When to Fold ’Em?
Lots of people have asked me this over the past year. “If my partner is moving away, is leaving me, when should I give up? How do I make that decision?” I did write one article on how to get ‘em to make a decision about joining you in a relationship. This article is based on the same principle involving a person who maybe acting passively at a time when you want some decision. And remember this is all based on your continued wish to reconnect.
The decision you want is a) that your partner decides to come back toward you or b) that you reasonably get to stop waiting for them.
Here is the setup. They have moved out, either physically or emotionally or both. Their actions have led you to understand that the previous relationship you had with them somehow “sucked” – enough for them to leave. So now you don’t want the old relationship back, but do want to make a new and better relationship with them. You have read my article on What to do when he/she leaves and are trying to follow the four steps.
So the question is, “How long do you wait?” The current wisdom out on the internet seems to be to not contact them at all. I do not think that a wise course. No contact may make them become aware of their “loneliness,” but also may communicate that you don’t care – that you want them to go away.
So here is my suggestion. Modify this as you chose. In its pure form it takes 5 months.
- Establish a contact channel: email, or cards are ideal. It should be cheap and easily permit the sending of a very limited amount of information. I find text messaging is not very suited to this, nor is voice mail, but you choose. You want them to receive your contact and have perfect freedom about what they do with it: read it, trash it, etc.
- Plan a message that you are going to send. You may have to send as many as 10, so make this simple. The message should contain a “greeting,” an optional bit of news, a clue to your work on yourself, a gentle invitation for more contact.
- The greeting can be nothing more complex than “Hi,” or “Dear Mike,” etc. Keep this light.
- Optional newsy bit is just something like “It’s raining hard,” “The lilacs are out,” “Broke my leg the other day. Doing ok, tho.” Don’t mention anything awful that they might feel obliged to fix. Don’t ever say, “I’m miserable without you,” or the like.
- The clue to your work on yourself is part of my instruction to “3: Work on yourself visibly.” This should be different in each note, and I think these should be pretty abstract. You want your partner to be curious for more. Some examples are, “Seeing my counselor weekly and I am sure learning a lot,” “Wow am I learning about how pushy I used to be.” “Boy, I am getting it that I have been asleep for years.” Etc. Anything you are learning that might involve some subject of their past “complaints” might be good. An example could be that if they complained about your temper, you say, “I am working really hard on getting rid of my anger. I realized it’s been a problem to me for years.”
- Lastly you include a gentle invitation (not a push) to more contact. “Love to hear from you any time you feel like it,” “It’d be fun to hear your voice.” “If you ever feel like contacting me, feel free.” (I strongly suggest you don’t ask questions. None, if you can. Just gentle invitations.)
- Then sign it, bluntly or not at all. “Dave,” “Yours,” etc. Do not say, “Your most obedient and humble servant, begging for your orders, please, please.”
- Send one message only, once a week for one month. (4 messages) Send one message, once every other week for two months. (4 messages) Send one message, once a month for two months. (2 messages) STOP.
That’s it.
If at any time he/she re-contacts you, follow my rule #4 and respond minimally. Oh, if their contact is neutral or simply newsy, read it and ignore it. The contact you are looking for is some request to connect to you coming from them. Example: if they say, “Life is crazy here,” you might feel an impulse to write back something like, “What’s going on?” Don’t do it! It’s a trap. If they say, “Tell me more about what you are learning,” that’s a move to reconnect. Respond minimally to that. Wait for them to be explicit.
Do not be surprised too much if he/she contacts you after the five months of this process. Your partner is leaving that period with a memory of your wanting them, but not pushing. That, I think, is the best you can do.
Good luck.
Hi, My man has been in rehab. He said his feelings for me haven't changed for me; however where once he was going to return home, now he says he wants his own stuff.
He has been drifting most of his life. He says he wants to be a better man and wants to take care of me. There are times when I dont hear from him for weeks, then one day he calls. He keeps changing his mind on many things. When he does come here to my place, he asks if i need anything and asks how I am.
I just feel so alone and lost. He does open up to me, yet says one thing and does another. What advice can you give me on how to understand whats going on.
It sounds as if your guy is trying to “find his way.” Sounds as if he is a bit lost, too. That changing of behavior, saying one thing at 10am and doing another at noon, is pretty normal when a person is struggling to change. Tis called “ambivalence”.
But your question is about how to understand (and I guess live with) this. The most important thing I think is to get your feet on solid ground. Build good boundaries and goals and steps for yourself. That way his ambivalence/chaos has less effect on you and you can be a more solid influence in his life. Remember to take care of yourself first.
Thank you. this has been a very difficult time One more question should i follow your rule on brief communication and say I don’t have much time and make myself less available when he does want to come over. i do love him and understand he has a lot of issues so I need to know the right way to communicate and not put pressure on him yet get my point across that my feelings matter and I know we all go through things in life however the point is he knows right from wrong. I dont want to give up just yet because he does have a true addiction problem and has for a long time.
I’m glad you ask cuz I think your situation is different. If I get this right your loved partner is in “recovery” from some sort of addiction. That on the surface implies two things: about your role with him and about your role with you.
My thinking is that you are in a support role with him. The big work is his, a) in shaking the addiction and b) healing the stuff that lead to that addiction and the stuff that the addiction lead him into. Your role is to help him keep at it by helping him in his forward movements and by making his life a bit worse when he moves backward. To help him move forward it is useful to get him used to sharing his struggles and being validated a lot. To make his life worse, use TimeOuts rigidly when he slips.
Then there is the work you need to do. It seems a truism about couples that you always match up with a person who is just as screwed up as you are. Using that image, you have to take responsibility for finding and healing your stuff, right in front of him if you can. He can help by giving you some challenges. My suggestion is that you keep yourself going by joining something like Al Anon and sticking with it.
This instead of reducing all “pushing”, your goal is to contact him if you can, be a bit of a pain in the neck toward his healing himself, and withdraw (Timeouts) from him when a) he’s slipping back and b) if you are overwhelmed.
Thank you very much. I am so so very grateful to have come across your site and get the best advice I have had in a while. Loving someone with an addiction { drug } is a very challenging situation believe me. However I do have much understanding and if he showed no sign of trying or showing signs that he does care than by all means I would have as you say Fold um and let him return only when dedicated to working together as a couple attending Na AA meeting. I f anything else should occur as I continue to work on myself and listen to what he is saying I will pass this to you and seek your advice so that I stay on the right path with your sound advice Once again thank you so much.
Bonnie C.
Hi Al,
I was looking on the web to figure out what the next steps were since my 24 years old marriage has just ended. My husband has decided to leave me and our children once he got some advice. Before this person entered our life we were always able to work things out, but since reading alot of your articles I can now see that I always did what was best to keep our family together and was not looking at what I was doing to myself. I am going to try your advice and hope for the best.
I started lying to both of us to stop the fighting and keep the peace. Stupid of me because it made me look bad in the end. Thanks to you I may be able to find myself and not lose me again. I don't seem to be able to answer one question and that is why he not leave earlier when to quote him it has been 10 years of hell. I have my own income so that is not the issue. I will say that I am pretty upset but I now know this needs to be done.
Dear Anne, Hang in there. Tis not easy to deal with 24+ years of things all at once. Be kind to yourself. A relationship that has been "10 years of hell" for even one member, I think, should be ended. But that doesn't mean the two of you have to leave each other. "Divorce the relationship, not the partner" is my way of looking at it. It is amazing to me how many people live on in a kind of "hell" without raising enough fingers to change it. My favorite picture of this is my friend, the Stuckman.
I would change your line from "I always did what was best to keep our family together" to the line "I always did what I thought was best to keep our family together". This allows you to investigate and find those things you did that now you think could be improved while still respecting yourself for doing what you did. Somehow "learning" always involves a kind and gentle approach to making mistakes.
Hi Al
Been sat in the sun and read a bunch of your stuff and a lot of threads around the site as well.
I think as my understanding expands that though I will move through the remaining minimal contact phases the likeleyhood of any contact from my ex is very small
I mentioned in an earlier thread that for our whole relationship we worked closely together; indeed we did everything together and had a huge majority of our time shared.
At the end of February she drew back. Though we still worked together every day the situation was difficult and I thought I was being manipulated and read lots of stuff on narcissism rather than face my own failings. She never actually was willing to call the relationship over, just suggested that I needed to find the answers…..
In mid April without any proper pre-amble I (the firm) gave my ex partner a cheque for about 3 months salary and made her redundant from the job with immediate effect, literally that day…….not my finest moment.
In the two months since I have seen her momentarily for two brief one word hello’s but as she is ignoring my-mails and quite possibly deleting them without even a look I have very little opportunity to visibly show my progress, not least how much more aware I am of my own controlling/clinging master talk behaviour .
I am aware that she is moving out of the flat she took last year whihc she liked very much, and I think it is likley this is an issue of cost as her salary when we worked together was inflated because we were a couple and in dollar terms she would struggle to match the $50000.00 in the current climate by at least 25%.
I guess I think I am responsible in part for that, and easy for her to stay angry at me and forget the role we both played in getting to that point. I think I overdid the ‘being together’ benefit point you made.
Do you truly believe that by moving away without pushing, the longer term contact possibility will exist, particularly as I can see pride and a need to be seen as ‘handling the challenge’ will keep her from responding?
Hi David,
It seems that you and I are on a similar journey. Ladies we love, and not being able to connect in the time frame we want. I have read and listened heaps to Al’s material and for me think that having a plan is awesome – my issues is that i want to do everything to speed up the plan – unfortunately this doesn’t work (well hasn’t for me).
I was really really struggling with this until one night in the middle of a dream i woke up with the thought “what she is doing makes sense – and i am ok with that”. for the next week or so i wanted to get myself to the place where i was ok with that.
I did a heap more searching and listening – even checking out a bible verse on love – 1 cor 13. 4-7 : “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it his not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”.
The patient side of things is being forced on me to learn – not a lesson I like, but I want to learn it as quick as possible :-). Some of the others are about respect and enduring love. For me the real challenging part that I have wrestled with and want to be my own position in regard to my lady is “It does not insist on its own way”. – that is a real challenge.
Wishing you all the best with your learning – trust the plan, if it doesn’t work out with your ex – at least you will have new skills for the future.
Brendan
Hey Brendan,
Thanks for taking the time to write, as a non religous person I had long since forgotton how good a book the bible was just as a piece of literature, as a kid I was read loads of great stuff from the bible. The words are smashing thank you.
I too have had the greatest problem of all with the issue of patience and I suspect echo much of your own struggles in that area. I refuse to do the work just to try and manipulate a result, I want to be the change I see and enjoy the rewards because they are real….
I do from my own life experience believe sincerely that love comes oft unlooked for, and so I think that the more I can work on evolving me and letting my ex partner have her space and calm, oddly the more chance that re-connection will occur when the time is right.
I have begun to challenge myself with the following question…….If she walked back into my world right now would I in truth be ready? I have found a load of tools but have I truly done enough practice with them to ensure that things would not devolve to the same mess
If I may I think Rudyard Kipling said it for me at least quite well…….
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowances for their doubting too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about don’t deal in lies
Or being hated don’t give way to hating
And yet don’t look too good nor walk too wise
For me I guess when I can get somewhere near to practicing those qualities and feeling natural and good about being that man then I think my partner will find me. We are a tribal being and I don’t believe that science see’s all the connections. . I think When it is right it will happen naturally. Brendan I wish you well on your own journey and will watch out for your posts. All good things come to those that wait…………that’s you and me I guess!!
Best wishes
David
Hi Al
If my memory serves in one of the Mr/Mrs or similar articles (I am sorry I read a bunch and cannot recall which one) I think you suggested that we pick our partner (subconsciously) effectively as our equal, equal intellect, equally ‘f*****d up, equal levels of trauma in childhood, equally blind to the illusion presented by the other in the infancy of the relationship….yay look at me I’m really mature and can give you all the space you need, and so on.
That I think sounds entirely reasonable.
If so then two things come to mind on which I would appreciate your thinking
A. The power struggle whilst seemingly a necessary event on the road to vintage love, or at least I think I am learning a fact of life; can never foster success for either party irrespective of the factors of boundary and respect, simply because the opponent (horrible word in this context) is your equal, and your loved one.
If that is as true as it appears wouldn’t it be great if we could teach in adolescence to factor an expectation of this in to the life ahead? ‘Be the change you want to see’
B. If I as a clinger can recognize all the energy, emotion, delusion, learning, heartache, thinking, feeling and so on that splitting up has cost/caused me, then why do I not recognize that ‘my equal’ would likely encounter the same outlay just within avoider boundaries rather than clinger boundaries.
I as a clinger find myself thinking instinctively that my ex is ‘having a ball’ since we parted, but thinking about it I guess logically that is probably not the case?
Even if my ex has perhaps been holding me responsible for both her and my part of our problems, which I think is likely, as indeed I held her responsible when we were still together, it didn’t diminish my pain ‘blaming her’ so likely does not diminish hers……..
I may not be in ‘live’ contact but if this is as true as I think it seems then perhaps I am calming my own lizard with a little more understanding, and hers at least a little by not obsessively chasing and contacting her.
Does that sound right??
Thank you#
David
Wow…..why the chimes rang……I will be reading that to my 6 year old daughter on Christmas Eve (and anyone else who will listen). Thank you for sharing it
Best Wishes
David