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
Jonathan,
I believe its possible to be a source of safety to a lizard from a distance. For instance, lets say that she is the type of person that keeps busy partially as a defense mechanism. Basically, her subconscious is saying “If I'm always busy, I won't form close attachments so that I don't get hurt”, which is ultimately an expression of her lizard going into unsafe mode when people get too close because of some childhood trauma. That could manifest itself by not returning calls, not showing up for commitments or a lot of things. Also, let me reiterate that I'm not suggesting this is going on for her, just in theory. I believe that showing consistent behavior, not getting upset when you don't get to talk to her for a week or two weeks or whatever. If you are the same way with her when you're having infrequent contact than you were when you had frequent contact, if you just accept that she is doing her best, then her lizard may begin to see you differently…as a source of safety.
Also, please remember that I'm not a professional. That's Al's job. My knowledge is from Al's site, conversations with Al, other readings and my own personal experience. While I believe I have learned to read people well, I don't have anywhere near the range of experience that Al does. I'm a CPA, and clients will ask me legal questions, and I'm willing to give them my opinion, and I'm clear that this is just a CPA's best guess and there are probably better sources of information. The same applies here. This is just my take on it, and I think Al is a better source of information than me. Its what he does for a living.
If you are finding value in what I say, I think that's great. And if it doesn't seem to fit for you, then I think that's great, too. I suspect you already have a lot of answers in you, I suspect you are looking for aid in finding them.
A couple of things about just your second sentence in your last reply. I didn't make you feel better about yourself…that came from you. I think its important to give myself credit for what I accomplish in my journey to self-awareness and I think that works well for others, too. Also, you say what you “have to do in the future.” “Have” is a very definite word, and I've discovered that it has helped me to remain flexible where the future is concerned. What works best for me may not work best for you.
Good luck!
Hey Al,
Been Reading through this website, it's been a really great help to see where I am. Currently I am having quite a problem with my girlfriend, she shuts herself off from me…yes, I was blinded and this came as a surprise…which you are right… I am the clinger in the relationship and it made my lizard active I kept chasing until she gave me the ultimatum few months ago, if I dont stop it she'll walk away, she also told me that she loves me and really want to work this out, since then I did a lot of self-reflection and reading…however I think things are not going any better even though we kept in touch almost constantly over the phone /text msgs to try …so I decided to follow the four steps in “What to do when she (he) leaves”… I don't do anymore pushing, eg:minimise the calling, try to enjoy living alone and try making new friends….However, when I don't call my GF for the whole day she goes into this mode, asking me why I dont call her and getting angry all that…and when I try to make new friends, she kept asking who they are, and when I invited her to meet them, she refuses…. this is really confused me… I started thinking is this really worth it and I am tired of playing stupid games just because of her phobia of commitment…does the Biological Dream really exists? or should I just follow my lizard to flee and become a monk in the mountains or something….
Thanks for listening
Confused 0.o?
Hi Eyes,
Thanks for your reply, it made me feel much better about myself and made me realize what I have to do in the future. “Be prepared to give your partner more space than she needs at a moment's notice” is a really good way of putting it. My girlfriend is in med school so she rarely has time for me or even her parents. She's under a lot of pressure for the time being and I would love to be able to help her to relax, by being a source of safety to her. I read the paper about the lizard, but the only solution to be a source of safety is to ask the partner right? Is it possible to be a source of safety by staying away from the partner? The two seem very contradictory as being a source of safety (to me) is being proximate and comfortable around each other.
Recently, I am having trouble with insecurities and jealousy issues. I'm starting to make theories that she may be in love with someone else basing on her tweets and facebook statuses. I feel that this is really pathetic and I want to solve this problem as soon as possible. Sometimes I even tried calling her to ask whether she already found someone else or not, but i couldn't ask her because it scares me to doubt her trust again and the phone call becomes a stupid fight with her crying in the end because I couldn't give her the space I promised her. Do you have any tips for this Al? Thanks
Jonathan
Jonathan,
After my breakup, I found ENA to be a very good site for support. After a few months, when I was able to cope a bit better, it seemed to me that there were a lot of people there just looking for other people to tell them that they were all right, that it was the other person's fault, etc., etc. There did not seem to be that many committed to really looking at what happened, and investigating where people were effective/ineffective. Of course, that was just my experience, yours may go differently.
I still miss my ex, we talk every few weeks and when we do, I just miss her more. At the same time, I'm no longer certain I want her back as anything more than a friend. The distance between us makes that tougher on me. In my case, one of my biggest concerns is that, while I've done a lot of work on myself and see her and relationships in general differently than I did in 2008, I get the impression she hasn't, and I'm leery of getting re-involved in the same relationship we had before. That's an over-simplification, and this is your thread, not mine. Suffice it to say that I still love her and probably always will, and the best thing for that may be (or may not be…lol) for us to be apart.
As for approaching her, I think that if you look at your own motives for it, that might help. As Al reminded me once in 2008, getting together for something with my ex that I thought would be fun for us would likely only actually be fun if she wanted to do it, too. “Dragging her along”, as it were, was not likely to help the situation. I think testing the waters is fine, and listening to her responses to see if she's doing it because she wants to be there or only in a “this will get him off my back” sense is important.
In my prior relationship with my ex, I heard a lot, I just didn't listen much, and I think that was a big contributing factor to our problems. I have a bunch of Al posters up on my bathroom mirror, so I see them every morning. Two that came to mind when I read your post were “Be prepared to give your partner more space than she needs at a moment's notice” and “My goal is to be a source of safety to your lizard. What can I do, right now, that might make you feel safer?” I think that until her lizard sees you as a source of safety, this will be an uphill climb. I think if you trust yourself and use what you learn here, you'll do fine…and by definition, you'll be doing yoru best.
Of course, that's just my take on it. Al could well see it differently, and you may not find value in my words. I wish you luck!
Hi EyesOnThePrize..
Thanks for your comment, it really opened my eyes. You're right, I was just trying to do my best to keep the relationship running smoothly. I realized it started when I had to continue my studies overseas and I've been really insecure about having her thousand of miles away from me. We fought a lot a couple of months ago and It was really difficult for me to be in a new country without knowing anyone, so I got a needy and kept on pestering her even though she has a lot to do in her university herself (we just graduated from high school so it's new for us both). After some constant fights she decided she had enough and asked for a 1 month break from the relationship, stating that she's been avoiding me and she would like to try to miss me again, and she stated I should try to grow up and be more independent, then she wants me to lead our relationship.
After a lot of “research” on relationships, especially long distance ones, I realize what I've done is “less effective” and I really want to make it more effective when we get back together, that's why I'm on this site :). I've learned a lot the past month and I have to thank everyone for the knowledge about “life” as they don't teach these stuff in high school nor university. Especially you eyes, I read your experiences from 2008 and I really think of you as a role model as you really stood strong to number 1 & 4 even though you really miss her and I know how hard it is to do so. BTW, thanks for the enotalone website Al, I found people with the exact same problem with me and I learned a lot from them.
I do have something on my mind though. I'm going back to my country in 2 weeks time, and I really miss my girlfriend. Should I approach her or should I give her time to approach me? I have not seen her in 3 months and I'll only be there for 3 months, so I really want to spend my time with her as effectively as possible.
Jonathan