7 Reasons Aries Men Pull Away

All relationships are a dance. We need to move in time with each other. We need to understand each other’s rhythms. If you don’t, you’ll step on his feet, he’ll stand out of reach, and everything becomes clunky.

When an Aries Man is “With” You

• He chases.

• He checks in.

• He’s possessive and protective.

• He takes an interest in what you’re doing.

• He’s passionate.

• He’s playful.

• He’s sexually excited.

When an Aries Man is Losing Interest…

• It looks and feels different.

• He’s excited about everything BUT the relationship.

• He cancels plans.

• He lashes out and projects his frustration onto you.

• He finds any reason to be busy and not involved with you.

You’ll know the difference between an Aries guy who is busy and an Aries guy who is burning out. This guide will help you avoid these problems and respond when the fires start to dim.

1. Too Much, Too Soon

The Importance of Pacing His Passion:

Think of an Aries man like a sprinter.

He wants everything fast and furious.

And you know it feels GREAT in the beginning. The problem is that sprints are brief by design. If you’re planning to be with him for the long run – that is, if you want to run a marathon – you can’t possibly sprint the whole time.

But nobody told an Aries man this. Or if they did, he didn’t listen.

Aries men love to believe they are the superheroes from their childhood comics. They want to think they can outlast anyone in energy and focus. Yet they are human. At some point, they just become tired and burned out.

Aries men don’t know how to pace themselves. They want it all, now. As much as it can feel great to get his undivided attention and passion, know that this is the hot, steamy, fast dance that he does in the beginning. But like any good dance partner, he needs to occasionally slow down so he can speed back up.

Help your Aries man pace himself. This will potentially save your relationship. When he chases, don’t open up too quickly. When he expresses his passion, don’t match his energy exactly. Be enthusiastic and excited, but give him a reason to chase you.

He may remind you of an excited child and indeed his sign is the Child of the Zodiac. Like an exuberant child, he needs to be reminded to slow down and delay gratification.

The KEY, though, the ABSOLUTE MUST in this process… is to NOT take on a parental role toward him.

If he feels like you are condescending to him or patronizing him it will backfire. You don’t have to tell him what to do (in fact, that is NEVER a good idea with an Aries man).

Instead, ROLE MODEL the pace for him. Simply moderate your OWN pace in the relationship and this will naturally lead him, tantalized and encouraged to pursue you.

Don’t Miss Your Cue

Now back to the sprint analogy…

At some point, your Aries man will start to run out of steam. He’ll remember he had other interests, and he’ll suddenly remember he has other friends.

Naturally, he’ll go from 100 percent into you, to maybe 30 percent or less.

Ouch.

It can feel like the rug has pulled out from under you. You may wonder why he can’t simply go from 100 percent to, say, 90 or 80 percent.

But such range is easier if he was jogging or walking moderately. It’s easier to scale up or down if you’re NOT an Aries man. For him, the speeds are zero and one hundred. All or nothing. There is little in between.

Now, it’s ESSENTIAL that you understand that this is HIS style. Not a reflection of his feelings toward you. So when he’s on high speed and giving you one hundred percent, enjoy it, but don’t think it will always be this way. In fact, you may even want to tap the brakes when you can to help him pace himself.

Now, when he cools down, don’t panic. Rejoice.

Tell yourself that this is his self-care. His needed slow-down after a pace. It’s good for YOU as well. This is your chance to balance your life as well. Give him some space. Encourage it, even. Don’t chase him. Don’t try to get him to go back to the way things were at this stage in the game.

Remember, if he was running at a sprint pace and slowed down to catch his breath and bring his body back to balance, you wouldn’t want to push him to sprint again before his body was ready, right?

Look at this as a time to get back in touch with your interests and friends. BUT also remember this is your chance to prime him to chase again. Do this in subtle ways. Show an interest in adventures, travel or physical activities.

Change up your style or give yourself a makeover. Be responsive but not over-accessible. Let him FEEL what it’s like to wait for you.

Aries men are incredibly impatient and this is the best way to provoke him to chase you. Don’t be too easily accessible. Without donning an attitude, act as if you are a celebrity. Confident, popular, in demand – remind him of why he is actually WINNING if he’s with you.

2. Waves of Emotion Drown Him

An Aries man is intense and passionate. So it’s only natural that the average woman will read his PASSION as his willingness to connect EMOTIONALLY. But to an Aries man, there is a difference.

One of the reasons he withdraws from a relationship is because he starts to feel emotional overload.

Let’s look at the difference between EMOTION and PASSION from an astrological perspective.

Aries are one of three fire signs. Fire signs are known for their passion and also can be described in the following ways:

• Direct

• Honest

• Impulsive

• Adventurous

• Spontaneous

• Possessive

• Intense

Now, emotions can convey passion or be expressed in passionate ways. Signs that are typically known for being highly emotional are water signs. In astrology, as well as in many other systems, water conveys EMOTION while fire conveys passion and action.

Water is also associated with the following traits:

• Intuition

• Sensitivity

• Family

• Empathy

• Attachment

• Depth

It is in the nature of water to balance and snuff out fire.

An Aries man has a fiery nature, and he will feel smothered (snuffed out) by the power of water (emotion) when things become too overwhelming.

Put another way, it’s FUN for an Aries man to express his passion in intense, spontaneous or even impulsive ways. When he talks about marriage after two weeks, he’s speaking from PASSION, which he can easily do without engaging EMOTION.

So he has feelings, don’t get me wrong. But he’s comfortable with the firecracker energy of passion rather than the heavy, deep, murky energy of emotion.

Think of how we describe emotions: we feel DEEPLY. We POUR our hearts out… we use watery terms.

These words evoke fear in the heart of an Aries man because on some level he senses the watery nature that threatens his fierce, fiery nature.

It’s ok to have deep, powerful, emotions regarding your Aries man. But you want to let these emotions flow in a gentle stream or to fuel the fire of his passions, rather than to overwhelm him like a tidal wave.

If your relationship is soaring, or on the rocks, pouring your heart out is not what you want to do with an Aries man.

Instead, you can let him know how you feel through your actions (which he prefers to words anyway) by treating him like a hero, and by showing him admiration and adoration.

But don’t expect him to “hold space” for emotion, because that’s not his comfort.

It’s not his style.

When He Goes Cold

If you don’t pour your heart out to him, what should you do?

When he goes cold, EXCITE him. Don’t chase him, don’t try to dominate him. Don’t overwhelm him with emotions.

Take the time to seek emotional connection and support through friends and family. Fill your cup in other ways. This gives you both a chance to cool off. Don’t make a big deal out of the fact that you’re going to do this – there’s no need to announce your strategy.

Just do it as a natural part of balancing out your time with him.

When he pulls back, get involved in exciting, fulfilling, emotionally satisfying activities. This will accomplish a few things.

• It takes the pressure off him.

• It makes him miss you.

• It fulfills you emotionally so your emotions won’t compel you to chase him.

• It encourages him to chase you.

By knowing how to understand his passionate nature, you can keep the fire lit without unintentionally dousing the flames with too much emotional water.

3. He’s Bored

The idea that boredom could undermine your relationship with an Aries man can seem ludicrous. .You know your Aries man, you’ve felt the AMAZING connection. Surely boredom is something you’ll never have to worry about, right?

Wrong.

Be on the Lookout for Boredom

Aries men are super sensitive to boredom. If you feel bored, rest assured he’s already feeling it too. If you start to notice that things are becoming too routine, he’s already sensed it.

This is a relatively easy problem to mitigate, fortunately.

Introduce excitement, and change things up. Surprise him. Become absent. Take a trip with friends or spend a weekend at an artist’s retreat or yoga retreat. Change your appearance. Join a new exercise class. Make yourself less available.

Challenge him to a game. Research new sexual techniques and excite his interest by letting your freaky side out to play.

Whatever you can do to break up the monotony or change routines, do it. Some of the tactics you can do involve you specifically, and that’s ok. The more you do things to broaden your horizons, the better.

Even if you travel alone, it still gives both you and your Aries man a break. He gets a chance to miss you. Your solo adventures will give him something interesting to learn from you. Do something new for yourself and you’ll invigorate and excite him.

4. He Doesn’t Feel Like a Hero

In every relationship, at some point we become used to our partner. We get to know their strengths and their weaknesses, for better or for worse.

It’s inevitable that you may suddenly not feel like his queen and he may not feel like your hero.

But for an Aries man, this can be a reason for his withdrawal.

Aries men want to be the hero in your life. When an Aries man loves you, but doesn’t feel like he’s your hero, he’ll look elsewhere for the praise he’s not getting. Now this doesn’t mean he’s cheating, but it could mean he spends more time, energy and attention with other people who do feed his ego in ways the relationship no longer does.

What it Looks Like When He’s Not the Hero

To an Aries man, losing hero status looks like the following:

• You criticize him openly or privately, more than usual.

• He tries to please you but you find fault – justified or not.

• It seems like you expect him to do certain things and no longer praise or thank him.

• You speak badly about him to others.

• You point out his mistakes or berate, judge or laugh at his flaws.

• It becomes harder and harder for him to save face or make it up to you when he’s wrong.

• He doesn’t feel respected, admired or praised.

Easy Ways to Treat Him Like a Hero

Fortunately, this is easy to turn around. Here are a few simple ways to remind him he’s still your hero.

• Give him a task you know he’ll excel at and treat him like he’s saved the day when he follows through.

• Always thank him and mean it.

• Compliment him.

• Brag about how amazing he is to your friends.

• Offer constructive feedback, not criticism.

• Don’t put him down.

• Admire him and his talents.

• Let him save face after a disagreement.

• Find little ways every single day to make him feel relevant and important. Remind him of all the reasons your life is better with him in it. Keep the passion strong by allowing him to do some things for you, even if you could do them yourself – especially challenging things he can take pride in accomplishing.

5. He Senses Competition

If an Aries man starts to turn cold after some time, it could be because he senses competition.

Though many times an Aries man WILL respond when you stoke the fires of competition – after all, he loves to compete in sports and other areas of life – competition in love can go one of two ways for an Aries man.

Either he’ll suddenly become more passionate, wooing  you and becoming possessive. He’ll make sure everyone knows you’re with him. He’ll want to go over the top to make sure he’s got your devotion and loyalty…

Or, he’ll do something entirely different.

Under some circumstances, an Aries man who senses competition, if he thinks you’re serious about the other man you’ve begun talking about or flirting with, he may try to beat you at your own game. He may seek out a woman he finds attractive. He may even make sure it’s someone he thinks you’ll be jealous of.

This is his way of trying to fight fire with fire, something an Aries man is likely to do.

If you’re going to use the tactic of stoking the fires of jealousy to get your Aries man to respond to you differently, there are a few things you should consider.

Ask yourself the following:

How long have we been together?

Making him jealous works better when you’re in the VERY EARLY stages of dating an Aries man, and if he’s not committing or if he’s wavering on his interest. The reason being, once he’s “settled down” with you, he expects complete loyalty.

Any action at this point to make him jealous will backfire. He will read it as you no longer being interested in a relationship with him, after he’s already invested a lot in the relationship. Doing this when you’ve been official for more than six months or so runs the risk of sending the wrong message.

You want to get him to chase you by sending the message that you’re worth the pursuit; showing him any hint of competition far along in a relationship may make him think you’ve changed your mind and are rejecting him.

Has he been completely loyal?

If he’s flirting with other women or you suspect infidelity, giving him a taste of his own medicine can work in your favor if you remain above reproach by only flirting and not violating the boundaries of the relationship. Keep your flirtation VERY subtle and low-key.

Keep your intentions clear – you just want him to know you have other options if you have proof that he’s taking the relationship for granted.

But if he’s been loyal and faithful, this technique only makes it look, to him, like YOU are the one who is taking HIM for granted. So you want to avoid this tactic if your Aries man is faithful but just distant.

Has infidelity been an issue in his past?

If your Aries man has a history of being cheated on by previous partners, never use this tactic. All it will do is send him into red alert. He won’t trust you and may even think he’s made a mistake by opening up to you. When He Feels Insecure…

Now, sometimes an Aries man will sense competition on the horizon when you’re not outwardly stroking his jealousy. Here are a few ways this can happen.

• He hears you talk excitedly and adoringly about another guy.

• You take another man’s side over his in an argument or debate.

• You stop treating him like your hero (as outlined previously) but show great enthusiasm for someone else.

It doesn’t matter to an Aries man that the person you’re paying more attention to, giving more compliments to or acting enthusiastically about is a friend. It doesn’t matter to your Aries man that this other fellow is someone you’re SO not attracted to in a romantic way.

Like a child jealous of his sibling, all he’ll notice is that he wants your attention and someone else is getting it. This can eventually make him become distant in a relationship as he seeks the attention he craves somewhere else.

6. He Thinks He’s Won the Game

One thing that can make an Aries man start to lose interest is when the challenge is gone. Aries men need to have a quest. That is, after all, part of what makes him feel like a hero.

He needs mountains to climb, villains to vanquish, ordeals to go through.

When a relationship starts to become too routine, an Aries man will become bored. Life is a game to an Aries man. But if he feels he’s won the game, he won’t invest more in playing.

Just like we would get bored running the same path every day, with no hills or surprises, an Aries man needs hurdles to jump at times.

Aries men are attracted, in part, to friction.

If you make life too easy for them, they’ll get bored. He needs to see that there is a fair amount of YOU in the relationship in order to feel compelled to continue to invest in it.

If the relationship is too much about HIM, say, his interests, his ideas, his plans, or his needs, he’ll feel like he may as well be on his own.

Now, to be fair, this is another situation in which Aries men set the stage for their own demise. They are notoriously dominating. They can be opinionated and insistent.

It’s not hard to understand why people who are close to Aries men often find it easier to just give them their own way. Going up against an Aries man can be truly exhausting.

They are among the most willful men in the zodiac.

So when you challenge an Aries man, you never know what you’re going to get. He may become excited by the tension which can fuel his passion and sexual attraction. He may dig in his heels and insist on having the last word.

It doesn’t take long into a relationship for a woman to realize the merits to giving in to the whims of an Aries man. Like a busy parent with a demanding child, sometimes it just SEEMS like it’s worth avoiding a tantrum.

But just as this backfires in parenting, it also backfires when it comes to an Aries man. Sure, he’s not a child. But he is the most youthful sign in the zodiac.

You’ve got to know the challenges he is turned on by as opposed to the challenges that will turn him off. There is a difference between making an Aries man feel dominated and making him feel like he’s “won” the game and that there is nothing more to pursue.

Appealing to his desire for a challenge looks like:

• Making a request that he can accomplish with some effort.

• Standing up for your needs rather than always compromising.

• Telling him what you desire and letting him satisfy you.

• Letting him know when he’s satisfied your desires, and thanking him.

• Giving him a list of tasks or sending him on errands.

• Actually challenging him – to a hike, an adventure or a competition.

• Making changes to your own goals to inspire him (don’t let him think he’s got you all figured out).

• Having something challenging to aspire to together (fixing up an old house, traveling the world, starting a business and so forth).

When you keep things challenging for an Aries man, he remains engaged. But you’ve got to make sure the challenges are feasible. Don’t make things too easy for him but don’t send him on fool’s errands either.

To be extra clear – here is a list of things women often do that are the OPPOSITE of challenging an Aries man – avoid these things, or at least try to not do them excessively. This can doom a relationship with an Aries man.

Are you making things too easy?

Do you insist on always paying?

This will hurt his pride over time.

Making all the decisions based on what you think he wants – this will bore him over time.

Letting him get stuck in routines because you’re afraid to suggest new things – speak up for your own interests instead.

Not asking for what you desire.

Not letting him know when you’re upset.

Do you try hard to eliminate all obstacles so as to not bother him? Those inconveniences and challenges are what an Aries man thrives on – he needs a problem to solve.

Do you live by the saying, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself?”

This is TOXIC to a relationship with an Aries man.

As tempting as it may be to try to constantly keep the peace and make him happy, avoid this. It will turn your Aries man off and in the long run will undermine the relationship completely.

Don’t get me wrong; you WANT your Aries man to feel like a winner. But you also want to make sure he doesn’t feel like he’s conquered every level and that the game is now over.

• Make sure he knows there is always another level to advance to. Turn up the heat, make things complicated, give him problems to solve. Don’t let him get complacent or else he’ll lose his spark of passion for you.

• Make sure he knows there is more to learn about you as well. Challenge yourself to advance and you’ll challenge your Aries man to grow right along with you. Give him a chance to discover new things about you by continuing to grow and adapt personally.

7. He Feels Controlled

This final reason an Aries man turns cold is one of the hardest to recognize. Mostly because we all have a fatal flaw as human beings – we don’t realize our own bad habits as easily as we recognize the bad habits of others.

Especially when it comes to having control issues.

It’s easy to see the control issues (or other issues) of an Aries man. But it’s much harder to look in the mirror and honestly face your own control issues.

Aries men are VERY independent.

Any slight bit of coercion or manipulation will send them packing.

Here are a few examples of common things women do that come across as controlling to an Aries man…

• Rushing him to define the relationship.

• Making it obvious that you want him to show his feelings in ways he’s not comfortable with yet.

• Making judgmental remarks about his hobbies, interests, or priorities because they don’t align with yours.

• Suggesting that he’s “wrong” for not sharing your values (marriage, owning a home, getting a promotion).

• Getting into power struggles with him because he prefers a specific style of communication (such as when he doesn’t like to text).

• Trying to dominate or control his time – such as assuming he doesn’t care about you because he wants to spend time with friends or alone.

Often, what underlies these control issues are a few false assumptions. The assumption that he shows love the same way you do, so if he is not doing these things, he doesn’t love you.

The assumption that he needs as much time together or alone as you do.

So for example, if he talks about needing space but you are already missing him and wanting to spend MORE time with him, trying to make him spend more time with you can feel like you are dominating his time or manipulating him.

This can be a difficult pattern to recognize, because chances are, what you’re expecting from him seems NORMAL and even RIGHT to you. It certainly did to me. So if you are able to step back and be flexible about your expectations, recognizing that he has his own style of communicating and his own threshold for time alone, you can let go and trust the larger process. Have confidence in yourself.

That was one of my issues, I realized, so many years ago.

I didn’t actually trust the guys I was dating. I really didn’t have confidence in myself. I was making the subconscious assumption that if a guy didn’t instantly open up and share my level of interest in the relationship, that meant I was on the verge of losing him.

This extreme assumption probably cost me many relationships, but luckily I learned before it was too late that I didn’t have to be quite so anxious in relationships.

Trust in your Aries man’s desire for you. Give him space when he needs it and he’ll feel compelled to chase you. He’ll naturally start to miss you. If you wonder how he really feels about you because he doesn’t express himself verbally, look at his actions.

Aries men are more likely to express love through what they do than through what they say. Let him show you the lengths he’s willing to go to for you.

This is the greatest proof you can have that your Aries man is totally devoted.

But if he feels you’re pushing him for more than he’s ready for – if you keep hinting at meeting his family, moving in together, or getting engaged, for example – he’ll start to shut down.

Also, if you insist that he “open up” and show his feelings in a way that is validating for you, you may be inadvertently giving your Aries man the sense that you’re trying to control his feelings.

This is a big mistake with an Aries man. He avoids vulnerability. Instead of trying to get him to conform to your style of showing emotions, look for the evidence of how he IS ALREADY showing you how he feels.

This can’t be overstated.

Aries men are huge control freaks, so if they feel like you are overstepping at all, they will react by growing distant.

This is the easiest way an Aries man can think of to reassert his sense of authority. This is how he sends a message to you that he won’t be dominated. It’s also how he reassures himself that he is still able to call the shots in his own life.

An Aries man needs to feel like he’s able to remain independent in a relationship. When you insist that you know his emotions, what he needs to do, or what’s best for him, he will feel like you’re usurping his authority and taking control.

He’s super sensitive to control issues in relationships so be sure not to give this impression.