Attention, ladies! If you’re hungry for a serving of cold, hard truth that will help you succeed in your dating life, grab a chair. Men, scram! We’re going to be giving you your serving of a truth-burger next Monday. Alright, now that it’s just us girls, we want to talk about a problem that seems to plague a lot of us.

Here’s the situation. You find a cute guy that you’re interested in, and you send him a message, or maybe he even messaged you first! Awesome! You start chatting back and forth, and you get ready to plan a date. You plan the date, and then over the next few days, he starts to seem a little distant. The next thing you know, “something comes up,” and he has to cancel the date. After that, he starts to get slower and slower with his responses until finally, it takes him days and maybe even weeks to get back to you.

What went wrong? Well, it could be a lot of things. Some men are just flaky or aren’t respectful enough to let you know they aren’t interested or have found someone else. But we can’t just go ahead and blame the men without taking some time to self-reflect and make sure that we didn’t do something to push him away.

That’s what we want to talk about today. One of the biggest ways that women drive men away in the dating process is by coming on too Strong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with clear communication and expressing your feelings. The problem, though, is that you need to make sure that you initially do this in moderation. Otherwise, you’re not going to have much luck in the world of dating.

Why Does This Scare Men Away?

There is nothing wrong with knowing right away that a man is going to play a special role in your mind. Frankly, our women’s intuition probably helps us to get a leg up on this. The thing is, though, sometimes the people we are dating aren’t as quick to the punch as we are. This means that if we’re treating them like our future husband and they’re still trying to get to know us, we’re going to run into some issues.

Thanks to the media, men have been trained to be scared of women who come on too strong. They’ve been told and conditioned to run for the hills the second a woman starts moving faster than they are comfortable with. Is this fair? Probably not, but it’s the way things are. We can pretend it’s not, but that isn’t going to help us find Mr. Right.

Men get skeptical of women that are looking to move too quickly emotionally. They worry that you’re going to be clingy or are possibly rebounding from a Bad Relationship. These are legitimate concerns because if we are clingy or just got out of a bad relationship, we tend to act this way. Again, we’re just trying to be real with you here. Taking an honest look at how you are acting in relationship settings is important to make sure that this is not an issue.

How to Avoid Doing This

As we just stated, the most important thing is being honest with yourself. You need to willing to take an outside looking in view of how you are reacting to new matches. Most ladies that we’ve talked to that struggle with this are clueless that they are coming on too strong. They think they are just communicating well and letting the men they are talking to know they have feelings for them. Step one is to take an honest look at yourself and don’t be scared to admit that you need to make a change.

What you want to be looking for is how quickly are you sharing your personal feelings with someone about how you feel about them. Honestly, you’re better off holding off on giving the intimate details until it feels natural. You may think that doing this will make sure no other ladies swoop in on the man you want, but it just pushes him away. You need to let things follow a natural progression and not worry about trying to rush the process. If he’s that easily swayed away from you, you don’t want him anyways.

We aren’t advocating that you play games or pretend to be disinterested. All we are saying is that you should be selective about the information that you share with someone about how you feel. Wait for signs or signals that it’s ok to share that information. If you’re a week into talking to a new guy and you’re telling him how cute your babies would be, you’re screwing things up big time.

While you may be correct and heck, he may even be thinking it too, it’s not the right time to share that information. During the “feeling out process” avoid talking about long-term commitment type things like marriage, babies, and titles. By titles, we mean don’t be asking if you’re boyfriend and girlfriend or even worse assuming that you are and calling them that. Take. Your. Time.

If you really care about the guy and want it to work, you’ll take things at turtle speed. When he starts to open up to you about how he feels about you, you can let him know how you feel. Just don’t let it all come gushing out like a tidal wave that scares him away. Moderation is the key here and paying attention to how he reacts. If you say something and it seems to spook him, backtrack and slow things down. This will take some feeling out to get right, but being aware of it and being honest with yourself is the first step.

The Final Word

Again, we want to make sure that you’re not taking this as a call to hide your feelings. Effective communication and sharing how you feel is important, but you need to realize that sometimes men aren’t as quick to the draw as we are with these things. Give him time to find his own feelings before you share yours. Otherwise, his instincts are going to tell him that you’re clingy and that he should run. And you know what, he is going to run. Just remember these three words…Take. Your. Time.