You’re a man who prefers to be in relationships with women where emotional intimacy isn’t expected or wanted. You’re okay with sexual intimacy, but only if it isn’t accompanied by emotional intimacy. In other words, you want sex, but you don’t want any heart connection with a woman.

If you’re under thirty, you may have found plenty of women to date who haven’t yet figured out why their relationships keep failing. Of course your relationships always end in failure too, and likely for the same reasons, but you’re going to hang tough and have it your way or no way. If you’re over thirty and still cling to the idea that the perfect relationship doesn’t require an emotional component, you’re probably not doing very well finding women close to your age to date.

While I admire your stamina, your rejection of emotional intimacy isn’t particularly admirable, because it’s painful to watch a man hit his head against the wall until he passes out, only to awaken and repeat banging his head against the wall. If you think there’s such a thing as an authentic relationship with a woman that doesn’t involve emotional intimacy, think again.

The reason this is a lose/lose philosophy is that absent emotional intimacy, what’s left is an acquaintanceship. The next time your life falls apart, call all of your acquaintances and see how many show up to help you. More than none would be surprising. No one is going to care about you unless you’re willing to care about them too. I’m not sure why that’s hard to understand, but it appears that for many men, the notion of emotional intimacy with a woman is too challenging to contemplate. Maybe challenging is the wrong word. Perhaps fear is a better word to describe a man who rejects emotional intimacy.

For two decades I went from woman to woman like a bee in heat, but unlike the bee who gathers pollen and makes food grow, all my relationships died from the lack of emotional nutrition. I was terrified to share my inner self with a woman for fear she would use it against me later on. I experienced such a disaster when I was young and figured out that the less I gave of myself, the better my chances for survival after the relationship cratered, and surprise, they all cratered.

Relationships, for men, are about getting past their fear and trust issues. Lots of men insist a woman earn their trust before they let them into their hearts. Of course that rarely happens because there’s no quantitative methodology for measuring trust. But it sure keeps a woman from getting into your heart. The perfect lose/lose.

Rejecting emotional intimacy is all about denying a woman access to your heart, whether your issues are fear, trust, or any other past pain that you haven’t let go of yet. To expect any woman worth having as your partner to embrace you with the feint hope that one day you’ll trust her is a complete non-starter.

Men who talk about their emotional intimacy fears with other men will find their fears aren’t unique. They will also learn lessons from those men who overcame their fear of intimacy who will share with them how they made that happen. It’s not cool to be a loner who preys on women desperate enough to embrace you no matter how unskilled you are. It’s very cool to be a man who stands with other men, teaches them what you’ve learned, and learn what they have to teach you.

It’s 2011, and way past time to wake up and embrace the emotions you keep jamming down into that special place you reserve to lock your feelings up in to avoid intimacy.

It’s time to
Act like a man!