91: How Emotionally Unavailable Men Train You to Stop Asking (The Pattern Most Women Miss)

You didn’t wake up one day and decide to stop asking for what you need.

You learned it.

Slowly.

In the moments where every time you spoke up… you were labeled the problem. 

In this episode, Darla breaks down the pattern most women miss:

How emotionally unavailable men don’t just ignore your needs…
they train you to stop having them.

Through personal stories - from a marriage where nothing she asked for was ever “right”… to real-life examples of boundary violations, entitlement, and being made to feel unreasonable - this episode exposes the truth:

👉 It was never about the request.
 👉 It was about the pattern.

You’ll learn:

•  What actually defines an unreasonable request
•  How “no” gets turned into a negotiation - and why that’s a problem 
•  The subtle ways women are conditioned to edit, soften, and silence themselves
•  Why persistence after a boundary is not attraction - it’s entitlement
•  How emotionally unavailable men create confusion… while emotionally willing men create clarity 

And most importantly:

How to recognize when you’ve been taught to abandon yourself… so you can stop.

If you’ve ever:

•  Felt like you couldn’t win - no matter what you did 
•  Questioned whether you were asking for too much 
•  Adjusted yourself just to keep the peace 
•  Or left conversations feeling like you were the problem 

This episode will land.

Because you didn’t lose your voice.

You adapted to an environment that didn’t honor it.

And the woman you’re becoming?

She doesn’t ask permission to have needs.
She doesn’t justify her standards.
She doesn’t negotiate herself out of what she knows is right.

Connect with Darla Ridilla: 

Book a Magnetic Connections Call: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/call

3 Keys to Magnetizing Emotionally Available Men masterclass: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/masterclass

Website: https://www.highvaluewoman.info

Send me an email: highvaluewoman7@gmail.com

Sign up for mailing list: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/newsletter

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550835718631

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highvaluewoman7/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HighValueWoman-m7w

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darla-ridilla-3179b110/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You didn't wake up one day and just decide to stop asking for what you need. You learned it slowly. It was in the moments where every time you spoke up, you were labeled a problem. If you're ready to stop questioning yourself and start recognizing what's actually happening in your relationships, then you are in the right place. Welcome to You Have the Power, The Road to Truth Freedom, and Real Connection. This podcast is for women who are done asking why emotionally unavailable men keep showing up and are finally ready to change the way they relate. The chemistry is always there, the potential looks promising, but the consistency, death, and emotional presence just never fully arrived. Here we work magnetic connection that way. Agency empowerment. Because emotionally unavailable men aren't the problem, they're the feedback. And when you stop managing relationships that require you to disappear, emotionally willing men are magnetized to you. Let's begin. If you're in a place in your life where you speak up, and then there's tension, you ask for something simple, he gets irritated. You explain why you made the request, and then he reacts by shutting down or flipping out. And then you leave the conversation feeling like you did something wrong. You asked for too much. And over time, you start to edit what you asked for and how you asked for it. And you tell yourself that you're being more patient, you're investing in the relationship or the dating experience. But you're not. You're making yourself small to accommodate another person. If you listen to the last episode, I shared an experience with my ex-husband where we were on the beach in Galveston, Texas on vacation with his family. And I made a simple request. I just asked for him to walk with me on the beach. But instead of either agreeing or coming back with an answer that met me where I was, he showed resistance. He got pissy. He withdrew. And it really wasn't about the walk on the beach at all. It was really about a pattern that he showed in the entire 10 years I was with him, the entire relationship. During that trip to Texas alone, that pattern was loud and clear. The first night we got there, he wanted to go out alone with his cousin to a bar. I went with him and he did not want me to come along. He expected me to sit at home at his aunt's house by myself or with her. I mean, she was a delightful woman, but I wanted to be out with my husband. He blamed me and said I was being unreasonable, that he wanted things to be the way they used to be when he and his cousin went out by themselves. But this was a joint vacation. It wasn't like he came by himself and they decided to go out. That's a whole different story. He made it a point to exclude me at every opportunity. And for me, it was a lose-lose situation. If I asked, I got blamed for being unreasonable. And if I didn't ask, I was feeling small. I was feeling left out. I was going to feel left out either way, right? But I couldn't win no matter what I did. That pattern revealed itself over the entire relationship from day one to the last day. He had a lot of women around him. In fact, how I got hooked so easily is that he always had a posse of women around him. He was extremely good looking. He had this thing about he would give hugs to all the women when he would arrive at the bar. They swarmed on him like a pack of bees to honey. And when we started to get involved, he made it feel like I was the special one because he chose me. Trust me, he didn't just choose me. He was still choosing those other women. He just kept it from me. But my point is that I did notice that there were many times where he was a little bit too friendly with female friends, going so far as to suggest that we should have one stay at our house one night a week because we were going to an open mic together. And even though she only lived 15 minutes away, it was just too late for her to drive home by herself. Oh, and by the way, I had to leave for work before she did, and they were alone in the house together. While she claimed that they never slept together, I really don't know if I believe that. There was a pattern of him showing attention to women, even openly flirting with them right in front of me. When I would express that I wasn't okay with that, whether I was his wife or his girlfriend at that time, that I deserved to be the only woman in his life that he gave that kind of attention to, I was labeled as being paranoid and unreasonable. He was also extremely chummy with his ex-wife. This is something that I noticed right away. And there were many examples of that, whether she would come over to visit the kids and sleep in the bed that we had sex in, which to me was disgusting, a total overstep on her part. But he would justify it that she's trying to get time with the kids. Fine, go to your house. Don't come to his. She would do stuff like she would walk up to our table, the bar, and set her drink down and stand there. And I remember one night getting extremely angry, and I felt it was his place to ask her to leave. Not maybe necessarily the bar, but not to be in our proximity or at our table. And when I confronted him about it and I said, This is unreasonable. Your ex-wife is doing this, first of all, to exert power and try to intimidate me. I need you to shut this down. I need you to tell her that she can't do that, that you and me are together now. But he refused to do that. He said, This is a public place. She can be anywhere she wants to be, and you're being unreasonable. She also used to be invited to every event at his parents' house, whether it was a holiday or just to get together for a barbecue. They would have assigned seating and they would always sit me at the table away from him and they would put him and his ex-wife together. It took me two years to get him to finally make an ultimatum that we would not come over anymore if she was invited. But I still got labeled as the problem. When we decided that we were going to be in a committed relationship and that we were going to devote ourselves to each other, I insisted that in order for me to stay in that relationship, he had to get divorced. And then later on, I discovered, even after the divorce, that she was still on his life insurance and I wasn't. And so once again, I had to give him an ultimatum that this is not okay. It's not about the money, it's about showing me respect as your partner. If you say you want to spend the rest of your life with me, but if something should happen to you, you're making sure she's provided for and I'm not, that doesn't sound like I'm a priority in your life. Whether my requests were big or small, it didn't matter. His reaction to it was the same every time. He blamed me and said I was the problem. It took me a really long time to realize that I had to decide within myself what was an unreasonable request and what wasn't. An unreasonable request is when someone expects you to do something that you've already said no to, when someone blames you for something simple, when someone makes you the problem, even when you're not. And sometimes you, when you say no to your time, you say no to your energy, you say no to his attention, and you say no to access to your body, he doesn't react very well. And when he doesn't react well to those standards and those boundaries, you've got a problem. Because no, it's not a negotiation. Persistence after a boundary is not attraction, it's entitlement. And a man does not have the right to earn access by ignoring your discomfort. As women, we are often expected to be compliant, to be nice, to be accommodating. And society hasn't upgraded yet to accept the fact that women get the right to say no. We don't even have to justify our no or give you a reason why we said it, whether it's going out on a date, what happens during that date, if a man approaches you in public to engage you in conversation and you don't want to talk to him, if you're in a social space, if he repeatedly attempts to get access to you, you've all seen the videos on Facebook on social media where a woman turns her phone on and records the conversation because a man approaches her, whether it's in a bar on the street, or he's she's been out on a date with him and he wants to come in and have a hookup, or he comes back after she's broken up with him and she says no, but he ignores her no and he keeps going. That is not connection, it is a refusal to accept the reality that no means no. As women, we don't just feel annoyed, we don't just feel irritated, we feel watched, we feel unsafe. I recently had an experience where I had a man do this repeatedly step over my no while there was an initial interest in after an invite to go out for coffee, he breadcrumbed me and then he expected me to be okay with that. And when I told him no, in the same night at a social event, three times he came back to me. And the last time he did it, right in front of somebody else, but he messed with the wrong bitch. Because when I make a decision and I have decided no, it is now no. So I didn't care that he brought up the topic again in front of another man. I right there in front of the other man told him no and walked away. But after that, he started to up his game. He started showing up everywhere I was, it was creepy as fuck. He even came to my job pretending to want to buy something at the store I worked at, and then got pissed when I refused to help him. After that, my boundary was strong. Don't talk to me. He would come up to me when he would run into me and try to hug me. And so I finally said, no, stay away. I didn't give him a reason. I don't need to. But he persisted. Not only is this unacceptable on its own merits, it really hits a trigger for me. And I know there's gonna be some women out there that are gonna relate to this. The main reason I left Colorado was because I was stalked by my ex-husband. He infiltrated every circle that I was in. I left because I was afraid for my safety and my life. And just over a year ago, I came back. And I came back because I wanted to take my power back, and I'm not as afraid as I used to be. And I see his behavior for what it is, but this still hits a nerve in me because I felt so unsafe in those moments. And when anything that looks like that, harassment stalking starts to show up, it stirs that pot in me. And I know there's so many women out there that can feel that. There's so many ways that a man can be unreasonable, but I think the mo the one that's the most impactful is when he continues to ask for access, when he shows up when you've already said leave me alone, or when he asks for physical intimacy before you're ready, and he doesn't let it be and respect your standard. And then if you flip it to what you're asking for, you ask for that standard of you know what, I reserve sex for when I'm in a committed relationship, and he just misses it. He tries to explain it away, he pushes back, and then you're feeling the tension, you're feeling like maybe I am being unreasonable. It is 2026 until you adjust, or maybe you just stop asking for what you want. And when you get to this point, it it didn't start as silence, it became that you know, no matter what the situation was, whether I just started dating someone or I'm already in a relationship, but definitely in my previous marriage, my ex didn't have to tell me to stop asking. He simply made it too uncomfortable to do so. And this made sure that I did what he wanted, and I stopped. I stopped asking. Back then, I wasn't the woman I am today. I I used to bend myself and contort myself into something I wasn't because I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to be liked. I didn't understand that it's better to be respected than to be liked. And at the end of that 10-year relationship, when he divorced me anyway, I realized I didn't even recognize myself. I had become someone I didn't know. I had become what he wanted me to be and he didn't want me anyway. Now I hold my standards and I don't care if the guy doesn't like it. A couple of years ago, I went out for drinks with a guy that had asked me out. When we initially talked, it seemed like it was going pretty good, seemed like we had a lot of uh common interests. And I showed up for the drink. I'm super excited, and then the bill comes. I decided to uh be discreet, so I excused myself and went to the restroom. And when it came back, he had an irritated look on his face. The bill's sitting on the table with his credit card on a clipboard. And he looks up and said, Oh, I was waiting for you to put your credit card down. And I looked at him and I said, This is not how I date. You asked me out. That means you pay. And of course, he tried to push back. No one, no one has ever said that before. I've never had a problem with any other woman. And I just looked at him and I said, I'm not other women. I don't pay for dates. And then I just sat there and I stared him down. The only thing I would do differently today, instead of staring him down, is I would have just got up and walked away. In that moment, um, I was on my second drink and I kind of needed some more time to sober up. But I was in a downtown area. I could have walked away and walked it off, like I've done when I go out to dinner with myself. And I need a little bit more time before I drive. But I got caught off guard. I wasn't expecting that to happen. He finally got really aggravated and paid the bill. And I texted him the next day and I said, I'm not going to go out with you ever again. This is a standard I have, and we are out of alignment with how we do things. When you pay for a woman on a date, you were showing her respect. His answer was, How can I respect you when I don't even know you? Not only did that piss me off royally, it validated I made the right decision. But this is where women get told or too much. While I am very independent, I also have some old-fashioned values. I do expect the man to lead. And leading means he plans and pays for the dates. I do feel that that is important. And it is not about the money, it's not about getting a free meal. It's about is he a leader or not? Because if he's not a leader, he has no future with me. And it's not that I'm being unreasonable, it's my standard. And if he wants to do the 50-50 thing, fine. Find a woman that's willing to do that. Because that's not me. And what I've had to learn is that just because someone resists my standard doesn't mean it's wrong. It's right for me, and that's all that matters. And a man that can't meet me there isn't gonna work long term. You see, I wasn't asking for too much, I was just asking the wrong man. Because an emotional, unavailable man, he's gonna override your boundaries. He's gonna ignore them, he's gonna call your standards too high. He is gonna avoid responsibility and accountability when you express your needs. He's gonna create confusion and he's gonna make you question yourself. Because if you start to question your own reality, you're gonna buy into his. But an emotionally willing man, he's gonna respect your no. He's gonna meet you with clarity. He's not gonna make you defend your position. He may not agree with it, but at the very least, he's gonna try to understand it and he's gonna respect it. And he's gonna choose you without all that resistance. You're gonna feel safe and secure when you say no. You're gonna feel like your standards are valued. If a man labels you as too much and he has a pattern of unreasonable request, whether he's asking something of you or he is pushing back at something you've asked of him, that's information. And in the next episode, we're going to talk about what you actually do with this. How do you respond when someone makes an unreasonable request? And how do you hold your boundary and how you stop negotiating yourself out of your standards? And if something in this episode stirred something in you, if you're realizing how often that you've talked yourself out of your own needs and your own standards, if you're tired of questioning yourself in those moments when you should feel clear, but you're feeling confused. If you are ready to look at your own patterns of how you've accommodated unreasonable request, or you haven't asked for what you want because you've been labeled as unreasonable, then I'm going to invite you to book a magnetic connections call. We're going to look at your patterns, we're going to see what your next step is, so you can determine what is unreasonable and what is reasonable and how to react to that. This is not therapy. This is just a call to identify your patterns and what's next. And if that is you and you're a woman who is ready to have that conversation, book a call. The link is in the show notes. If you hear nothing else in this episode, please hear this. You did not lose your voice. You just adapted and softened it or quieted it to accommodate others. And the woman that you are becoming, she doesn't ask permission to have needs. She doesn't justify her standards. And she doesn't adjust her request to accommodate others. You have the power. Now, it's time to choose like it. Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the Road to Truth, Freedom, and Road Connection. If something landed while you were listening, pay attention to that. Emotionally unavailable men aren't a mystery to solve. They're information. They show you exactly where you've been waiting, minimizing, or tolerating what doesn't actually work for you. This podcast isn't here to teach you how to answer that dynamic better. It's here to help you stop participating in it.