#138: What to Do When a Partner Pulls Away
On Attachment
Stephanie Rigg
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's episode, I'm sharing some thoughts on how to navigate a partner pulling away. If you're someone with anxious attachment patterns, a partner's withdrawal or disengagement can feel extremely distressing - and yet, many of our go-to strategies for managing that distress can ironically have the effect of pushing someone further away.
We'll cover:
- what to do when someone pulls away in an early dating context
- why we feel drawn to pursuing connections with people who are inconsistent
- how to navigate a partner repeatedly leaving and coming back
- what to do when a long-term partner is emotionally withdrawn or distant
Highlighted Links
- Free Break-Up Training: The 3 Shifts That Help Anxiously Attached People Heal After a Break-up
- Free Training: How to Heal Anxious Attachment and (Finally) Feel Secure in Life & Love
Additional Resources
- Download the FREE Anxious Attachment Starter Kit here
- Join my email list 💌
- Explore my library of free guides, classes & meditations
- Visit my website
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships |
| 0:10.6 | and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. |
| 0:19.8 | I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, |
| 0:22.8 | and I'm really glad you're here. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. |
| 0:33.3 | In today's episode, we are talking about what to do when your partner pulls away or withdraws. |
| 0:39.6 | So this is a question that I have received in many forms, many times from people in my community. |
| 0:47.1 | And I think it's a big question because obviously it spans so many different sets of circumstances and contexts. |
| 0:54.7 | And so in answering this question and sharing some thoughts around this, I'm going to split it up into different scenarios. |
| 1:03.1 | So if someone that you're in the early stages of dating starts to pull away, you know, that's a very different scenario to if someone you've |
| 1:12.7 | been in a long-term relationship with for a couple of years is being withdrawn and pulling away. |
| 1:16.9 | And I think while it might activate similar circuit tree within you, I think what is appropriate |
| 1:22.7 | in terms of how you respond to that might be different and my advice would probably differ. |
| 1:28.8 | So I'm going to speak to those different versions of the scenario where someone that you're |
| 1:34.9 | in relationship with or connected with is pulling away. And while I haven't explicitly made this |
| 1:42.7 | about anxious and avoidant attachment, I think it would |
| 1:45.2 | be fair to say that I'm mostly speaking to people who probably lean more anxious here and |
| 1:52.0 | have been in the situation of having someone who leans more avoidant pulling away, as we know, |
| 1:56.6 | that's the more typical scenario. |
| 1:59.0 | So while it's not exclusively that, and of course there will always |
| 2:01.9 | be variations on the theme that's probably, in most cases, going to be what we're talking about |
| 2:08.6 | today. Before I dive into today's episode, I just wanted to share, I've done a really terrible |
| 2:13.6 | job at sharing this, but there is a YouTube channel that I created a little while ago |
... |
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