The four phases in which a man falls in love

In these past couple of months I’ve been able to observe a friend of mine from his first date until now as he’s been falling in love with his girlfriend. It was amazing to have witnessed this process from the very beginning. Knowing this process would have saved me so much time, energy and emotions in my own dating life in the course of the years. While I was expecting that a man would commit to me after a few dates, I’ve now learned that a man’s commitment phase comes much, much later than a woman’s commitment phase. That’s why I want to share these phases with you because I believe that it will give your relationship more chance to succeed. Although character and attraction are the key to get a man to be interested in you, it takes the patience to go through these phases for him to fall in love with you.

The first phase is the denial phase:

You must be asking yourself what is she talking about? But just bare with me as I’m trying to explain a man’s thinking in a woman’s brain.

The denial phase is the phase in which a man won’t admit to anyone that he is seeing you. You’ve been on a first-, second- or even third date and you had a great time. You enjoyed each other’s company and all seem to go well. For us as women we tend to go and label these moments way too fast. So we start dreaming away about our life together. While for a man, this is simply a time of denial. Whenever someone would ask him about the two of you, he will deny that there is anything between you two. Although you’ve been hearing from him every day since day one and although he asked you on a few dates, he won’t mention your name to any of his friends or family yet.

This is normal, because a man is mainly driven by his ego and reputation so he won’t risk to put it all on the line if he doesn’t know you well enough. So he takes his time before he even thinks about mentioning your name to those around him.

The second phase is the minimisation phase:

This often comes after two to three months of dating. So he’s been going out with you; you’ve done the cinema, you’ve done the lovely dinner out, the hand in hand walk across the park and the cosy little bar on a night out. While you as a woman are now high on your horses and want to get the label out and call him your boyfriend; you want him to clarify and put a stamp on the fact that the two of you are an item. He on his end, will minimise and downplay anything that has to do with you to anyone who ask about it. Of course he will do his best to treat you well. But whenever you try to pop the question: “Where is this going?” Cause you want some clarification in your dating life. He will try to avoid the conversation and just find something else to talk about. Or he might even ignore your question or try to get away not having to answer it.

Here we are, three months into your dating life. As it gets kind of difficult for a man to denial that he is seeing you, he will simply minimise the fact that you two are seeing each other. When asked about you, he will answer things like: “Well yeah it’s just someone I met recently”, “Yeah we went out, no big deal”. If he finds you beautiful he will say things like, yeah she’s alright, simply cause he wants to downplay it. Also to you, he will be more cautious, he won’t text you too much. He won’t share with you the important things of his life yet, cause he is still on the look out to see if this is going to be something worth it. Cause a man would do anything not to lose face.

The next phase is the admission or commitment phase:

After five to six months of dating (if you’re patient enough to stick around), a man will start to confirm his engagement to you. In this phase, a man wants to be sure that everyone knows that you are his and therefore he will go on and label you as his girlfriend. Because he simply wants to make sure that you don’t go see anyone else but him.

When asked by family or friends, here he will confirm that you are his girlfriend. He might let you meet his friends and family and sometimes even ask to meet yours. Here he will start to engage you in his life, such as bringing you out with him while his friends are around. By doing this he wants to make sure, not only to others but also to you that you are his and no one else’s. In this phase he will admit that he finds you attractive. He will contact you more than he did on the previous phase, and sometimes it might even feel as if he is testing you. He will check on you more frequently and will want to know where you are, with who and so on.

We as women see this phase differently, we think yes; he is in love with me but that’s not yet the case. A man needs more time and confirmation before he gets there.

Only around this phase a man will be fully committed to you. In the previous phase he might even take some other woman out on a date, as he hasn’t committed to yet, so he is technically free to do so. It’s only in this phase, that he will limit his dating scene into one person, you. As he is open in telling others that he is seeing you, he will expect you to commit to him and he in return will commit only to you.

Please note that this means that if after six months of dating a man still doesn’t call you his girlfriend or doesn’t want to commit to you or hasn’t brought you to any of his family nor friends then it means he is not worth your time. Meaning that he might be seeing someone else or he is just not that into you.

But if you’ve passed all those phases successfully then the next phase is the Falling in love phase.

The falling in love phase

This phase comes after the admission or commitment phase. Which means it’s about eight to nine months into your dating life. This is the phase where you are now the centre of his world. As you’ve been able to stick around, you’ve seen his ups and downs and his flaws and all and you are still with him, he will do anything for you. Yes, I know you want me to repeat it again so here it comes: He will do anything for you. He will go out of his ways to make you happy. If that means buying expensive things for you; going long distance to see you, taking you out on fancy holidays he will do it (depending on his personal situation of course). All this are just a fracture of what he will be willing to do for you. You see a man isn’t as sentimental as us women. A man when he can get sex, he’ll go for it. In general he won’t do that much effort for a woman but once you’ve reached this phase in your relationship, nothing is too much. He will go exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond to make you happy. For a man to be able to do all this effort, means that he is in love with you.

Although he won’t go and scream it to his friends and family he will show it in everything he does for you.

After falling in love comes the building a future together phase:

Although for us woman this phase already comes after two to three months; and yes for some it already comes after the first date. A man needs somewhat nine months to see himself being bonded to you for a long time ( please note that I didn’t say for life, cause that term scares some men, having to think that he would spend the rest of his life having sex to only one woman) But if you’ve been able to stay with your man for so long and he has fallen in love with you, he would see his future with no one else but you.

In this phase the rolls turn around, he will be the one asking you to book things many months ahead. For example a friend’s wedding in a few months or a concert or end years celebrations. This because he starts to see the future with you. In this phase he will want your presence in his life. If he lives by himself he will want your stuff in his apartment such as pictures of you, or little things such as clothing, toothbrush so that he is always reminded of you. Sometimes he will even suggest that you move in with him. Note that I only mention this now, because until a man falls in love with you, having your stuff in his place will feel smothering to him. Even if he has confirmed that you are his girlfriend, he doesn’t want to see too much of your stuff in his house yet. So wait until the right time comes before you start to leave things in his place. There is nothing attractive about a woman being too pushy; or a woman who already leaves her under wear in your place after a few dates.

With this all being said and done it’s important to know these phases, to respect a man’s timing and to let the man take the lead. I don’t say that every man reacts the same way, but this is a blue print of most relationships. Of course some situations might be different. The key to win a man’s heart is patience and time. If you have these two main elements and he is attracted to you then your relationship is set to succeed.

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