What’s on his mind

The most obvious kind of CP, the type we’ve all either faced or dished out, rears its head at the beginning, in the first few months of dating.

Why does he string you along for three months and then cut it off?

The case
A recent thing I had with Christian, a 27-year-old website developer. We met at a party. Or, I should say, I saw him, thought, “You’re cute,” and leapt on him. Minutes later, we were out in the garden, away from everyone else, kissing. An hour passed in what felt like a minute — I kiss a lot of guys and this was something else. I invited him to come back with me, and he was a pure gentleman, quietly paying for the cab, refraining from sex (I was a little disappointed by this) and the next morning asking when he could call me.

The next day, I had an email from him inviting me to dinner and drinks that Friday night. I was stunned, as it’s not every day a guy goes for the top-drawer slot: Friday and dinner. It turned out to be not just any dinner, either: a posh restaurant in Mayfair, then a swanky bar in Soho. We ended up spending the entire weekend together, unable to move from his bed.

Now, call me crazy, but a 48-hour first date bodes well. So imagine my surprise when we parted at the Tube station on Sunday evening with a chilly “Don’t be a stranger” from him. And then, when I hadn’t heard anything from him by Wednesday, I emailed, thanking him for a nice weekend. His reply was all smiles, and he offered to come round that Friday with chocolate cake. Again, we had a gorgeous time.

Things continued in this stately and systematic vein: no excess communication, carefully planning things in advance. At our peak, we saw each other twice a week, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were always in danger of going slack. Time slid by. After three months, I began to feel upset that he wasn’t in touch more than every four days. He explained: “There might be times when I’m away, and I can’t be in touch every day or whatever.” This was a couple of weeks after he had said, with a caress, in bed: “I can’t have a girlfriend. I told myself I wouldn’t, so I could focus on freedom and work.”

I started to feel that if I didn’t drop everything, I might never see him again. so I tried to be available when he called. The moment I left his flat one Wednesday afternoon after a sleepover, with that now-familiar sinking feeling that I didn’t have a clue when I’d next see him, the penny dropped. It was time to end things. I decided to ignore his calls. It was easy — they didn’t come.

What the guys think
Tom L, 28, recently single: “Just like animals, men are motivated by self-interested simplicities. There’s a saying about not wanting to buy the cow when you get the milk for free, and I suspect that plays a part in Christian’s behaviour.” I proffered the booty on a plate, so he didn’t want the rest.

Adam L, 31, in a committed relationship: “Christian falls perfectly into the Casanova category. Casanovas teach themselves how to make women fall for them, because they weren’t always the smoothies they are now. They get off on the validation of getting it right over and over, but don’t care about a long-term result — and they’re cold perfectionists”.

Bottom Line
Guys who hold you at arm’s length to a cruel and mystifying extent are not good news, because they are motivated by some internal, hidden game with themselves. That said, there was a sex-on-a-plate element to which he was not impartial. Early sex doesn’t have to cancel out the potential for a relationship, but it can — as it did here — get in the way of a guy appreciating the woman herself.

Some men make the relationship deteriorate until the woman is forced to end it (Robert Dale)

Why does he go odd after a year, but won't end it?

It’s one of the oldest jokes in the dating book: the guy begins to act so offish that eventually the mortified, mystified girl has no choice but to break it off. The mystery remains: why? Why are so many adult males incapable of conducting a mature, honest break-up?

The case
Alice and Steve, both teachers, were in the same crowd and had lots of friends in common, many of whom were shacked up with each other. Friends started saying they’d be great together, and one night — bam. They got together and within weeks were inseparable. At every opportunity with friends in the pub, Steve would rave about how in love he was. Alice had a permanent smile on her face. They’d talk about having babies together; Steve, in particular, seemed sold on the dream of the happy family and wanted it as soon as possible.

Their honeymoon phase lasted a year, then Steve turned odd. He stopped caring as much as he’d done before; it started with little things like irritability and nonchalance. He wouldn’t go to the pub with their friends, and when he did go, he’d ignore Alice. He’d moan about having to do things he’d have jumped to do before. But Alice was in love with Steve, so despite being miserable, she wanted to make it work. All the same, she couldn’t help reacting to his coldness and bitchiness, so she stopped sleeping with him. They bickered and fought and were nasty to each other all the time, and didn’t even have a sex life to make up for it.

Finally, when it got so grisly that there was no conversation left to have, Alice ended it. She found out recently that he split up with his next girlfriend of two years, also having turned cold around the one-year mark, with her finally ending it. Asking around, she found out he’d done the exact same thing with the girlfriend before her. What is going on with Steve?

What the guys think
Barry M, 26, king of flings: “Obviously, if you’ve been going out with a girl, you like her, so you don’t necessarily want to dump her and you don’t want to hurt her. So you just make the relationship deteriorate until she is forced to dump you. That way, nobody gets hurt. Straightforward, right?”

Rob Q, 27, serial monogamist: “First, men are cowards. If we can avoid confrontation and letting someone down, we will. Basically, Steve is finding he’s beyond the exciting early stages of the relationship, and he’s not taking it well. He seems to have trouble accepting that things have to change with the passing of time.”

Bottom Line
On the surface, Steve is bored with the relationship, which, coupled with his innate dislike of confrontation, means he puts off a break-up. This boredom, though, is likely to be part of a wider obsession with racking up the number of girls that are dependent on him, so that he feels validated and stud-like. His cowardice has another form: the morbid fear of the realities of a longer-term relationship. Moving beyond the honeymoon phase terrifies him, since it means he’s one step closer to having his freedom curtailed, which would mean more compromise and less excitement. Wah! Must ruin!

Girls, think of it like this. The second he starts acting badly, he’s trying to rip off the plaster of the relationship. You might as well do it yourself before it gets more infected and, ultimately, more painful.

What to do if you want to save this

Barry has a fatalistic view, but Rob thinks there’s hope for salvation. “In this kind of situation,” Rob says, “a girlfriend can tap into a guy’s mental block and coax him out of it by making him aware of what’s really bothering him. Once they’ve discussed it honestly (and he’s forced to stop playing games), they have a decent chance of moving on, since he’ll realise things aren’t as terrifying as he’s making them out to be.” ?

© Zoe Strimpel 2010. Extracted from What the Hell Is He Thinking?

All the Questions You’ve Ever Asked About Men Answered, which is published on Thursday (Penguin £8.99). To buy it at the discounted price of £8.54 (including p&p), contact the Sunday Times Bookshop on 0845 271 2135 or visit timesonline.co.uk/bookshop