Most women crave to find the One since an early age, that’s just how women are raised. Women want a fairy-tale life with the perfect partner, who will never hurt them. The one who stays. The one who’s truly smitten. The one who always has time for them, no matter what.
A romantic woman doesn’t want to imagine a life in which she feels trapped in a relationship. One where she’s emotionally or physically neglected. Where she needs to literally beg for her partner’s attention.
More often than not, such relationships happen. It may start with something small like a partner coming back from work and paying zero attention to his woman, preferring to sit on his phone for hours or play computer games.
Or much bigger signs of neglect like lack of intimacy or sex early on in the relationship.
Most women are conditioned to think that as soon as something goes wrong in their relationship, it must be their fault and they’ve just got to fix it. What women often fail to realize is that maybe they simply chose the wrong guy, and it won’t get better.
They want romance but settled for the guy who has no interest in romantic gestures. They want a soulmate, but their partner is too busy working on their own life goals to pay attention to the woman next to him, who also has goals and aspirations.
If a woman feels neglected by the man in her life, 9 times out of 10 she’s on her way to leave him, just hasn’t figured out how and when yet. Don’t want this to happen to you? Pay attention to the following 12 signs a woman feels neglected in a relationship.
Table of Contents
1. She pleads for your attention
A woman might beg, plead and cry for her man’s attention, and he still doesn’t think there’s anything wrong going on. Seriously? If he does notice, he promises to change, to do better, to make more time for her, but he never truly does.
Empty promises can literally bring a woman to despair. Why should she put up with someone who’s got anything else prioritized, but her? Why should she humiliate herself by asking for attention, for romance and intimacy?
Some men even judge or make fun of it.
If she literally has to cry to get your attention, then you need to do something, so it never happens again. Do you really think she wants to do this?
No woman wants to hurt her dignity, or feel belittled, that’s literally her last resort, so pay attention, or she will leave you.
2. She’s emotionally withdrawn from you
A neglected woman is sad, frustrated, and humiliated. She doesn’t feel like opening up to her guy anymore, she just feels helpless.
If the woman in your life is no longer confiding in you, making plans with you, or sharing what’s on her mind, then she sure isn’t feeling it anymore, and you aren’t the guy she wants to be with.
A neglected woman will not trust you to understand her, so she will no longer be open with you.
3. She has no interest in sharing a bed with you
A woman who’s plotting her exit strategy because she’s sick and tired of you neglecting her will surely avoid sleeping with you. Sex is about intimacy, trust, and commitment. It’s the ultimate expression of love in a relationship.
A neglected woman will no longer want to make you happy in bed or find time to simply be near you. Curiously, a woman who feels that way might try and tackle it first by initiating more intimacy, thinking it will save the relationship.
Once she’s realized it won’t fix anything she will withdraw and avoid it like the plague. She may also be texting other guys or watching porn just to avoid you.
4. She just resents you
Do you get the funny feeling that the woman you’re with secretly (or not so secretly) resents you? Is she often angry with you, for no apparent reason? Do you find yourself having any of the following exchanges recently?
You: What’s wrong?
Her: Nothing!
You: What do you want me to do?
No: Never mind, I will just do it myself!
You: Stop putting pressure on me.
Her: I just want to be close to you.
She will be making subtle hints long before she starts snapping at you and asking you to leave her alone. If she’s given up on you in her head and simply planning when to leave you, then you will have to try extra hard to change her mind.
5. She talks about other guys often
Has she started mentioning other guys a little too often lately? Is Jeff at work always making her laugh? Did she have lots of fun on Friday night at a sports bar with her friends?
Is she point blank telling you there are guys who flirt with her?
If she loves you and is truly happy with you, she would be polite about it and not bring up other men. If she doesn’t care about how it makes you feel, then she’s definitely not committed to you anymore.
Feeling neglected by you on a regular basis will push her limits. She will say things to test you – just to see your reaction. She will want to make you jealous to understand whether you still care for her and there’s any hope for the relationship.
It’s not a game she’s playing, it’s an exit strategy of a desperate woman, who’s got nothing left to lose.
What she’s trying to say to you is: “Give me attention, or I will replace you”
6. She’s drifting away and building a new support group
The woman who used to do anything for you and change her plans to make more time for you is suddenly re-adjusting her life, and not even bothering to tell you. Have you noticed that she’s drifting away, spending a lot of time on her own, or away from you?
She needs time with her friends a lot more often. She comes home late, to avoid communicating with you. She doesn’t text you when she will be late. These are all sure-fire signs of a neglected woman who is done telling you what she needs from you.
She now has a support network that she reaches out to whenever she needs emotional support, and you’re no longer that person for her. It sounds like she’s accepted the neglect in her life and building new coping mechanisms.
7. She doesn’t check in with you anymore
If your woman has stopped announcing what she’s up to or where she’s going, no longer interested in giving you any sort of heads up about her whereabouts, then you’ve got a huge alert there!
Sometimes her silence can speak louder than her words. Her silence about her plans that don’t involve you is a sign she doesn’t care anymore. She’s accepted that you don’t care enough to be worried about her or to interrogate her.
So why would she bother telling you in the first place?
8. She has an affair
Whether she cheated or is in the middle of a full-on affair, your woman has moved on from you in all ways but one. Perhaps you’ve got children and a home together, but that’s all that keeps you together.
She’s sick of trying to make you change. She’s sick of wasting her precious life focusing on a man who won’t step up and pay attention to her. There are plenty of men who would!
And even if cheating is not always linked to neglect, those who feel neglected are much more likely to cheat. When her needs are not being met in this relationship, she’d rather focus on a new one, until she figures what to do next.
If she’s given up on the prospect of a happy future with you, she would no longer care about breaking her promises or wedding vows either.
9. She’s changed her priorities
She’s had enough of your neglect and she’s choosing to look after herself. That means she will be changing her priorities and you better know the end is near. She has found new passions she wants to pursue, better than to focus on you.
Whatever it is it changes the game. She isn’t fixating on you. She isn’t begging you to make time for her. When the tables have turned, you might be the one who feels neglected, but it will be a vital lesson to learn. Especially if you want to save the relationship.
10. You are fighting more than usual
If it feels like you’ve been fighting more often than usual, and she’s being unforgiving, then there’s something seriously wrong with the relationship and how she feels in your company.
She is probably just completely fed up with how you treat her and is losing her patience with you. If in the beginning she was more internalizing the neglect and keeping the anger boiled inside, then now the rejection is too much to handle, so she is expressing her frustrations openly and honestly.
She’s probably looking for the “final straw” that will help make up her mind that she’s done with you and give her clear conscience.
11. Whenever she asks for your help, you ignore or delay
If she wants something from you and all you reply is “later”, then never get round to doing it, you can rest assured she will feel annoyed and neglected. If your relationship is a priority for you then you won’t reject her needs.
Do your conversations sound scarily similar to this?
Her: Could you please fix the sink?
You: Later!
Her: Can we have a date night soon?
You: I dunno…I am too busy with work.
Her: Can we plan a holiday?
You: Can you do it instead?
Anything she wants, you somehow never have time or desire to do it. If this sounds a lot like your relationship, it’s time to put in some effort. The little nags you get from her are all signs she’s fed up with you. They will all pile up and reach the escalation point if you don’t acknowledge your ways.
12. You do any of the following
You forget to congratulate her when someone good happens in her life. You don’t notice her new haircut, to the point where she needs to point it. You have stopped taking care of yourself and making an effort to look good for her.
You don’t ask about her day but always talk about yours. You make rude comments about her interests. You are always running late and fail to apologize. You walk away whilst she’s still talking. You don’t make eye contact with her.
You shut down during important conversations. You look at other women and make comments about their looks. You show no empathy towards her feelings. You don’t feel like listening. You never make plans with her.
Neglect comes in many shapes and forms, and often women don’t see it at the start. “He’s too busy with work. He’s got a lot on his mind. It’s just a rough patch.” Women say these things to try and reassure themselves that everything is fine, when they know, deep down, that it isn’t.
If emotional neglect has become the norm for a woman, she will slowly withdraw and leave you. Ask yourself – is it her, or is it that you always neglect the women you are with? And why should any woman put up with it?
