Relationships are one of the most important parts of the human experience. Through connecting with others, we experience fun and excitement and fill our lives with meaning and fulfillment.
Yet, navigating relationships is complex. The people closest to us often serve as mirrors to our own unprocessed emotions and shadows. Conflict that drives couples apart typically reveals painful places inside of each partner.
To protect ourselves from emotional pain, we unconsciously employ defense mechanisms. These protective behaviors can keep us from feeling our own difficult emotions by suppressing or keeping the focus on the other.
One way to divert from pain or challenging feelings is to withdraw emotionally in relationships. If you are on the other end of the cycle and see your partner pulling away, you may be confused about why they withdraw and how to support them.
Plus, experiencing withdrawal in a partner is incredibly painful. We all need connecting bonds that we can rely on. So, we’re going to talk about what emotional withdrawal is in relationships and how you can break this pattern.
What Is Emotional Withdrawal In Relationships?
Emotional withdrawal is the disengagement with one’s own emotions and with the internal experience of a partner in a relationship. When things are not going well in relationships, partners may pull away entirely in an effort to prevent getting hurt further.
This strategy of pulling away or suppressing emotions is often learned early in life and formed as an avoidant attachment style. It’s not coming from a malicious place. Typically, one who withdraws has experiences in relationships where engaging in painful emotions leads to rejection or abandonment. Therefore, they learn that withdrawing in the face of stress is a safer move and they avoid conflict.
Pulling away emotionally can seem like an effective strategy at the beginning. However, in the long term these patterns are damaging not only to the relationship but to the partners’ mental health. When we mute our emotions, we become disconnected from ourselves. As a result, the nervous system might have to try harder to get through by pumping anxiety chemicals through the body. Plus, when we disconnect from difficult emotions, we also numb out the positive ones.
Couples who experience withdraw from one or both of the partners may notice that they start to feel like roommates, conversations feel surface level, and they lack a deep connection. Over time, these patterns can deteriorate the health of the relationship and cause resentment to build.
In healthy relationships, emotional vulnerability and expression are necessary.
What Are The Signs Of Emotional Withdrawal In Relationships?
Here are some of the ways emotional withdrawal can look in a relationship:
- Feeling emotionally distant even when you are physically together
- Partners spend more time at work
- Lack of physical and sexual connection
- Spending time alone
- Lack of depth and emotional connections in conversations
- The other partner feels increasingly anxious
How To Deal With Emotional Withdrawal In Relationships
Here are some tips and strategies to break emotional withdrawal in relationships.
Identify Patterns
Often when a partner withdraws, they are feeling emotionally disconnected or unsafe. As a way to protect from getting more hurt, they pull their feelings out of the equation all together.
The other partner likely becomes anxious and stressed when they see their partner pull away. As a result, they may approach them to work through their problems together. However, this pursuit actually causes the withdrawing partner to pull away even more, creating a cycle of stress.
To deal with withdrawal, first identify the pattern of the relationship and the ways both partners impact the dynamic. A couples cycle mapping guide, or the first conversation in the book Hold Me Tight, can help you observe these patterns.
Reflect On Your Own Behavior
As partners notice the pattern their communication cycle falls into, they should engage in some individual reflection on their own tendencies (I.e., withdrawing or pursuing their partner). In order to change behaviors, we must first understand why we are engaging in them in the first place.
Some helpful reflection questions to explore include:
- What happens in my body right before I withdraw or pursue?
- What am I feeling when I move into my own pattern?
- What would happen if I did not withdraw or pursue in this moment?
Reflection and accountability are key healthy relationship characteristics. Identify your own attachment styles and get curious about where your patterns come from. Allow each partner time to process on their own before coming back together.
Communicate Openly
When partners gain clarity on their own behaviors, they should communicate openly with the other. We cannot expect to read one another’s minds and know what happens in our partner’s mind and heart during moments of stress.
Acknowledge the patterns each partner falls into and share with your partner what’s going on for you internally. Sharing your thoughts and feelings from the reflection prompts above is a great place to start.
Create Safety
As we’ve mentioned, emotional withdrawal is a stress response. If we want someone to stop withdrawing, we have to take away the need, or perceived need, for their body to move into a stress response.
Create safety and build a supportive environment by listening to one another when you explain your positions. Rather than challenging one another, denying their perspective, or casting blame (which will all lead to more withdrawal), hear them out and validate their perspective.
Express perspectives and emotions in a healthy way to create a sense of security.
Attend Therapy
Cycles of stress and miscommunication in couples can be difficult to manage alone. When both partners are triggering one another, the best attempt at conversations can run in circles and lead nowhere. If you continue to feel stuck, it may be time to seek professional help.
A professional couples or marriage counseling therapist can help break these cycles. Working with an individual and couples therapist provides a supportive environment where both partners can safely explore the roots of emotional withdrawal.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) is a modern method of couples counseling that specifically focuses on breaking patterns formed by stress responses. While therapy is an emotional investment, it can completely transform your understanding of one another and reestablish emotional intimacy.
If you aren’t sure how to ask your partner to go to couples therapy, be sure to approach the work as a joint relationship effort. If one person is framed as the problem, they are unlikely to feel safe participating.
Rebuild Your Bond
When a partner becomes emotionally withdrawn, both people often feel alone, confused, and disconnected. To begin healing, focus on rebuilding the emotional bond while also addressing the unresolved emotional pain that may be driving the withdrawal.
Withdrawal often comes from unexpressed or unprocessed feelings that build into resentment and hopelessness. Often, unspoken fears, hurt, or unmet needs from the past resurface in moments of distance or conflict.
Instead of arguing or avoiding, slow down and acknowledge where you are. When partners recognize and validate these emotions, they respond to the real attachment need rather than getting stuck in behavioral requests. Over time, this process strengthens trust and rebuilds emotional safety within the relationship.
Acknowledge If Things Don’t Change
As a couples therapist, I always want to believe the best in people and that they can change if they are motivated. However, if you put in an effort with the steps above and continue to see withdrawal from your partner when you need them, acknowledge your observation.
Healing in relationships is a beautiful experience. Yet, if you are not getting your needs met even when you put in your side of the work, if might be time to walk away.
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