A man explains, in his own words, why he kept a woman he cared about waiting for a label for almost a year. As told to relationship coach Matthew Coast. Details changed to protect privacy.
I'm not proud of this story. But if you're with a man who gives you everything except the label, you deserve to hear it.
For almost a year, there was a woman who was basically my girlfriend. Weekends at my place, her coffee in my cupboard, my friends knew her name.
She was wonderful. And every time the word "girlfriend" came anywhere near a conversation, I changed the subject.
The comfortable truth
Here's what I would never have admitted back then. Undefined was the best deal of my life.
I had all of her, and the arrangement asked nothing of me. No decision, no risk, no cost.
Why would I change a thing? The only pressure on me was a conversation I could dodge in thirty seconds.
Her patience kept it frozen
Every time she was understanding about it, the clock reset. Another month of "let's just see where this goes."
Twice she worked up the courage for the "where is this going" talk. Both times I went a little distant for a few days afterward.
And then, this still stings to admit, she would apologize. For pressuring me.
We'd slide right back to comfortable, and those talks taught me something terrible. The wait was working, and she'd wait as long as I wanted.
Then the floor moved
The change came quietly. One week, Saturday just stopped being automatic.
She was warm when we were together, and completely fine when we weren't. Her life filled up with things that had nothing to do with me.
She stopped doing the reaching. And for the first time in a year, I felt the distance between us.
I'd love to tell you I handled it calmly. I was the one rereading her texts at night, wondering where she was, feeling her slip.
Three weeks after that shift started, I asked her to sit down, and I brought up where this was going. Me. The guy who'd dodged that conversation for a year.
What she'd actually done
Much later, she told me what changed. She'd been reading Matthew Coast, a coach who's worked with women on dating and relationships since 2013 and has helped hundreds of thousands of them.
He's also heard hundreds of men explain the exact behavior I just described to you. What she used came from that: a change in how she showed up that removed the comfort without removing the warmth.
Part of it was a short text. Four words. She sent it right at the moment I was bracing for another long talk, and it knocked the wind out of me in a way no conversation ever had.
I won't pretend I can explain why it works on us. I just know it worked on me.
If you're the one waiting
If you're reading this in month eight of "complicated," hear me. Another patient month tells him the wait is working, and another talk resets the clock.
He can care about you and still keep you undefined forever, as long as undefined stays comfortable.
The woman I almost lost changed one thing. Matthew put what she changed, including the four words, on the page below.
Read it before your next "where is this going" conversation. You may never need to have one again.