Boomerang, 32, from Johannesburg, asks: I have been married for 10 years and divorced this year January. I met this guy who is 33 and never been married, lives alone, financially stable, good career, highly educated. I fell for him cause he does not seem like the type that will take me serious and want to commit to this relations ship "just what I needed" and he seemed outspoken. But then he started doing commitment things like introducing me to his mother talking -- "hinting" -- about us and marriage in the future; call my daughter (13 yrs) on the phone wanting to know about her studies, went for HIV test (so that we should stop using a condom). But all this happened in a month's time of meeting him. I then gave him negative signals indicating that he's moving too fast and I need space. I did not tell him but I just did certain things to show him. He now treats me so differently. He doesn't call or show me the interest he used to show and he's so cold and I think I fell in love with him and miss all the attention and want us to be the way things were before I told him to back off, but his full of pride and just not the same . What do I do ?

VictorM's advice: This sure is a twist.

Well, you have basically bruised his ego. He was cocky, confident, and calling the shots. You slammed the brakes on that and now he feels like a little kid who's been told off and goes to his room and pouts. Now he needs to show you that you were better off before.

My advice is to be patient and do nothing different than you did when things were going well. If you give in to his current behavior, you give him too much of the upper hand and he's likely to want to pick up where he left off -- you don't want that. If you have a confrontation with him you just prolong his pouting. But by being nice to him without giving in to his inner child, he'll eventually come around ON YOUR TERMS, which is what you want.

Men... you gotta train them like puppies.