into each other's lives and they develop partnership from that position. But a lot of men don't want, I'm just being blunt here, they may not have the resources or they don't want the responsibility to be a caretaker to your children. And that's a critically important question to uncover right ladies, before you have physical intimacy with someone, I would really have deeper conversations about that. I once dated a woman who this is some years back who had a 13 and 15 year old and my children are grown. And I was like wrestling. I mean, I liked, I was attracted to, I wanted to have sex with her and we did have sex, but I really didn't want to be the support person to our children. I mean, I wanted to do it from the peripheral if I'm being honest with myself, you know? And a lot of times we think of it from the peripheral but when you get down to the nitty gritty, when someone has young children, they are responsible for these children not up until 18 years old, but really up until 25 to 30 years old, you feel a responsibility for your children. Okay, that's those in their forties category. For those in their fifties and sixties that have probably have kids out of the house, the true purpose of the relationship is finding a way to integrate into each other's lives. And this is where so many people fall short. And this is why I continually recommend a series of books. By the way, there's links below to get a copy of all the books I recommend, but I really want to invite you to all, I talk about this book incessantly. It's eight dates by Drs. John and Julie Gottman. These are the critical conversations to have in those early stages because dating is a vetting process to decide if you want to explore a deeper committed relationship. And yet the vast majority of people today date for hooking up situationships and casual relationships. So why do they act interested? And should you accept this? I think what you should do, or this is maybe not, I would encourage you to do is really get crystal clear on who's really compatible with you, get crystal clear on your values, your lifestyle and your own emotional maturity and ask those deeper questions very early on to determine real compatibility because in those uncovering questions, you can determine a lot of wounded people that are probably not capable of going the distance. And even though they like you and they care for you and they're attached to you, they're incapable of actually falling in love and committing deeper. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Post a comment below. Also for those in my group, please tell your friends about Midlife Love Mastery, send them to my website, Jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group or they can check out and you can send them the link below to Midlife Love Mastery. And if you need some additional support, hey, schedule a discovery call with me, follow me on Instagram, check out all the books I recommend. All right, I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big, gigantic Jonathan Barrahug of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone a pet, Teddy Barrah pillow. Give it or 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-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.