This Relationship Habit Is More Damaging Than You Think

Every time you pull away, you withdraw, you shut down, or you withhold your love from the person you care about, you weaken your relationship, often to the point of no return. And if this is you, you have to recognize that it is a habit. It is something that you learned. Because every time you pull away, it brings your partner closer to you because they're anxious and they want to connect. But it never works long term. All it does is create a tremendous amount of stress in your partner, it creates stress in you, and it just adds to the dysfunction in your relationship. So what I want you to do is challenge yourself. Challenge yourself. When you are upset, when you feel insecure, whatever it is that's going on, to breathe, to stay present, and to communicate. And it's going to have to be something that you are disciplined about, and that you practice a lot. Because likely you learned it from your parents. Or you may have been in a very difficult relationship, and there was a lot of push-pull, and you realize that by pulling away, that that somehow created some sort of reconnection. Maybe your partner was the one who always pulled away, and then you kind of pulled away too. This is what happens in relationships. This is what creates dysfunction. We, in our attempt to feel more secure when we're feeling insecure, what we'll do is that we'll punish our partner by withholding our attention and our love. Because what's the most important thing in a relationship? It's attention and love. We all want to feel seen, understood, known. So the moment we withdraw, the very thing that is like the oxygen for a relationship is the moment that we are very effectively punishing our partner. But all it does is create dysfunction. And it creates dysfunction in you too, because then you're never actually going to be in a relationship that feels fulfilling, that is healthy for you. And look, I mean, some people have said to me, oh, I do that because they're so mean to me, or I do that because it's survival. Well then, if you're in a relationship where in order to survive, you have to withhold your love and pull away, then you're absolutely in the wrong relationship. It's never the answer. The answer for you might be, I have to end this relationship. But withholding love, pulling away, all of that, it's a defense mechanism. It's a coping mechanism. It is learned. It is well-practiced. And it is not good for you, and it's not good for your relationship, and it's certainly not good for your partner. So like I said, you have to break the pattern. And that means first being aware of when that impulse to pull away and to punish comes up. Because for a lot of people, it's not some master manipulative plan. I mean, for some it is, but for many, it's, I feel insecure. I feel unloved. I feel anxious. I don't know what I'm feeling. And then I'm going to cocoon myself and make myself unavailable to my partner, not because I want to hurt them, but because I don't know what to do with all these feelings. And or I've recognized that when I do that, the person who I love, who feels so distant to me, at least when I cocoon myself and I pull away, that's going to bring them closer to me. And it's a conundrum, but you don't want to do it. So you want to, you really, really, if you want the kind of relationship that every single one of us wants, which is loving and free and healthy, you want to challenge yourself to recognize, like I said, to become aware of what triggers it. What is it? What's the emotion that happens inside of you that leads you to do that? And then to be aware of when that's happening in real time, to take a deep breath, to take several deep breaths, to maybe even go for a walk and to, and to really connect with that. What am I feeling right now? I'm feeling lost. I'm feeling insecure. I'm feeling I'm like, I'm going to lose love. I feel like I'm not good enough for my partner. I feel like I'm not number one, you know, I just feel like everything else comes before me, whatever it is, because it's always coming from a place of fear and lack and, and feeling somehow inadequate almost always. And so you have to connect to that inside of you and say, okay, that's what I'm feeling right now. How can I communicate? How can I just be present? And you can even say to your partner, it's really hard for me to be present right now. I want to just run away because I feel so sad, you know, or I feel so, um, inadequate, but I'm here. I'm going to stay here. And you have to, if even if you have to challenge yourself over and over and over again, to retrain yourself, to have healthier responses to your partner and healthier responses to whatever it is that you're feeling internally, you will guarantee transform the quality of your relationship. And yes, maybe it's a relationship that doesn't last, but at least it doesn't end because of this constant corrosive dysfunction. If you want a relationship to end, you end it by being mature about it and ending it, not allowing things to get so out of control with this push pull that it becomes this incredible stress that lives inside your mind and your body. And then the relationship ends. And then you just end up feeling like a failure or you feel like, you know, all, you know, love sucks and all relationships suck. No, we have to be able to take responsibility for how we are contributing to whatever's not working. And like I said, probably one of the top three worst habits in a relationship is the habit of pulling away and withholding our love every time we are upset, because it is almost impossible. When we do that enough times for our partner and for the relationship to bounce back from that, it's impossible to have trust. We don't become more secure in a relationship by making our partner insecure. In fact, whenever someone feels insecure in a relationship, something is not working in the relationship. Sure. There are people who are just, who feel insecure and it doesn't matter who they're with or what is happening. And that's something they have to address within themselves. Absolutely. But more times than not, I'm telling you that when someone is chronically feeling insecure in their relationship, when they feel emotionally unsafe, when they feel chronically inadequate for their partner, it is usually a symptom of something that's going on in the relationship. And so whenever we are doing something that is in any way going to trigger insecurity in our partner, we have to take that very, very seriously because it means something is not working.