Today's Gender Cold War

As far as I can see from the majority of posts that unhappy and frustrated women make about how their men are not returning their calls and playing cold/aloof/distant ...you know what I'm saying.

And then the helpful suggestions from other users hint mainly at the communication factor, that somewhere along the line, wires are getting crossed, signals are being mixed, the woman is nt communicating correctly what she actually wants to the guy and so therefore her upset is largely due to her own lacking in the Communication Department.

Well I am not so sure that the fault doesn't in fact lie squarely on the guys in this matter. I mean apart from actually talking face to face, speaking over the telephone is a very direct channel of communication. And if you call someone up it generaly means that you need or want to speak to or just hear them.

I happen to be on the receiving end (HA! what a contradictory euphemism!) of this type of thing from the man I've been seeing for the last couple of months. He's not calling back when he says he will basically. The latest trend is that he calls me or I call him after work at 6pm and he will generally say "I'll call you later" and then ends up calling me after midnight just as I've fallen asleep. He did it tonight and I could hear the backround noise from his local bar in his voice message.

This is not acceptable to me and it has pissed me off enough to tell him so last week. He didn't like the way I said it to him and he managed to turn my complaint back at me in the form that basically I didn't have any right to tell him what to do and what not t do and that maybe I was jumping ahead too quickly and thinking this is more of a relationship than it is. This upset me and I was quiet after this but he explained that he's the type of person that he will retreat if he feels like he is being told what to do or if he feels that he is being ordered around.

Anyway I think I was right to at least voice - albeit not as calmly as I could have mustered 😉 - my dissatisfaction at him not calling back when he says he will and calling me back late at night when he is in the bar and I am about to go to sleep.

And has it occured to me that he's is just stringing me along? Yes it has but I can't see any gain for him to keep a facade of interest in me so that he can be guaranteed a shag every weekend because that pretty much uses up all his concentration to be able to persue other women. In other words it's not very strategic to use that much time and energy in leading another guy or girl on if you just want companionship from them.

So I don't know what I should do. Because I'm not satsfied with this current set up and yet I feel that he does not tolerate any objection from me that he construes as me forcing him to change or bend to my will. But surely asking someone to just do what they say is not something he can really object to can he?

Is he upset? Has he things on his mind? Yes probably, he's coming from a not particularly amicable seperation from his wife. But I also have things on my mind and I understand that we dn't know eachother at all well enough to be comfortable confiding our troubles and insecurities with eachother. I would just think that if you miss someone like he says he misses me, that you wouldn't wait till you're in the bar 5 hours after telling the person you'd call them back to do so. I don't get it.

But since I've already tried to broach this issue not very effectively with him before, I wonder whether I should back away now. I don't even think saying that I'm going to do so will be useful as he may take this as a form of emotional blackmail. But for myself, I don't deserve to feel upset and anxious by his behavior because in this particular "relationship" I have done nothing wrong and we have gotten on well when we have been together as far as I have felt anyway.

It is important for me not to get angry with him as that acheives nothing useful for me at all. I have a lot of work to do on myself still and even though it is wonderful to enjoy the sensual pleasures of being sexually intimate with a man, I've got to weigh up my emotional fortress which is pretty weak against my physical desires.

It's a tough one when the guy in question is telling you he misses you and likes you very much.

So guys, do you relate to what I'm saying or am I just a crazy lady———