''If He Likes Me, Why Doesn’t He Make an Effort?''
The cost of being available on someone else's terms.
Posted June 2, 2026 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
A friend recently showed me a message her sister sent her about a man she had been seeing. The message was sort of brutal:
In the span of six weeks, your boy found the time, money, and energy to go on holiday to Albania and organise more fun trips to Poland with his friends, yet somehow he still couldn’t organise seeing you.
If he wanted to, he would.
You see each other only when you organize it while he extracts emotional support, attention , and sex whenever it is convenient for him and entirely on his terms.
My friend said that despite how clearly her sister described the situation, and despite how obvious the pattern appeared from the outside, she felt confused. I asked her what exactly felt confusing in something that at least seemed relatively straightforward. She said she could not reconcile the gap between his actions and the things he told her. His behaviour communicated distance, inconsistency, and lack of prioritisation, while his words communicated emotional intensity and certainty.
He told her she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. That she was beautiful. That he connected with her “on another level.” That he had never felt this way before. He even asked her to be his girlfriend, so they could make the relationship “official.” He texted her constantly, and called whenever possible.
But when I asked her what they actually spoke about, the pattern did not indicate mutual relationship. Most conversations revolved around sex—lots of phone sex—alongside his frustrations at work, his anxieties, and stories about his own life: holidays with friends, dinners out, tennis, rugby, park runs, and the various adventures and experiences he was having. Occasionally he would ask about her day, but the emotional centre of gravity consistently returned to him. Gradually, the relationship became organised around his needs, his desires, his emotional release, and his access to her attention, sexuality , and emotional labour .
At the beginning, my friend tried to rationalise his lack of effort by assuming he simply struggled financially. It felt kinder, more humane, and easier to accept than the alternative. But that explanation slowly collapsed once she saw him organise holidays to Albania, book trips to Poland with friends, go out for dinners, maintain expensive hobbies, and continuously invest time, money, and energy into the parts of life that mattered more to him.
He was not, she saw, incapable of effort; he invested plenty of time, money, and energy into the thing that mattered to him the most: himself .
People reveal their intentions and priorities through what they consistently choose to invest their time, effort, attention, and resources in.
His sweet-talking would only mean something if his actions matched it. They didn’t because they were never expression of true feeling but rather functioned like an access code—the mechanism through which he gained access to her resources. Every “you’re different,” every late-night confession, every “I’ve never felt like this before” created just enough intimacy to keep her giving him access to her body, attention, emotional energy, and care. The emotional intensity was not translating into effort because that was never its function. Its function was to keep her attached while he continued organising his life around himself.
So, the answer to “If he likes me, why doesn’t he make an effort?” is often simple: Because he does not want to. If he repeatedly fails to properly show up for you, then you are simply not a real priority, regardless of what he says.
The man my friend dated may have enjoyed talking to her, sleeping with her, and receiving her attention, emotional support, validation, and daily availability because all of those things benefited him. In many ways, she became a low-cost emotional and sexual solution to his needs. If it were not for her, he would likely have had to rely on multiple people or services to meet the same range of needs: a therapist to absorb his frustrations and emotionally regulate him, a mother figure to nurture and reassure him, friends to entertain his loneliness and listen to his daily stories, a nurse-like figure to provide care and emotional soothing, and platforms like OnlyFans or other forms of paid digital intimacy for sexual attention and validation. Instead, she provided all of these things freely within a relationship that increasingly appeared organised around his needs, his comfort, and his emotional and sexual convenience, while requiring little reciprocity, sacrifice, transparency, or genuine investment in return.
When Exploitation Feels Normal
It's unlikely that this man is an evil mastermind consciously exploiting her. Rather, modern social arrangements normalise patriarchal dynamics to the point that exploitation feels like just another day.
Within heterosexual relationships, women are frequently socialised to provide emotional regulation , validation, nurturing, sexual availability, and relational maintenance as if these were natural expressions of womanhood rather than forms of labour that disproportionately benefit men (Walby, 1990; Hochschild, 1983). Because this labour is culturally romanticised, exploitation often does not feel like exploitation while it is happening. Instead, asymmetry becomes normalised as intimacy itself. A woman may find herself functioning simultaneously as therapist, emotional regulator, confidante, sexual provider, and source of unconditional reassurance while receiving comparatively little prioritisation, sacrifice, or structural commitment in return. Many men learn to experience women’s labour as something naturally available to them, while women are taught to interpret endurance, accommodation, and emotional self-sacrifice as evidence of love. The result deeply unequal arrangements that feel emotionally meaningful because patriarchal culture has trained women to confuse being consumed with being genuinely valued.
So what should someone do when they realise they're trapped in a relationship organised around convenience rather than mutuality?
First, stop listening to words and start analysing behaviour. Emotional intensity means nothing if it is not reflected in consistent effort, prioritisation, sacrifice, and real investment. Second, immediately reduce the unreciprocated labour provided: the endless emotional soothing, constant availability, sexual access on demand, free therapy sessions, validation, and attention that keep the relationship functioning for him while draining her. Unequal dynamics often become clearest the moment a woman stops over-giving. Third, stop interpreting their lack of effort as confusion, trauma , stress , poor communication, or hidden depth. People organise their lives around what they genuinely value. If a man consistently invests his best energy into himself, his hobbies, his friends, and his pleasures while offering a partner only words and emotional theatre, they are already telling her everything she needs to know.
Russell Hochschild, A. (2012). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling.
Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing patriarchy . Basil Blackwell.
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Mags Lesiak, MPhil, is a psychological criminologist investigating how coercion, attachment, and structural pressure impact decision-making and consent.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.