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
Kia Ora Ano Al,
Thank you for your kind words. Read MANY threads from yours and ENOT too. I have never been blind to the fact that many other people have/had/are going through the same or similar situations. I have found your material to be accurate and honest AND with anything NEW you find I have tried to share this information with my whanau (family) and friends. I have even convinced one of my mates to join the “Vinatage Love” journey with me.
I love my ex-partner very much and feel blessed that I have found your site. I am hoping that I can apply my new found knowledge and win her back…but am always aware she may not want me back. You are absolutely right. If only students were taught this material at school. You'd be out of a job and the world would be a happier place!
Ma te wa,
Darryl
Well. gosh. What a wonderful sharing. Reading between the lines I gather you have found a lot of “gold” in my writings and are already investing in your future. I salute you. I very much enjoyed your process.
I remind you that I don't think you can get through Freshman year in a couple of days or weeks, nor do I believe you can do it alone. But I believe one can, and you have, learned lots by “auditing” my “freshman” stuff.
I wish you great and continued luck and best wishes.
Kia Ora Al,
Have only recently found your site right at the beginning stages of my partner of 4 years leaving me. Your comments and the comments of others on this thread have been immensly helpful. Has helped dull the pain a little.
My partner and I have had a VERY complicated relationship, not unique, just complicated. 1. She is 21 and I am 36, 2. She is a forma student of mine, 3. I have two beautiful children to my previous partner of 10 years. I thought these parts would be important to know so you could understand where I'm coming from with my story.
I felt that I had to hide our relationship from people because of her being and ex-student and I hid it from my children (until recently) as I did not want them to get angry at me for being with someone other than their mother (another complicated story).
Anyway, what your wonderful site has done, it has AWOKEN me to the “fear” I created within my relationship/s. Because of the way I treated my partner eg; bullying her and emotionally manipulating her, treating her like a slave, I made it very difficult for her Lizard to feel safe around me. I see that now.
It has been 7 days since my partner sent me an email saying that she “loved me” but was “scared of the future” (she is just finishing her degree) and “didn't want me to be hurt or angry”. My lizard went into fight mode. This, at the time, was my “Out of the blue” moment. Until I thought about it further and realised this had been coming for a VERY long time. After a semi-heated discussion, it eventuated that she had met someone else through and internship recently and that she was going to visit him overseas after her degree finished in 4 weeks time. Obviously I was gutted! My Lizard went into full ATTACK mode, which of course wasn't the reaction she wanted (but I now know expected).
We met up a couple of more times, my decision again, really about letting her know how sorry I was (on reflection) for eveything I had done (lots) and begging her (PUSHING) to come back to me (This is ALL obviously Pre-Turtle as I like to call it). I could sense she was really fighting herself to not come back, we have had very mini breakups over the past 12 months, usually only a few days long. After I did the craziest thing…I went and saw her for ONE more PUSH. I told her that if she came back to me I would “marry her and have children with her” (these being two reasons she didn't see a future with me, which I had constanly said I didn't want, obviously cause I already had kids). I KNOW NOW this was a huge PUSH in the wrong direction, but it made “sense” to me. I sent her one more email to reinforce what I had told her. That was 3 days ago.
3 days can seem like 3 weeks with these kind of feelings floating around. Fortunately I found your material and have spent the last 3 days becoming a student of the University of Life. Still feeling like a freshmen, but confident of becoming a Sophmore soon.
I have taken solice in your words and the words of others. Doing my best to use the 4 steps (tough) and about to follow your “know when to fold em” advice too.
It made me smile, after decyhpering (attempting) your material that I never even thought that I am actually wanting “Vintage Love” and (as you have mentioned) that often great pain is the catalyst for great learning. I'm not sure if you can shed anymore light on my own situation but hopefully someone else may be 'comforted' or 'enlightened' by my words too.
Nga Mihi,
Awoken
Well, I read through your posting twice. I wasn't sure where or in what way to respond. I just ended up confused. My guess is that we should talk on the phone. I think this is a situation where one-on-one talking can help make your thinking more clear. Sorry.
Here's a link to the details of chatting with me.
Its funny you mention that you think it's useful that she is in heavy contact, as I have been laying low, letting her contact me as she wants, which is frequent, but we had a communication snafu the other day in which she wants much more contact phone/text/hanging out…as in she wants me to be much more active on that front like I have an active interest. (I think this comes from the relationship I didn't seem like I had a active interest in her.). So we had a snafu where she thought I was just vague, not really there that day, not being interested in plans we had made (really from my perspective I thought I was helping her feel safe and not pushing) she gets mad, I validate, understand, try and heal resentments with her and she doesn't want to talk. I say, okay we can take a time out now, I can see you're triggered. I told her maybe we should really think about talking tommorow to resolve this conversation. (text this as I left her)
Next day we talk over text, not mentioning the night before. She starts getting irritated, that I am just the same as before, etc. I finally through validating and understanding get her to tell me whats going on and she is mad that I didn't bring up resolving the other night. Like really mad. Again I didn't want to push and since I got no response earlier when I texted resolving issues and she never brought it up I figured maybe she didn't want to talk about it when I had been hoping to all day. So I mirror, reframe, validate etc. Get down to the fact she is still really hurting. We agree to meet the next day…I try to heal resentments with her (1st time process) and it goes alright, get her to open up enough for one BCR (saying good morning each morning), but I had to do a lot of pulling, got a lot of i don't knows (told her that's not allowed, whats your best guess). We go to her place lay around, talking, back rubs, and she does mention she needs to build trust and the friendship thing that she wants is because she doesn't even have that right now and it's hard to see past that because she feels we didn't have that, that intimacy, and she mentions she talked to the other guy about how if she could take him (biological dream stuff/friendship) and me (imago/chemistry) and put them together she'd have the perfect person. She said he found that offensive, what did I think, and as I knew what she was talking about perfectly I was like, “no of course it makes perfect sense! why wouldn't it! you just described a perfect partner”
Question: Do I keep up heavier genuine normal contact like she wants, in a way I want to do (in order to be myself) that is not pushing? (We know she wants heavy contact, she wants to build trust, communication and more open genuine non holding myself back communication seems to be what she wants. I told her if that is what she wants I will not be cautious, I'll respect our past but if I am going to be me I need the room to do that to be myself, to be attractive, that there is desire there for her and I won't neuter myself but not push either, as every time I've held back it's caused reactions in her. I feel she is being quite genuine and not looking to play games, I think she is hurting a lot and needs to build trust. (she mentioned the way she doesn't trust me is different than any one else she has met, she mentions being open and going into 'stupid girl' mode and it just hurts worse different than anything/anyone else). I don't know if this question is worth asking or not. But damn can it be confusing if you over think these things. You think you are doing the right thing being delicate but she gets mad because you are neutering yourself. The biggest thing so far I think her mind is looking for is lack of safety and me flipping and being argumentative. Things seem to be getting better as that hasn't been happening. I think the only thing that plays with my mind is sometimes I do want to snap and be like what does it matter you're playing it safe with some other guy, but I know that is personal anger and she makes sense whether I agree or not or even if she understands herself or not. And i know anger is way too comfortable sometimes to fall back on.