The Relationship Mistakes Men Don’t Realise They’re Making — Until It’s Too Late...

There are certain truths we stumble into only after something precious has already broken — truths that feel obvious in hindsight but were invisible while we were living inside them.

Relationships, especially the tender early ones, have this strange way of revealing our blind spots only when it's far too late to correct them. And if you are a man reading this, or perhaps someone who loves a man and is exhausted by repeating yourself, you may recognise the unmistakable pattern: things that could have been prevented, if only awareness had arrived sooner.

I’ve seen this happen again and again — in sessions with clients, in the stories they whisper through tears, and even in my own personal life. And every time, I find myself thinking…

If he had only known what she needed long before she needed to scream it, they could have stood a chance.

So let’s walk through this gently, humanly, as if we were sitting together over a warm drink and trying to make sense of the invisible distance that grows between two people who once wanted each other so deeply. Because most men don’t fail out of malice — they fail out of missing information. Out of cultural conditioning. And due to the lack of emotional education they never received.

And yet… the cost is the same. Miscommunication. Pointless conflict. Missed opportunities. Heartbreak.

Let’s begin at the beginning — the stage where most men don’t realise they're already losing the connection before it’s even had the chance to grow.

1. Why don’t men recognise that dating is dangerous for women?

If you are a woman, you already know this in your bones: dating is not neutral. It is not casual. It is not just another Sunday afternoon plan. Dating is dangerous — not metaphorically, not emotionally, but emotionally, physically and existentially. Every woman carries a catalogue of stories (her own and borrowed) that taught her vigilance long before she knew how to spell it.

Every woman has heard the warnings and appeals:

Text me when you get home. Share your location. Don’t let him walk behind you. Have an exit plan.

For most men, this level of alertness is unthinkable because it has never been required of them for their own safety.

So when a woman moves slowly, keeps things on-platform, refuses to hand out her number, declines a video call, or avoids revealing details that could identify her... she isn’t being “difficult.”She is being aware and cautious.

If you're a man, now you'd likely think: ''...but not all men, I'm not a dangerous man!''

Well, sure, but how is she to know for sure? You're just a stranger... Abusers don't come with labels on their foreheads reading ''Danger'' or ''One of those men...''

So — good men, well-meaning men — often misinterpret women's caution and their safety behaviours through the narrow lens of their own experience. They think she’s disinterested. Or hiding something. Or playing games.

And in the pain of that misunderstanding, connection dies before it even begins.

Men ask women to prove they aren’t catfishing.

Women, meanwhile, would never dream of asking men to prove they aren’t dangerous — even though that is the statistically the bigger and real threat. But imagine, for a moment, if she could ask: “Would you be willing to share your recent criminal record check? Because I’m being asked to reveal far more vulnerable things about myself just to earn this date.”

It sounds outrageous only because the gendered risks are so uneven.

Women know this. Men often don’t.

And unless a man becomes conscious of this early — unless he demonstrates through his behaviour that he understands her world is not his world — she will choose to disappear and ghost him rather than take a risk she cannot afford.

Women's need for safety, especially considering how many women have experienced sexual trauma, is nothing more than reasonable and evolutionary sound.

So what can men do differently then?

Oh, that's got to go into its own piece! Not because of complexity, but because it deserves its own space for breath and depth. Want to learn about this from me? Send me an email and I'll prioritise writing this up and helping you in your dating and relationship building and maintaining, so that you know better, can do better and have better outcomes!

2. Why do men assume women want sexy photos as much as they do?

Let’s be clear about something first, because clarity matters here: it is completely normal for sexual energy to emerge early when there is chemistry. Flirting can turn into sexting. Words can heat up. That electric charge between two people can build quickly, sometimes unexpectedly, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying that spark when it’s mutual and consensual.

But here is where many men fundamentally misread the situation.

They assume that because the energy feels electric to them, it must be carrying the same charge on the other side — that arousal moves symmetrically, that desire escalates in the same way, at the same pace, and toward the same expressions. It doesn’t. Not psychologically, not socially, and certainly not in terms of risk.

Electricity is a useful metaphor precisely because electricity is dangerous when mishandled. You don’t just start touching exposed wires because the lights are on. You don’t assume the circuit can handle the load. And you don’t get to be careless simply because you are enjoying the current.

For many men, sending a nude — especially a dick pic — feels low-risk, almost inconsequential. If it leaks, it is unlikely to harm them socially, professionally, or physically. For women, the stakes are entirely different. A leaked nude can cost her reputation, her work, her sense of safety, her peace of mind. That asymmetry matters, whether it’s acknowledged or not.

Even in a sexually charged moment, even when the conversation is hot, even when she is flirting back, it does not automatically follow that she wants to see your genitals. Desire does not equal consent. Sexting is fun for many women exactly because it doesn't involve the visuals. And excitement does not cancel out the need for explicit permission.

This is why sending unsolicited sexual images is not “bold,” “confident,” or “playful.” It is a boundary violation. And expecting or demanding a nude in return — explicitly or implicitly — is not reciprocity; it is pressure.

The respectful move is simple, and yet so often avoided:“Would you like me to show you...(explicitly state what you are offering)?” And then — this is the part many men struggle with — being genuinely okay with a no.

No sulking.

No pushing.

No “but you were…”

No treating her boundary as a personal rejection. It's not about you. It's about her.

Because when a woman says 'No' in these moments, she is not shutting down connection; she is protecting herself in a world that has taught her, again and again, that she must.

If you are a man who has felt confused here — unsure why sexual momentum suddenly stalled, why she pulled back, why things cooled off — I want to gently but firmly invite you to consider this:

sexual connection is not about escalation; it is about attunement. It is not about assuming access, but about checking in with the charge, the capacity, the consent on the other side of the wire.

When men understand this — really understand it — women don’t become colder or less sexual. They begin to feel safer. And safety is what allows desire to deepen rather than disappear.

Because nothing kills the electricity faster than fear. And nothing sustains it longer than respect.

3. Why do men believe fixing the sex will fix the relationship?

There is a peculiar ache I see so often in couples who arrive in therapy: a man who desperately believes that if they can fix what’s happening in the bedroom, everything else will fall neatly into place, and a woman who feels increasingly suffocated by the weight of that expectation, because she knows — often in a wordless, embodied way — that the issue behind their lack of intimacy is not sexual at all. It is architectural.

Sex is the roof of the house, not its foundation.

And when the walls have cracked, when the beams have swollen with resentment, when the floorboards of emotional connection have begun to rot from neglect, you cannot lay new roofing and expect the structure to hold. To her, the loss of sexual desire isn’t a mysterious malfunction; it is the most honest mirror of the relationship’s interior climate. When she doesn’t feel safe, when she doesn’t feel seen, when she has had to repeat herself a hundred times only to be dismissed or minimised — her body retreats long before her words do. And when her body goes quiet, it is not withholding; it is signalling.

But men, through no fault of their own, have inherited a cultural script that teaches them to fix the symptom rather than the cause, to patch the roof instead of rebuilding the frame. I’ve sat with so many men who look at me with genuine confusion, saying, “If she would just have sex with me, we would reconnect.” And I’ve sat with so many women whose eyes fill with grief because they’ve been saying the same sentence for months, just in reverse: “If we could reconnect, I might want to have sex again.”

And so I want to offer you a question that has softened even the most guarded men into introspection: What if her lack of desire is not rejection, but exhaustion? What if her body is not withholding pleasure, but responding to the emotional architecture you’ve both built — or failed to build — together? 

Because when sex disappears, it is rarely the problem; it is the messenger. And if you can listen to the message instead of fighting the messenger, the house you are building together has a chance to become stable again — a place where desire can return not through pressure, but through safety.

4. Often men don't take women’s concerns seriously until it’s too late....

Have you ever walked into an old house and noticed the quiet signs of structural strain — a hairline crack in the wall, a door that doesn’t close properly, a window frame that leans slightly inward — and thought, “It’s probably nothing”?

Many men treat the emotional signals in their relationships exactly like these domestic whispers: inconvenient, ignorable, surely not urgent. And by the time they realise these signals were warnings, not annoyances, the house has already begun to bend under the pressure of neglect.

Women (almost) always speak early. They name their feelings, their concerns, their disappointments before they calcify into resentment. While women's communication is often indirect - the meaning implied, and without much direction for action (which men often really need) it's still there and men need to learn to listen and ask more clarifying questions. Women may say things like, ''You're never around'' - translation: “I feel alone,” or “I need more connection” may mean ''I don't feel seen'' and ''I need more quality time together'', hoping that the man they love will meet them in the vulnerability of those early cracks. But men, often not trained to interpret emotional language, dismiss these signals as temporary storms, or neediness, assuming things will “go back to normal,” not understanding that the version of “normal” their partner is referencing has long since collapsed inside her.

And then the time comes that many men describe as confusing. Seemingly out of the blue, for no good reason she is quiet, removed, maybe one day she stops speaking altogether This disconnect is never sudden. It is the finale of a long, quiet unravelling she tried to prevent, but he ignored. Women rarely scream first; they scream last. They don’t walk out in confusion; they walk out in clarity.

If she's screaming, she cares. Don't abuse that care and patience. Pay attention or you'd wake up one day, there's be a potential storm at the horizon that you'd see and think ''Oh, here we go again'' and there will be.... nothing. A defeaning ... NOTHING. And you should know. She's done.

So if you hear her voice going quieter, if you see her affection dimming, if you sense a distance you cannot explain — this is not the time to wait. It is the time to listen as if your relationship depends on it, because it does. And if you find yourself tempted to minimise, to postpone, to avoid, I invite you to ask yourself: What is the cost of waiting until the house collapses instead of repairing the structure while it still stands? Because love rarely collapses in a single moment; it erodes through the small ones you convinced yourself didn’t matter.

5. Men stop growing once the relationship begins...

There was a video of a comedian I stumbled recently that is now burned in my head. He said something to the effect of ''The more a man is shredded and jacked with muscles etc, the more I worry about his mental health. I wanna go to him and be like - Who hurt you?''. And let's face it - there's truth to that. We all know at least a man or few who have gotten out of very comfortable relationships, and then hit the gym as if their life depends on getting all the weight off and getting all the muscles they possibly can.

Why does self-improvement and growth for men happen only after they've been hurt or lost what they valued?

A dear friend and colleague of mine says, 'We [men] are creatures of comfort. We want to do the least amount of work possible. We want to be lazy and enjoy ourselves, and that often means we neglect things, people and ourselves if we perceive it as taking work - and we pay the price for it later.''

And that's it. One of the most painful truths I’ve witnessed again and again is that many men treat the beginning of a relationship as the point where the construction is finished — the drywall is up, the paint has dried, the keys have been handed over. Meanwhile, women think of, see and experience relationships as living structures, requiring ongoing attention, adaptation, emotional renovation. And over time, the couple begins to live in two different houses: one static, one evolving.

Women grow because they have been trained — often through necessity — to expand emotionally. They read, they reflect, they attend therapy, they unlearn patterns, they deepen. Men, in contrast, have been taught that emotional evolution is optional, even indulgent, and for some men, it's been ingrained in them that this is ''sissy'' and ''not manly'' and so they settle into comfort, not realising that comfort becomes stagnation, and stagnation becomes distance.

And I’ve witnessed so many women grieving quietly beside men they deeply love, realising and thinking, “I’m evolving and he’s not coming with me.” This is the growth gap that silently robs relationships of their vitality. Not because men are incapable of growth — they are profoundly capable — but because no one ever told them that the relationships they want requires it.

So if you are a man who fears being left behind, I invite you to consider not what you need to change, but who you want to become — not for her, but alongside her. Because the most beautiful relationships I’ve ever witnessed are those where both partners walk through their emotional hallways with curiosity, dusting off old shelves, replacing broken fixtures, building new rooms, expanding the home they share.

Because in the end of the day - you either evolve and you thrive or stagnate and end up pushed away.

6. Men stop courting once the relationship feels secure

Here is a truth most women talk about often and most men forget matters:

the courtship phase may end, but the need to feel chosen and wanted does not.

The early effort — the intentional messages, the thoughtful plans, the subtle excitement — is not a performance women crave; it is evidence. Evidence that you see them. Evidence that you desire them. Evidence that you are still moving toward them, not simply standing still now that the house has been claimed.

But so many men, once inside the relationship, relax and believe the project is complete. They assume the foundation is unshakeable, the walls are permanent, the love is guaranteed. Meanwhile, their partner begins noticing the quiet disrepair: the missing tenderness, the fading attention, the absence of initiation not for sex but for genuine connection. And slowly, her heart begins to ache with a loneliness far more painful than solitude — the loneliness that comes from being partnered but not pursued and connected with.

And I wonder — have you ever paused long enough to ask yourself what it means to be chosen not once, but daily? Have you considered how both partners become custodians of the energy between them, tending it the way one tends a garden, trusting that nothing living thrives without nourishment?

Because the truth is simple and devastating and hopeful all at once: the relationship does not begin when you win her; it begins when you choose her again the day after.

Closing Reflection — The House You Build Together

If there is one thread running through all these mistakes — from safety misunderstandings to missed emotional cues to stagnant growth — it is this: relationships are not houses we move into; they are houses we build and we can choose whether we treat them as a lovely project to work on together and find new fun, excitement and opportunities in - or we choose to inhabit it lazily and watch it deteriorate over the years as we just 'can't be bothered' to be true partners in it. And every behaviour, every oversight, every assumption becomes part of the architecture, shaping whether the home is a sanctuary or a place both partners eventually abandon.

So perhaps the most important question you can sit with is this: What kind of home are you building, not just for her, but with her? And if you discover cracks or drafts or uneven floors along the way, take heart — these are not signs that the house is failing, but invitations to return to the work with tenderness.

Because the most beautiful relationships are not the ones that never need repair, but the ones where both people chose, again and again, to build, improve, expand, and repair-together.

An Invitation to the Men Who See Themselves in These Words

And if you’re a man reading this — perhaps with a sense of recognition you didn’t expect, or even a whisper of “I wish someone had taught me this earlier” — I want you to know something very clearly: there is nothing wrong with you. These patterns are common not because men are careless or unfeeling, but because so few men were ever given an emotional map that showed them how to build connection, how to listen before it’s too late, how to be safe in a world where women carry a lifetime of vigilance, how to grow at the same pace as the relationship they long for.

And awareness is not a punishment — it is an opening.

If you recognise yourself in some of these mistakes and you want to learn how to do differently, how to love with skill rather than guesswork, how to build a relationship that doesn’t collapse under the weight of misunderstandings… then I’d love to invite you to take a simple, pressure-free step forward.

You can book a Free 30-minute Discovery Call with me.

It’s on Zoom, it’s gentle, it’s confidential, and there is absolutely no pressure or expectation. It’s simply a conversation — a space for us to understand what’s happening in your relationships, what patterns you’re repeating, and whether I’m the right professional to support you.

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And if I’m not the right fit?

I’ll happily point you toward another practitioner, service, or resource that might suit you better. Truly — there is no risk, no obligation, no commitment required.

Just a moment of honesty, a willingness to stop repeating what hurts, and a chance to begin learning the emotional skills no one ever gave you.

If you’re ready to not just hope for better relationships but actually create them, you can book your call here:

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Your future relationships — and your future self — will thank you for it.