What to do when He/She Leaves?
Assuming you want her (him) back.
People frequently come to me with this problem. Actually, this is my most read article. To me that suggests that a whole pile of people only “really wake up” when their partner starts to pull away. And you are probably one of them, right now. I feel for you. You’ve probably done a whole bunch of things “wrong” and don’t know what for sure. I am sorry it took you so long to wake up. A lot of my work, shared here on this website, is for you. Take your time, breathe and read on. Take heart! Waking up is always a good idea – at least in the long run.
First job is to turn your partner around, or at least halt their moving away. Some years ago, in 1998 I believe, I came up with a short set of answers to this situation and have not felt the need to change them since. It works. Follow the four steps. Print this Article in PDF
1. GIVE UP ALL SIGNS OF PUSHING.
This is very important. Your partner is already moving away. Anything you do to push them will tend to make them move away faster and further. Stop anything that might be construed as pursuing or pressing them. If your instinct is to call them twice a day, start calling them once a week. If your instinct is to send them a gift, do it once a month. If you are trying to find out what they are doing by asking other people, don’t. Leave them alone – a lot, but not completely. (I do not recommend “no contact.” (See my article When to Fold ‘Em.) Let your partner contact you when they are ready. (See Reliable Membership Article.)
2. SURVIVE
Do not be surprised that you may feel awful, or sick, or depressed. This is normal when you feel left behind, abandoned. The feeling will go away – with a lot of time. We all can live alone. It’s not good for us, but we can. So, in the meantime, continue to live your life. Go to work. Eat well. Sleep well. Do more exercise. (It will help you sleep. It will help with any depression you may feel.) Be among friends. While you do this, you might consider staying away from friends of your partner’s gender. If you cannot sleep or seem very depressed, see your doctor. Some medication may be helpful for a while. If your partner speaks to you, don’t tell them how hard a time you are having. That will probably not get you the sympathy you want. Just say something like, “Well, it is tough.” And say no more.
3. WORK ON YOUR SELF, VISIBLY
See a counselor. Read books. Talk your problems over with friends, your pastor, your priest, your rabbi, etc. Learn what you can. Read my papers on Using Turtle Logic and The Two Walls. Chances are there is a lot for you to learn. Most often when a partner leaves, they have been planning it for a long time. Most often they have felt terribly lonely with you. You, on the other hand may have been taken by surprise. Ask yourself, what led you to be so unaware of your partner? What led you to be so unaware that they were in distress enough to consider leaving you? Try to not blame yourself too much. All relationship trouble takes two. And so, Get to Work. Work on yourself.
And do this work so that your partner knows. The chances are one of the reasons they are leaving you is because they believe you will never change. They have become hopeless about you ever changing for the better. By visibly working on yourself, they have to wonder what you are doing and who you are becoming. That is much better than their continuing to believe that you will never change.
When I say “visibly,” I mean that you take opportunities to let them know that you are doing something. If they call, say you only have a little time as you have to get to your counseling appointment. Say, “By the way, I’ve been reading a book on marriage. It’s interesting.” Remember to follow Rule #1, and not say much. Don’t try to “teach them.”
4. BE AVAILABLE MINIMALLY WHEN YOUR PARTNER ASKS FOR CONTACT
It is reasonable that your partner will try to contact you. They may ask for a chat. Ask, “How long?” Agree to give them half that time. They may ask for dinner together. Agree to give them a short one. They may ask for you to spend the night. Stay only through the evening. Get used to this. Think that you are trying to get a deer to come out of the forest and eat from your hand. You have to earn (or in this case, re-earn) their trust and never lose it again.
Good luck.
P.S. And when he/she stops the leaving and starts tentative connecting or checking you out, be ready. For more on this subject, particularly once you have managed to get your partner to slow down their leaving, you might want to read “Out of the Blue” means “Read the Tea Leaves”.
You will probably also want to check out my Map of Relationships to put a clear framework around what is going on and what your choices are. Being foolishly stubborn, i.e. doing what you have been doing, will probably lead back to the same “them-leaving” problem. Being stubborn about “learning-to-do-new-things” seems to be the only path.
Notes:
There are so many excellent comments submitted that I archived them in two PDF files. Aug2007–July2008 and July2008–April2010. These are good.
Click here for “all” my articles on Clingers. Avoiders.
Remember, this is just one (Reliable Membership) of the several major problems in relationships. When you solve this one, when your partner turns around and decides to consider staying with you, there are the other problems in front of you. Take a look at How to Use this Website, or Using my logic on relationships, or Where to Start. The most comprehensive place to start is always my Map of Relationships.
Good luck.
Download an audio file of me sharing 26 minutes of further discussion for $5.00.
By © Al Turtle 2002
Al,
I've been reading over your website the last two weeks and greatly learned ally about my relationship ability and errors of my communitcation.
I have a question. An ex and I who still very much love each other split over resentment issues that we let build for 5 months in our relationship two months ago. We were together for over a year. I was angry and defensive and not understanding as I should have been. At first the break up was tough, it still is but there was pushing on my part and another guy she started to get emotional support from, he is kind of an opposite of me where I was aloof kind of indifferent and had issues opening up to love once resentment started to build. She's been pursuin him recently at a slow pace but always contacting me especially since I stopped almost all pushing a pursuing a while back and been taking your advice on understanding her and how she makes sense. She's come around much more, the days I haven't talked to her she aggressively tries to reach me or wonders why I don't respond. You can tell just how confused she is, I think she is confused to herself, I offer lots in the way of chemistry this guy doesn't and vice versa (but mostly because she's still closed to me and lacks trust I can be there for her). They connect in ways we didn't at the time. She knows I'm visibly working on things she knows I'd like to work through the resentment and anger and hurt. She texts me things along the lines of 'you know I love you I just can't let myself be with you. I broke up because of you, I can't get back together because of me, I'm unhappy' and 'he won't be able to hold me like you do.'
My question is this, with the other guy in the picture, do you still think I should be open to minimal contact or tell her in an understanding way that I can't be in contact with her that the relationship we have now is not what I want. It feels if I stay in the picture minimally there may be no change or decision on her part as she has a both in the picture, maybe I'm looking at it wrong and she'll change as I change and continue to understand and let her make the first moves for contact (which she does ad has been doing for a long while now) Assume I can operate both ways without pushing. I am constantly putting energy into working on myself but I'm also interested on what the best way to reestablish a mutual trust and the ability to work on things would be.
hi, thanks for the response. Sorry it has taken me so long to reply but what with moving out and having no internet its been difficult. I have been following Al's advice but it is very difficult when the heart constantly wants to over rule the mind! I can say with confidence that this is the hardest thing i have ever done in my life and she does make it difficult for me…
Like clockwork every 2 days she will contact me, either by text, phone, skype etc to see how I am doing, I can also put the most innocent thing on a social networking site and she will go the other way and be insanely jealous? I will always respond to say hi or put her mind at ease but I do not know if that is the right course of action or not? I have avoided the talk about the two of us as that didnt work to well when we first split but i am still going insane without her…
I hope your situation gets better hun and thanks for taking the time to talk to me
P
Al,
How do I know when they have stopped leaving? When she is contacting me instead of me contacting her? This has already happened somewhat.
Also, with someone that you have already created a solid friendship with, then went through romantic love with, where do go from there if you are trying to work it out?
To update – met with her tonight. Started off not talking too much about things like the work I am doing and eventually she brought it up. I brought up some of the questions from reading the tea leaves, and let her talk and talk about the things she was upset about and that she felt I needed to change. She also wanted me to send her a link to the site and is willing to go through some of the stuff here with me. I said I really enjoyed talking deeply like this and wanted to do more of it with her regardless of where it led to.
Nope. I've not seen it. I think there are two issues here: a) withholding information (also called lying) and b) talking too much too fast (an issue of the flow rate of data).
Generally a partner doesn't pull away cuz you are lying or they are lying. That is a problem, sure. But generally, and what this article is about, your partner backs off because of the rate of sharing/intensity of connection demands are too much for them.
Once they stop pulling away, you'll still have to deal with the lying/withholding problem that probably exists on both sides. Link to article on sharing.