Have you become forgiving of your man’s actions to the point where you’ve convinced yourself that it’s true love when he ignores you? Have you found yourself making excuses, saying that he isn’t ignoring you per se, but rather giving you space to breathe?
There’s a difference between being in a healthy relationship and having enough space for yourself, and being in a relationship where you’re disrespected and often given the silent treatment.
When a guy ignores you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he loves you. Instead, it means that you’re having issues that need to be resolved if you want your relationship to work.
The real reason behind him ignoring you is the fact that he’s dealing with problems that he wants sorted out. Maybe he’s fed up with something, but doesn’t know how to tell you.
That’s when the one you love decides to ignore you, thinking that pulling away from you will help him solve the issues.
But, he doesn’t realize that his behavior is actually doing more harm than good.
By ignoring you without giving you the reason, he’s affecting your self-respect and self-esteem.
You have no idea what’s going on, and you can’t fix the problem when you don’t know what caused it.
That’s why you’re probably reading this, right? Because you feel stuck in a situation that seems to have no solution.
You’re willing to work on your relationship, but if only he’d give you a reasonable explanation of what’s going on between the two of you.
In the meantime, you’ll try to seek solace in convincing yourself that it’s true love when he ignores you.
But let me tell you something. Yes, when he’s ignoring you, it probably means that he cares about you and that something hurt him.
But if he truly loved you, he’d sit with you and have a serious conversation because he knows that this behavior won’t get the two of you anywhere.
Before we dig deeper into the steps you should take when the one you love ignores you, let’s see why men start giving the cold shoulder in the first place.
Why did your true love decide to ignore you?
You’re in a romantic relationship, and everything seems to be going well. All of a sudden, you realize that your guy is pulling away from you.
His phone calls lessen, his text messages stop coming, and when you manage to convince him to spend time together, he feels like a different person.
You realize that all of these are actually warning signs that your loved one has for some reason started ignoring you.
You can’t stop thinking about it and wonder what’s going on:
Does he still love me? Is it true love when he ignores me? What changed in our relationship?
Moving forward without him doesn’t seem like an option, so you want to get to the bottom of this.
You want to know what happened between the two of you that your man started ignoring you in the first place.
So, here’s a list of reasons why men tend to ignore the women they love. Let’s see what pushes him away from you.
1. His feelings aren’t reciprocated
When a guy feels like he’s not being understood, he might decide to pull away for a moment.
The first time he senses that his feelings aren’t reciprocated, he won’t do anything.
He’ll give you some time so he can be sure that he’s not making a big deal out of nothing.
But if he sees that nothing changes and you keep treating him the same way, not considering his feelings, then he’ll decide to react.
So, in this case, it’s not necessarily true love when he ignores you. Instead, it could be the way he copes with not being understood in a relationship.
Maybe he doesn’t know how to approach you and tell you what’s bothering him, so he’s using a more passive way to deal with the issue.
His ignoring you is a sign of dissatisfaction.
2. He’s afraid of commitment
It’s obvious that a lot of men have a strong fear of commitment.
The bare thought of spending their lives with only one woman seems to make them sick.
Even when they fall in love and develop strong feelings for a certain woman, they still tend to go through phases where they’re petrified of committing to her.
In that case, a man can decide to ignore you. And he may continue doing so until he deals with the issue on his own or finds the courage to tell you what’s bothering him.
It’s not true love that’s making him ignore you. It’s the fact that he’s afraid of commitment and has no idea how to deal with it.
3. He’s afraid of rejection
Even if you’re already in a committed relationship, your man may still feel a deep fear of rejection.
What if after a while you decide that he isn’t the right one for you and leave him?
We don’t think about it, but men have feelings too. They feel strong emotions when they fall in love.
They also think about all the scenarios that might play out in the future.
So, what if he gives himself completely to you, and then somewhere down the line you decide to break up with him? He’d be heartbroken.
Plus, the rejection would destroy his ego, making him feel terrible about himself.
That’s why he might choose to ignore you, thinking that he’s saving himself the pain.
It’s one of the biggest fears men in a relationship have, and they usually don’t know the right way to process it.
4. Love scares him
Love is beautiful, but it’s also scary. It makes you feel safe and vulnerable at the same time.
Because of that, men have a tendency to hide from love because they want to be sure that their hearts won’t get broken into a million pieces.
What if he doesn’t know how to treat you well? What if he ends up being the one who loves more? And what if you hurt him?
How a guy like this sees it, love is risky.
So, in order to save himself from the possible pain, he looks for a way to deal with all these thoughts running through his mind.
If he’s afraid of love, he might choose to ignore you because he’s too afraid of what might happen.
The chances that this will happen are higher if you know that your guy has been hurt in the past.
Now he might try to hide from the potential pain, thinking he’s saving himself from going through the same ordeal again.
5. He’s angry or upset because of something you did
When you upset a man, he’ll most likely suppress and hide his feelings.
This is due to the fact that men are taught from an early age that they should hide their emotions.
So, in order not to let you see that you hurt him, he’ll act all tough and pull away from you.
He thinks that telling you that you hurt him makes him look weak and like less of a man.
But if he ignores you, he’s not giving you the power to feel like you did something hurtful because this man right here is tough and can’t be hurt.
At least that’s what he’s trying to make himself believe when he ignores you and pulls away from you.
6. He’s hiding something from you
When a man hides something, he doesn’t want you to find out about it. So, to be sure that he won’t accidentally give himself away, he decides to ignore you.
It acts as a shield between you and his hidden secrets.
He could be hiding something insignificant like the fact that he doesn’t like your friends. Or it could be something as big as another woman.
In both cases, he doesn’t want to tell you the truth, so he pulls away from you, making sure not to say something that would reveal his secret.
If this sounds familiar to you, then it isn’t true love when he ignores you. It’s actually far from love. It’s fear of getting caught in lies.
7. He’s playing games with you
If you’re in a relationship with a toxic man or narcissist, then this could be one of the games they love to play.
When he ignores you, he makes you chase after him. And we all know how much toxic people love being in the center of attention.
Or he read somewhere that the best way to make you go crazy for him is if he plays hard-to-get.
And in his mind, ignoring you and completely pulling away from you is how to play it.
Whatever the case, none of these games are suitable for adults.
If your guy thinks that he can make you chase him by toying with your feelings and ignoring you, then you’re better off without him.
A real man doesn’t do this. A real man knows the right way to treat a woman.
And it certainly isn’t by giving her the silent treatment for no reason.
8. He doesn’t care about you
This one may hit hard, but it’s definitely one of the possibilities.
When a man ignores you, it might be far from true love. It may just be because he doesn’t care about you (anymore).
Especially if you’re in a relationship with a selfish guy who doesn’t usually care about other people’s feelings.
In that case, he won’t bother telling you that his feelings for you are gone.
Instead, he ignores you and pulls away completely without explanation.
This behavior is at the very least disrespectful and you should never allow guys to treat you like this.
“If you don’t like me, tell me face-to-face but don’t delete me from your life completely without saying a word.”
9. He leads a busy life
The final reason for a man ignoring you may be that he leads a seriously busy life, which then makes you feel like he’s acting reserved toward you.
If he’s genuinely busy, he may forget to reply to your messages and have no time to call you. And the amount of time he spends with you will be limited.
All of these might seem like signs of him ignoring you, when in reality he’s just too busy to spend all his time with you.
I’m not saying this is right. I’m just saying that it’s one of the possible reasons why your guy might be ignoring you.
If it isn’t true love when he ignores you, then what to do about it?
I already mentioned at the very beginning that ignoring someone isn’t a sign that you truly love them.
It may be that your man cares about you and feels hurt. But even so, giving the cold shoulder isn’t the best way to deal with things.
It’s childish and immature to think that true love can overcome every obstacle and that you simply need to ignore the one you love to solve all of the issues in a relationship.
Love is more about communicating your feelings and looking for ways to fix the problem. It’s about working together to find the right solution.
So, no, it isn’t true love when he ignores you. That behavior has no place in a healthy relationship.
But it’s obvious that you can’t control the way men act. You can’t tell them how to behave, or what’s right and what’s wrong.
So what can you do when you see that your man is ignoring you and realize the fact that this shouldn’t be seen as true love?
Here are the things that you can do if you find yourself in the same situation.
1. Be 100% sure that he’s actually ignoring you
If you feel that someone’s ignoring you, first make sure that your feelings are valid.
Is he actually ignoring me or is he just paying less attention to me because he’s had a hectic week?
Is he constantly ignoring me or has it only happened once that he didn’t give me the attention I needed?
When you get the answers to these questions, you’ll then be able to get to the bottom of the problem.
If his behavior keeps repeating over time, then you can be sure that he’s pulled away from you and isn’t treating you the same as he used to.
If you’re trying to convince yourself that true love is when he ignores you, I beg you to stop torturing yourself like that.
It’s disrespectful and rude to put yourself down, and that’s exactly what you’re doing by making excuses for his behavior.
The only reasonable explanation for ignoring you is if he’s busy.
Otherwise, he should openly discuss his reasons with you, and work together on solving them.
2. Try to find out the reason he’s ignoring you
Is he ignoring me because he truly loves me? Or is it because of something else – something more rational?
Behind every type of behavior lies a reason for it.
Sometimes, those reasons might sound odd to us, but it doesn’t mean that our partner isn’t allowed to feel that way.
So, if you notice that your man is ignoring you, you should do your best to figure out what the underlying reason is.
Analyze both his and your recent behavior, and try to get to the root cause of the issue.
Maybe he’s said something that can give you a clue as to why he’s ignoring you. Maybe you did something, after which he pulled away from you.
There’s no chance that all of a sudden, out of the blue, he changed his behavior completely without a valid reason.
There must be something behind it and it’s up to you to find out what.
3. Don’t overreact or make rash decisions
When you realize that the person you love is ignoring you, you feel a whole cocktail of emotions hitting the surface.
You’re mad and angry, and you desperately want to know the reason for his actions.
But to make an impulsive decision or to attack your partner right away would be a huge mistake.
I know it sounds hard, but the best thing you can do is take a deep breath and calm yourself for a second.
Reacting straight away would probably make him pull away from you even further, which would then only make you angrier that he doesn’t want to communicate with you.
Take some time so all those bubbling emotions can calm down. After that, you’ll be ready to have a serious discussion with him.
4. Give him space
Messaging him ten times in a row and calling his number until his phone dies won’t work when your guy is purposefully ignoring you.
What he needs right now is space to figure out his thoughts on his own, without feeling pressured into making any decisions.
In the end, you don’t want him to stay with you and change his behavior only because he thinks that it’s what you want him to do.
Instead, you want him to be honest with his actions and to make a change in his behavior because he truly wants to – not because he thinks that it’s something you’d appreciate.
Real change comes from within, and when he does something because he thinks others would like it, that change won’t be permanent.
5. Discuss the issue with him
True love is when he ignores you? That makes no sense.
But it also makes no sense to leave him right away, without having a serious talk with him.
Before you decide on the next move, you first need to have a face-to-face conversation with him.
You need to get a better idea of where he’s standing and what differs in your opinions.
You can’t solve an issue by sweeping it under the rug and pretending like it doesn’t exist.
Also, don’t leave him right away before finding out what went wrong between the two of you.
Even if you don’t want to stay in a relationship with him for any longer, you’ll be able to get a closure that will help you move on.
6. If you’re the cause of the problem, apologize
If it turns out that you did something that hurt him and made him ignore you, then you should apologize for your actions.
Relationships are two-way streets and both of you bring equally to the table.
So, when you make a mistake, it’s on you to apologize for your wrongdoing. In the same way, he needs to own up to the things he did wrongly.
You shouldn’t be waiting for each other to make the first step because that won’t get you anywhere.
Instead of moving forward, you’ll be stuck in the same spot for ages and it’ll only get harder to get out.
7. Let him know that he can’t call it true love when he ignores you
If you notice that he’s giving you explanations on how he loves you but still continues to ignore you, then you should let him know that you don’t want to call this thing love.
Because it isn’t true love when a man decides to ignore you and pulls away from you, without letting you know the reason.
It isn’t true love when he keeps disappearing from your life every time things get hard.
True love is about working on the issues together and always trying to find the right solution to your problems.
It’s about standing next to your partner, letting them know what’s going on inside your head.
He can’t expect you to read his mind and instinctively know what’s going on with him.
Instead, he needs to open up to you and share his feelings with you.
If he’s chosen you as his partner, lover, and best friend, then it shouldn’t come off as a task to be honest with you and share his inner thoughts with you.
True love is when he fights for you and when you fight for him. When you choose each other over and over again.
And that’s a far cry from saying that true love is when he ignores you.
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