 Where does most frustration come from? It comes from experiencing doubt. And when a man goes silent most likely, what he's experiencing in this moment is his own doubt about the relationship. So we're gonna dive into this a little bit. And I know this is very confusing for so many women because initially in the early stages of dating and the courtship period or just getting to know someone, oftentimes we're driven by our hormones, the chemicals within our body. This is known as chemistry. And when two people have an affinity for one another and they feel a connection, they oftentimes are communicating at a fairly rapid pace. And what I mean by rapid pace, I should say a consistent pace with one another. There's lots of communication. And then usually this is also reaches a crescendo where two people become physically intimate with one another. And then after this physical intimacy, usually within the first 90 days, we find that a lot of men go silent. They start to pull back. They're starting to experiencing doubt. And if this has happened to you, we're gonna dive into this a little bit deeper today. You know, it's interesting the other day on my live stream on YouTube, we had a woman come on and talk about how she connected with a man two years ago on a dating site. And she actually openly admitted that she got a little bit drunk, a little bit belligerent. And then she didn't hear from the man. And then two years later, he happened to swipe on her on a dating app and they connected with one another. And I'm giving you the clip note version of what happened. Excuse my slurping. It's just a little hot, the coffee. And the coffee mode says, don't make me go all psycho roommate on you. Why am I bringing up this story? Well, she had communicated with him on Monday and it is now Thursday and she hasn't heard from him. And she's in this panic, if you will. She's in this state of frustration. She's in this state of doubt. She's in this state of longing for him to communicate. And she's wondering why this happened. Now the why is actually irrelevant, why he went silent. There are a hundred possible reasons why he might have went silent, okay? Might have been that he just lost interest in her. He might be communicating with someone else. Maybe they didn't have a good connection over the phone. And I don't mean static. I mean, there wasn't a real connectivity. In fact, she was a little bit surprised why. Oh, by the way, when he swiped two years later, she was like fascinated that he didn't remember her. And she went into a little bit of a confusion around that. I'm gonna say, when you swipe on hundreds, if not thousands of people, oftentimes people start to blend together. What fascinated me was how much real estate this person was occupying in her mind, her heart, her soul. For someone she barely knew. I mean, barely knew this person. And yet she's feeling so much frustration over this silence. And then she comes on to say that, well, you know, I'm so picky with so many other men and he checked all the boxes, if you will, in the beginning. I think one of the challenges most women and men experience in this area of frustration is this scarcity mentality. And that if someone goes silent, you think they're the only person on the planet that will fulfill the job order of your soulmate, of your beloved, of your boyfriend or girlfriend. We are riddled with scarcity mentality. And it's no wonder there's a lot of frustration going on. So coming back to what causes silence, it's experiencing doubt. And I get that it's frustrating because in the early stages of the community or connecting, there's a lot of communication. So there doesn't seem like there's doubt. But at the same time, we have to recognize that it takes about, first off, Jay Shetty says it takes about 40 hours of face to face time just to begin to get to know someone. I always say it takes about a hundred hours of face to face time just to build the first layer of trust. And it takes about 200 hours according to Jay Shetty of face to face time just to build a good, solid foundational friendship with another human being. 200 hours is a lot of time. And that's what's needed to get to know someone. And typically within the first 90 days when a man is, for lack of a better word, courting you, if you will, or getting to know you and you're getting to know them. Hopefully you've amassed that much time together. Now that's a lot of time, a hundred hours, okay? And if you're going out on dates for a couple hours here or a couple hours there, it's gonna take time to really get to know another human being. And when we're driven by the chemical reaction, especially if we engage in physical connectivity, we can temporarily bond with another human being. Now for men, it's temporary bonding. For women, it tends to be a much longer bonding period once they are physically intimate with a man. So I'm reminded of something my son shared with me and I hope he doesn't mind if he feels like I'm throwing him under the bus here, but there's a picture of my oldest son right there. And a couple of years ago, he was in a relationship with a woman, a young woman, I should say. And they met on a dating app. They began seeing each other regularly and because they lived relatively close to one another, they amassed a fair amount of time together. And around the 90 day mark of them dating, he said, dad, I'm just not feeling it for her, you know? And what he meant was he wasn't feeling a level of what he believes love should feel like. He was in a relationship when he was in college and he said by the 90 day mark. Now it wasn't that this was like on the clock or on the calendar, 90 days. It was just roughly within this 90 day period. He recognized that he wasn't having stronger feelings for her. He wasn't feeling like he wanted to progress the relationship much further. And he checked in with me and I said, you know, Colin, just give it a little more time. I know this is kind of confusing. And he did, you know, for another two months and he came to the conclusion that he wasn't feeling this strong drive towards her. And love is a fickle thing, you know? And then this happens for men, this happens for women is that we can spend time with someone, we can get to know them, we can enjoy them, we can like lots of things about them, yet the same time we don't actually, I'm gonna use the term fall in love with them. Now he did the honorable thing and he expressed, you know, he was wrestling with his emotions for a little bit, we were talking about it. He wasn't being, you know, he didn't ghost, he didn't disappear, but he pulled back a little bit because when you're in a state of uncertainty, when you're in a state of confusion, it's hard to move forward in a relationship. So for a couple of months, he did pull back energetically a little bit as he was navigating his emotions. And then at the five month mark, he intimated that he just needed to exit the relationship. And she was devastated because she liked him a lot and maybe she did fall in love with him, maybe she didn't. But you see, now the challenge is, is he did the honorable thing to do, he did it in person. Today, especially for those in midlife, a lot of times how men exit a relationship is they go silent for a period of time, they pull back and they're actually kind of waiting for you to initiate the conversation because they're in a state of fear, they're in a state of confusion, they're in a state of doubt, they might like things about you. And yet at the same time, they don't feel that you're, for lack of a better word, the one, okay? This is just like, we have to experience that this is life. And when these things happen, oftentimes women take it as a sign of rejection, men take it as a sign of rejection too. When someone wants to end a relationship, sure, you might feel rejected, you're not rejected, it's just they couldn't reach the level that you reached. That's all, they didn't reach the level you reached. And yet we oftentimes as human beings take this so personally, just like this woman who barely met him, I mean, met the man once. And yet he was occupying so much real estate in her mind and in her heart. And she felt a lack of self-worth, a lack of self-esteem. And then she wanted to progress or profess how picky she is in the dating marketplace and how hard it is to find a good person. Folks, I'm here to say most men and women are good people. We're wounded people, many people don't have good relationship skills, but most people are good people. You know, when we actually give a person a chance and we find out who their heart is, we're surprised. And yet here, particularly in the United States, we are very superficial, we're hyper-focused on physical beauty, men and women alike, and men tend to be more so than women, but we're so hyper-focused on the superficial aspects, no wonder it is an absolute cluster F out there when it comes to the dating marketplace. So I wanna lean into something that's really important that I shared a moment ago regarding this 90-day period. I've observed that most men within 90 days of getting to know a woman, he knows whether or not he wants to progress it forward or if he wants to end it, okay? Most men know this. The challenge is because we have a lot of broken and wounded men out there, they will stay in a, from their perspective, and I'm just saying it's a perspective, I'm not saying this is a fact, they'll stay in a mediocre relationship because it's better to stay in a mediocre relationship than it is to be alone. In fact, it kind of surprises me, women stay in mediocre relationships and then when the relationship ends, they're so devastated and yet the relationship was rather unfulfilling, it was mediocre. But why do men stay in mediocre relationships? And what I mean is it just doesn't fulfill them. It's because they're either waiting for somebody to replace you or they're waiting to lose interest because they're getting the benefits of companionship occasionally speaking. They're getting the benefits of connection occasionally speaking, they're getting the benefits of sex occasionally speaking. And so because they're getting some basic needs met, there's no need to make a change until something better comes along or they've completely lost interest. And men know, here's the thing, men know by the 90 day mark whether or not you are worth pursuing full term. In the case of my son, he was like in a state of doubt, that's understanding, it wasn't a no, but it was like I'm not feeling it and he gave it a little more time and a lot of times that happens too, we need a little more evidence to determine how we truly feel about someone. And quite frankly, the first year of a relationship, is the getting to know you phase. It takes a couple of years to truly get to know someone, to then choose the deep to build. The problem is that when couples are actively building the deep roots of trust in the very early stages of dating, that gap of getting to know a person shrinks substantially. The problem is most of you humans out there don't actually know how to get to know someone. In my private coaching, we have an exercise called Radical Honesty Prequalifying Your Prospect. We have multiple exercises designed to ask the deeper questions to evoke the emotional aspects of the relationship. Many humans operate from a very transactional type of relationship, mostly centered around entertainment. This is why women appreciate romance because it's entertaining. When I say they appreciate, they kind of feel some sense of validation. As I always say, romance should be reserved for those couples who are in a fully committed relationship with one another and not as an entry point into relationship. Men use romance as an entry point to get physically intimate with you and not necessarily an expression of true care and love in the early stages. So what should we do in those early stages is to be more radically honest, to be more authentic, to be more transparent, to be vulnerable early on and have deeper conversations to determine compatibility and ideally holding off the physical intimacy for a period of time. I once did a blog called The 10 Date Rule, The 10 Date Rule. Now it used to be, I remember when I first was single out on the dating marketplace after my divorce in 2005, there was something called the three date rule. And what that meant was if a man hasn't been physically intimate with you by the third date, he was usually out the door. And that seemed to be the ongoing narrative from 2005 to 2020. And actually for most younger people that is a very common narrative. If you haven't had sex right away, it's usually not going anywhere. My 10 date rule said if a man reaches 10 physical dates with you, he is most likely going to explore a deeper relationship with you, most likely. Midlife men are a little bit different because of distance and proximity and such. A lot of people will accept occasional companionship, occasional connection, occasional sex, and they can drag out this period of time. But for the most part when a man has physically been with you 10 times and you haven't had physical sex, you haven't had sex with one another, there's a good chance that by the time you have sex with one another, whether it happens on the seventh, eight, ninth, or 10th date, or the 10th date thereafter, there is a greater chance for success. That's all that means. So why is it important that we hold off or at least before there's physical intimacy that there's actually some agreements with one another because then you determine someone's validity, their intentionality. Folks, you all have heard me talk about, maybe you haven't. Something called my dating vows, okay? This is like a prenup to relationship, a prenup to relationship. By the way, there's a link below to get my dating vows. You can also get a copy of my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway, and schedule a coaching session with me. Okay, or at least a discovery call with me. The dating vows are like a relationship prenup. It's an agreement between two people before you physically give your heart, before you get too physically intimate with one another, and you make agreements with one another. Like we should be doing dating prenups. I call it dating vows. It's a vow to one another, but it's a prenup, and it's basically spelling out what if we're going to explore a relationship together and we're gonna be physically intimate, then let's have a conversation. Prenups in marriage are to decide if this doesn't work out, is having clarity of what we're going to do if this doesn't work out, and a vow or a relationship prenup is simply an opportunity to find out where someone stands, and it goes like this. I'll say it quickly, and there's a link below to get a copy of it. I agree to explore the process of getting to know you with the intent to declare something serious in the next three to six months. It's like we're making an agreement to explore this with intentionality. I agree to be monogamous sexually while we're having regular sex together. I think that's a fair thing to agree with one another. I agree not to actively seek to meet and date others while we're in the dating process, including my dating, taking my dating profile down if you met through a dating service. Why is this important? It's not about exclusivity. It's about a commitment to explore each other. Exclusivity, exclusively. Making a commitment. I agree to speak up if this isn't working for me versus pulling back, ghosting, disappearing, or going silent, silent. I agree to invest regular time in the process of getting to know you, which looks like social activities, hobbies, mutual interests. These are conversations to have with one another. My clients that do this have a greater chance of success. By the way, in the dating marketplace right now, you have a greater chance practically of getting hit by lightning and finding a real, true, juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship. Those of my clients that do these things have a greater chance of success by 10 fold because they're operating from a place of intentionality. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? I'd like to hear because the fact of the matter is when a man goes silent, because he's experiencing doubt, but that doubt is because you didn't build the deep roots of trust in the very early stage by being vulnerable, by being authentic, by being transparent with one another. And it's no wonder there's a lot of relationship frustration. So what do I wanna recommend for all of you? Show this video to a man you're dating. Have a conversation about this. Read the vows with one another. Have conversations because the more you converse with one another, the safer you feel with one another. And when that doubt comes up, it's a lot easier to talk about it from a place of sincerity, from a place from that vulnerable, authentic, transparent place. And that's my invitation for all of you. Is this sinking in? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Please post a comment below. If you're part of my group called Midlife Love Master, I'd like you to send your friends to my website, jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group and get these videos as well as a lot of personal connection with me through our Facebook group as well. Okay, I'm gonna sign up this video as I always do first off, give myself a big gigantic Jonathan Barrett 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, the 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-bye now, bye-bye.