my bf never wants alone time w me...why?

[Ashley888]

Hi,
This is it, I know my bf for more than 5 years and we've dated in the past and now we're back together. It's been a year since we're in a relationship. I lived at his house and everything's pretty good. But...actually, it's been months (really, like almost 8 months) that he never wants to spend alone time with me and this is not by saying "no" directly to me when I propose something. It's more about excuses he makes, like every single day he's tired, or just don't want to do the activity I bring up.
Well, so I stopped asking and once, I complained about doing nothing with him and he told me that I'd never ask anything ???? but I did, for weeks and got (legit!) tired of it because he'd refuse, and then, an argument starts and I always end up shutting myself down.


I must add something, we almost hang out every 2 days with his friends, like there's no problem he says he loves when I'm here with his friends and he gets sad if I say no when he wants me to join him and his friends. So I've never thought he's ashamed of showing me, as he always bring me up when I feel down, ugly etc.

So, I'd like to know from a man point of view or even a girl, what y'all think?
The only time we hang out just the two of us, it's for buying groceries or an appointment, he used to take me on date sometimes, restaurant, cinema, walking....but someday he just stopped and I've never figured out why.


PS: talking with him is quite impossible because he always repeats that there's no problem, that everything's going good, and if I try to deepen the talk he feels attacked and isolate himself from me...

[Elliot]

You must understand that the longer a relationship last, your boyfriend won't continue doing certain things. So, you shouldn't expect him to do things he was doing initially when the relationship began. This is normal, and you should accept it as it is to have a healthy relationship.

[Anthonia]

I too have been guilty of saying: My boyfriend won't spend time with me. It was a frequent complaint I had. And the more I said it to my boyfriend, the further he seemed to get. But I used to think that the only way for a couple to solve their problems is to sit down and talk about it. So despite all the signs that he was pulling away, I continued to bring up the subject.

It was truly a confusing time for me. Because deep down in my heart, I knew my statement to be untrue. In all fairness, I was aware that despite his own busy schedule, he clearly did make some time to go out with me, watch some TV together or have dinner. And as I looked deeper into what was really bothering me, I realized that the reason I was so unhappy, was that he didn't always agree to spend time with me spontaneously (as and when I liked). In fact, after our dates, he would often say goodbye and not attempt to extend our time together (although I was so desperately hoping that he would).

For a long time, I felt hurt thinking that maybe something was wrong with my relationship. I thought that if my boyfriend didn't spend time with me, it had to mean I wasn't really that important to him. There were other even more important matters, than me, that he had to attend to (like work, his other friends and playing computer games). So that surely was a bad sign, wasn't it?

Thinking that way used to make me so angry and resentful.

Only later on, after broadening my perspective about men, did I begin to understand why my boyfriend did the things he did, and what his actions meant. This made me feel better. I felt more at peace and secure about my relationship with him.

So the first thing I learned from Dr John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, is that a man needs his 'cave time'. A time where he withdraws to be by himself, think about things and solve whatever problems he may be facing in his life. It's just the way men cope. Women talk to each other to cope with life, but men withdraw into their cave. So this helped me to understand better why my boyfriend needed his alone time.

Next, I learned that: A woman's primary sense of self is through your relationships - as a mother, a friend, and a wife and lover; his is his success as a man. (Quoted from the book "Men Made Easy" by Kara Oh). Understanding this helped me a lot because now I understood why my boyfriend spent so much time at work and with his friends. All these activities helped him to feel successful as a man. So instead of resenting him for not wanting to spend time with me, it made it easier for me to be supportive about his career and ambitions once I understood this.

[Peggy]

Chances are good that you've tried to make him want to spend more time with you. Likely you've done that by talking with him, or attempting to talk with him about it. From years of experience, I can tell you that quite often, talking just is not going to get you what you really want from a man. Men respond so much better to actions than they do to words, especially if they feel they're being forced into something. That's why it's so much more effective if you show him that you're not happy with the way things are. The easiest way to do that is to stop acting like all you want is to be with him and stop being available when he decides to make time for you.

If a man knows that he already owns a woman's heart he won't put in that much effort to please her. He can do small things that irritate her because he knows she'll overlook them. That's exactly what's happening when you want him to spend more time with you and he doesn't. He knows you'll still hang out when he suggests it, so he sees no reason to switch his schedule around to see you. In other words, when he gets around to finally seeing you, he knows you'll be eagerly waiting for it. You can completely change that now by not seeing him as often. Start living your own life and stop waiting for him to decide when you two will get together. Instead, get out and have fun with friends. Don't be as accessible as you've been. If you can do this, and not make a big deal about it, he'll sense the shift in your attitude and it will make him sit up and take notice. Pulling back a bit is often all it takes to really get him to want to be with you.