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,
The break up really happened this time, she is currently on holidays for 6 weeks. she broke up with me On sunday 5/12/2010, and I lost my Job on Wednesday…and I need to move house in the next couple of weeks…wow!!
I have been trawling on ENA website, I think that most people there trying to impose the idea of no hope by going into No Contact and move on. it twisted me really bad, luckily I found a thread by someone about the Imago theory…which honestly brings back hope or at least keeps my lizard calms and validate me!
I'll try to keep posting on my progress.
Thanks
Confused
Hi guys,
the time for some serious hard learning is nigh, I will cut myself open (not literally) and try to identify where my blindness are, my GF has officially announced that she will be going away on holidays for 2 months traveling alone while thinking about things, and she also announced that there will be no changes in our situations, I have also done the steps in “Getting an Answer: When He/She Won't Make a Decision ” paper.
I've managed to gather on how she feels resented towards me, after the talk we had I believe the problems we had since the beginning is expectations, oh how this is hard to digest… During the talk she mentioned that she wants me to accept her as who she is and she felt that she's losing herself whenever she is with me, and I asked her to tell me what can I do to improve myself on, and she said she doesn't want me to change, but I said well obviously at least my current self is not working because we kept having arguments and it doesn't mean that I will change completely I am going to learn new skills or the 'blindness' so I can live peacefully with her.
I guess that there is a hope, and I am divorcing my old self and win her back by self-improvements not by force, and I am putting that sentence as a poster in my room…
Whatever the answer she will give me when she comes back, If she chooses door #2, then she has all the rights to do so, but if she chooses University of Life, I have to be prepared and start enrolling…
and I think that I am a dreamer (so was John Lennon) and the dreams of having vintage love is very alive within me…
and Sorry, If I come across as being arrogant to others, I think that we shouldn't waste time being stubborn, and hurting ourselves life is too short to be blind to your flaws…
and Al, you are so spot on about lots of things even without knowing the full story of my situation… and I think it takes a lot of self-realization to be that way, I want to be like that one day… In order to do that I will firstly make a list in which areas I think I am most blinded to and will regularly visit this site.
Thank you for your guidance and time…
Confused
Confused,
You may want to look at Al's paper on “The Gentle Art of Pulling” at http://www.alturtle.com/blog/_archives/2005/11/21/1417110.html. It helped me learn to change over from interrogating and, well, gentle pulling. It also helped me practice patience, a skill I've also found very helpful, and one on which I had a lot of room for improvement. 🙂
Hi Al,
Wow!, thank you for shedding the light :), I think I have just been hit by a large trout!… Yes, I think I might be “suck to talk to” that is why my GF keeps things from me.
The long awaited talk about our issues is coming up soon, I will not push her but I will try to invite her when she is ready to talk… I think the damages are quite severe now and I think that I am living in a “debted relationship” where she is the lender, hopefully I can pay the debts slowly.
I have made up my mind and commit to myself to become her source of safety, and if the result or any signs of the talk is going south, I think I want to suggest that we should seek a professional help…and if the signs are positive I will try apply the things that I have learned from your papers which will be a long and wonderful journey.
However there is one thing that still unclear in my mind though, relating to my current situation, Mirroring involves inviting the sender to share more, and the receiver tasks is to then validate the sender. I think from my understanding wouldn't it be seen as pushing the sender to talk or in a sense it can come across as interrogating? Correct me if I'm wrong…again thank you so much Al 🙂
Confused
Hello Confused,
Well, let's see. Confusion usually seems to me to relate to witnessing actions by your partner that make sense to them but you don't yet see their sense. Usually it means that “who you think your partner is or was” is different significantly from “who they are or were.” Ideally this should lead to a lot of curiosity on your part. And even more ideally this should lead to your partner telling you what is going on and you listening. (I wrote a paper on this recently.)
Of course if you “suck to talk to” she may not tell you much if anything. All you will see is the behavior without the explanations. So work on becoming a wonderful listener.
I wouldn't worry about feeling invalidated yourself. You can get that from me or a friend or a counselor. I wouldn't plan to get it from her for a while. You have to earn it / pay for it. Validating her is a way to earn it.
I believe that MasterTalk is a cultural craziness. Learn to remove it from your relationships. The two tools are Mirroring and patience. I don't think you can remove MasterTalk by inattention.
Learn to calm your lizard when you think she is talking to other guys. She's probably comparing you to them and if you get to work (which they probably won't) you can eventually come out shining.
Also she wouldn't be doing this comparing if you hadn't, between the two of you, neglected a whole bunch of relationship-building stuff. More reason to get to work.
The belief that both parties have to be committed is a bit whacky, I fear. You have to start where you are. Neither of you are displaying the commitment at the level needed to reach Vintage Love. So that will eventually involve re-commitment at a higher level. You, yourself, may be working toward that. She may not, yet. But you can't force her. Guaranteed way to drive her away. If you are committed to driving her away, then “force away.”
In many ways, the first stage of a higher commitment is commiting to yourself. You deserve a great relationship and have the right to learn how to do one. I recall committing to become a source of safety to my partner. That was a commitment I made to myself. I recall later committing to become an expert at validation. Both were acts on my part that, looking back, were brilliant.
Good luck with the light. 🙂