94: Access is Earned – Why Attention Isn’t the Same as Intention

You keep saying you want an emotionally available man.

But then a man gives attention…
and suddenly you’re giving access.

His texts feel intentional.

His consistency for three days feels like commitment.

His chemistry feels like compatibility.

And before his behavior has revealed anything…

you’re already imagining what this could become.

Then he pulls back.

Gets inconsistent.

Doesn’t follow through.

And now you’re stuck asking:

Did I do something wrong?
Was I too much?
Should I have been more patient?
Did I scare him off?

But what if you’re not confused?

What if you already know.

What if your nervous system noticed the inconsistency long before your mind wanted to admit it?

This episode is about the shift that changes everything:

Attention doesn’t earn access.

Behavior does.

Because standards with a backbone aren’t about punishing men.

They’re about refusing to negotiate against your own reality.

Emotionally unavailable men create confusion.

Emotionally willing men create consistency.

They follow through.
They repair.
They stay.
They don’t expect relationship access before trust exists.

The woman you’re becoming doesn’t build relationships from chemistry.

She builds them from reality.

You have the power.

Now choose like it.

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Transcript

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One of the biggest shifts that happens when you develop standards with a backbone is this. You stop deciding who someone is before their behavior actually reveals it. Many women give emotional access to men early. And it's not because they're weak, but because the chemistry they feel creates a premature certainty within them. The reality is that women often think that they are evaluating a relationship. But often what's really happening is they're evaluating the feeling that the man creates inside of them. 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 arrive. You are in the right place. It's about recognizing for you to be connected. Here we work through the magnetic connection pathway. 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 listened to the last episode, that was part one of a series called Standards with a Backbone. We talked about why chemistry is not commitment. But today, we are actually going to talk about how behavior determines access. But what's more important is what inside of you is happening. So you're able to make those decisions and determinations and not get caught up in that chemistry. The reality is that women often think that they are evaluating a relationship. But often what's really happening is they're evaluating the feeling that the man creates inside of them. That feeling may deepen because maybe due to the frequency of his text, and maybe he is showing intimacy in those communications. Maybe he's future pacing. He's talking about a committed relationship earlier or marriage, or you're the only one I want. I've never met anyone like you before. We've all heard that, haven't we? He might be creating what looks like emotional intimacy. Maybe he's sharing details about his life early on in a relationship, maybe too early on. Maybe you are too. Maybe there's uh even a form of trauma bonding going on. And sometimes these conversations, they look like emotional safety, but they're not. I've talked before about how I did decide to get on a dating app. And it's more of just an additional way to meet a man. I'm not putting a lot of investment in it because I am aware that a lot of emotionally unavailable men are on dating sites, but who knows? I only need to meet that one. And maybe he's on there too. We don't know. But I, you know, I talked about how I see dating apps completely different than I did just two years ago. And I no longer chase a connection. And I did have a man, if you heard the last episode, ask for access right out of the gate in his first message. He wanted to go on a motorcycle ride. And I pushed back and said, hey, maybe someday, and then asked a question about him because I wanted to get to know him first, get a feel for who he was in the app. And if I decided to meet him in person, then I wanted it to be in a public place, not on the back of his motorcycle where he has full control where we go. God only knows what kind of person he is or isn't. What's interesting is he never responded. I never got a return message back, no communication at all. He went totally silent. So I decided after 10 days just to go ahead and unmatch with him because that told me a lot. His silence actually spoke pretty loudly to me. It meant he wasn't going to respond for whatever reason. And it doesn't even matter. I don't even have to know the reasons why he didn't respond. All I know is it's out of alignment with what I'm looking for. You know, I could understand a few days. All of us have lives. We're, you know, if you have a life, you're not going to be on the dating app all the time. But after 10 days, that guy's not that into me. Or he's got issues about boundaries or whatever it is. And so he's not someone I want to go out with. And I just went ahead and unmatched him. And what's super frustrating, he's the only person that has responded. I haven't gotten any likes. I haven't gotten any responses to any other likes that I've done or um messages that I've sent with those likes. And so a woman that feels like there is a lack of men can get desperate and be like, well, gosh, he's the only one. Maybe I should give him more of a chance. And I used to do that. But I decided this isn't about desperation. This isn't about, this has to be the place where I find who I'm looking for. It's more about it's just increasing my chances of meeting someone. I still have to accept I may or may not meet him here. I may not meet what I'm looking for at all. But I'm okay with that too. You know, this goes back to access and behavior. He asked for access to me before he'd earned it. And then he didn't backtrack and even try to get to know me afterwards. That to me was a red flag. And for some women, a lot of times, whether it's a dating app, a relationship, a first date, and whatever the situation is, often we say things to ourselves like, maybe I said something that scared him off. Because I do have that I'm a relationship coach in my profile. I do have that I want a man to show up in a healthy way. While I also threw in some fun and playfulness in there too, because I don't want it to be all serious, because I'm not that way. To me, it's a filter. And my thought process right after we unmatched was hey, maybe I did scare them off, but that's a good thing because my filter is working. It's actually doing the job for me. And while it can be frustrating in the moment, it's actually saving me a lot of time and effort in the future. A lot of people also associate boundaries with being punishment. And it wasn't that I was angry or punishing this man. It was this doesn't work for me. And sometimes as women, I think we do this a lot. We feel like we're being too harsh. We are being too guarded. We're not being open enough to the possibility, maybe even being mean. And this is pushing the men away. But we have to remember that our boundaries aren't there to control the men. They are there to give us information so we can respond to their behavior. When we have a standard or a boundary, his reaction is valuable information. And we can choose not to interact with him further and not even be angry about it. We can just choose it and say, doesn't work for me. There are so many books out there that, in my opinion, are just clickbait or are ridiculous and really come more from a controlling aspect of if you want a man to do something and he doesn't do it, then you do something to kind of manipulate the situation. One of the stories that came to mind is a man spent the night at her house and then he wanted her to make him breakfast the next morning. And instead of her just being assertive and saying, I feel like this is wife energy, this is girlfriend energy, and we're very early in this relationship. And just because I had sex with you doesn't mean I owe you breakfast and I'm not comfortable with it. If you want breakfast with me, we can you can take me out. But at this stage in the relationship, I'm not making breakfast for you. Instead of saying that, she burnt the toast on purpose so he would never ask her again. To me, that is a manipulative, passive-aggressive behavior. And that's not what we're doing here. If you've listened to previous episodes, you've heard me tell the story about the man that I met about six months ago. We really hit it off, and there seemed to be a lot of chemistry, and he invited me to go have breakfast with him. And so I decided to leave the bar a little bit earlier and meet him. And I felt like the conversation went really well and we were connecting. He invited me as his date to a Christmas party, but he was gonna need to follow up because he couldn't remember which day it was. He never followed up. Not only did he not tell me when the Christmas party was, but I didn't hear from him all week. And so I did delete and block his number because I felt like after a week, I considered him not following up the same as standing me up. And I don't tolerate men who stand me up on dates. Well, just last weekend, I ran into him again. What's even more interesting is not only did he not follow up, but I realized during the conversation he didn't even remember me. That blew me away. I said, You invited me to your Christmas party as your date, and you fucked up. I said, You never followed up, I never heard from you. And I said, I will dance with you, but I will not date you. He immediately had this physical reaction, kind of like, I don't know how to explain it, but you know how like a child will physically kind of move their body when you say, No, you can't have another cookie out of the cookie jar, no more candy, no, I'm not gonna buy that toy for you. They do this physical movement, and I saw him do that, and then he got really quiet. And then he says to me, Well, the phone works both ways. And immediately I said, Oh no, you're the man. It's your responsibility to follow up, and you didn't, and then he really got quiet, and he's just sitting there kind of sullen and quiet. I could feel his discomfort, but I made a decision that I wasn't gonna ease his discomfort because that wasn't my job. I could tell he did not like it, that I held him accountable for his behavior. I didn't yell, I didn't get ugly. I simply said, This doesn't work for me. And he came back at me like, Well, are you angry with me? And I said, It's more about that that behavior didn't meet my standard. He went a very long time without asking me to dance again. And as he was leaving, he took a passive aggressive jab at me. He said, I hope you find a man who meets your standards. And I knew he was not being nice or friendly. And I just said, Oh, I will eventually. So not only was the chemistry that I felt more meaningful to me six months ago than it was to him, his later behavior revealed even more. There was more than just a lack of intentionality. There was an attempt to devalue and demonize my standards, to make them too much. Originally, I was willing to still dance with him, but after that passive aggressive jab, I decided he's lost all access to me now because I don't tolerate that. It's bad enough that he didn't follow up and he didn't take accountability for it. But to make me wrong for holding him accountable on my terms, I felt like he no longer deserved access to me. Doesn't matter how much I enjoy dancing with him. If I continue to do that, I'm rewarding his bad behavior. And if you look at this whole situation, this is what I'm talking about about how we can use the information they give us with the reactions to make a decision on whether or not we want to give them access. What this man displayed was defensiveness, withdrawal. He blame shifted and was passive aggressive. But the important part was when he said, Hey, the phone works both ways, I didn't get all mad and start screaming and yelling in a bar and make a big scene. There was no need for that. Sometimes our power comes in our calm. Sometimes just being firm and saying, Oh no, that was your responsibility. You're the man. Look him in the eye and just very calmly state it. That to me is far more powerful than yelling. There was a lot more to that statement than the words, because underneath it, what I was saying to him is, you're asking me to negotiate my reality. You're asking me to accept your inconsistency. You're asking me to accept the confusion that you created. And you're also asking me to carry the emotional labor. And I don't accept responsibility for what is yours to carry. And I tell you all this just to drive home the point that standards with a backbone means behavior determines access, not chemistry, not attention, not their words or their potential. Let's play devil's advocate for a minute and let's pretend he wasn't emotionally unavailable. Maybe he was emotionally willing. How differently he would have reacted to that same conversation because the emotional unavailable man that showed up that night had forgotten me, was defensive, he redirected his responsibility onto me, he minimized my behavior, and he withdrew emotionally. And then he took a passive aggressive jab at me as he exited. If he had been emotionally willing, it could have gone like this. He would have remembered me, he would have acknowledged the disconnect, and he would have taken accountability for it. He would have repaired the rupture and then shown curiosity instead of defensiveness. And how that all could have looked when I had said you fucked up. I never heard from you. He could have been like, Oh my gosh, you're right. I I'm so sorry. I I did drop the ball. I should have followed up with you. I should have told you when the Christmas party was. And I can so understand why this has impacted your perception of me. That right there is accountability. Because maybe something happened in his life. Maybe he lost his job and he was embarrassed. Maybe there was a death in the family. And him coming back and saying, Oh my gosh, I did never follow up with you. I can just only imagine how that looked to you. What can I do to repair this situation? I would I would still like to get to know you and show you that I can do better. Now, there will be men who will play you and breadcrumb you in this way. So, you know, there's a decision point with that too. But the point is that's not how he reacted. So his access was denied immediately. Because remember, emotionally willing men, they're not going to be perfect. They are sometimes going to do things wrong. And the issue isn't that he made a mistake. The issue is how he responded when I held him accountable for it. And when you have standards with a backbone that will determine whether or not a man gets access to you, it's not about expecting them to be perfect. It's about observing what he does when something does go wrong and whether or not he takes accountability for it. Because an emotionally willing man, he isn't going to disappear when you ask for clarity on something. He's not going to punish you if you want to pace the relationship slower than he wants to go. He's definitely not going to get passive aggressive just because you are holding him accountable for something he did or a standard you have set with him. He also understands that chemistry does not guarantee immediate access. The other thing I want you to remember as you change your internal thought process and you are evaluating these men, remember, emotionally unavailable men are still going to show up. It's not that they disappear. The difference is we see through them quicker. Instead of trying to have a hard and fast rule of how do I stop giving immediate access, have more of an evaluation period, maybe slowing yourself down emotionally so you don't get too emotionally invested. Slow down a little bit and pace the relationship. Pace how often you see him, how quickly you get involved with him physically. No matter where you are in the relationship, whether you've been with him a long time or just met them, you've got to be in observation mode all the time. And I'm not being like hyper-vigilant. I'm just saying, just observing behavior and deciding what you're going to do with that observation. And definitely don't start building fantasies around this whole chemistry thing. Allow time to tell the tale about who he really is. And please just remember that intensity and immediate connection does not guarantee or is it evidence that this is going to be a healthy relationship and that he's emotionally available. Because when you have standards with a backbone, chemistry is no longer going to make that decision for you. And you're going to make it based on his behavior. Before we wrap up, I want to let you in on something. Over the last year and a half of building this podcast and creating content, interviewing guests, learning new skills, making a lot of mistakes, figuring things out by myself and the hard way. Honestly, if you've been following me since the beginning, you've just been growing alongside with me as I've learned to do this. And through that, I've realized something. There's been another conversation that's been quietly happening behind the scenes. And I'm starting to explore what it could look like to share more of that conversation and that journey with you. I'm not really ready to say too much yet, but there are some new things that are coming that I'm genuinely excited about. And if you've ever wanted to create something or share your voice, build something meaningful, or you've just been kind of curious about some of the behind the scenes and how all of this comes together, you're going to want to stay close. And make sure you're on my email list. The link's going to be in the show notes because I will be sharing my updates there first. And I can't wait to bring you along for what's coming next. Next week, we're going to go even deeper into this. Because once that behavior starts determining access, something else is going to start changing within you too. And you're going to stop emotionally sustaining the relationships that only survive because you're the one carrying them. We're going to talk about over-functioning, chasing clarity, over-explaining, and you doing all of that emotional labor and why emotionally unavailable dynamics, they often just stop, collapse when women just stop managing that connection for both of you. Because the truth is, many of these dynamics don't survive because the connection is strong, but they survive because women keep emotionally sustaining them. And when that changes, the entire emotional direction of the relationship is going to change too. And that's where your empowerment begins. Agency is letting behavior determine the access. Empowerment is no longer about overfunctioning, it's about creating that magnetic connection and letting that emotionally willing man become the only relationship that feels aligned to you. Thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned. You have the power. And now it's time to act like it. Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the Road to Truth, Freedom, and Road Connection. If something landed while you are 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 manage that dynamic better. It's here to help you stop participating in it. When you believe a present, clear standards, and stay anchored in yourself, pattern changes. Not because it's because the present, but because of YouTube. You're not too much. You're just done betraying yourself. Unemployed, we'll leave that. Or magnetized too.