Latest / Just Listen To Me / When He Chases: The Hidden Pain of Male Pursuers
Transcript
- Julia Shay: Hi, I'm Julia and welcome back to Just Listen To Me. If love feels confusing or painful right now, you're not broken and neither is your relationship. Let's slow this down together. Today I want to explore something that doesn't get talked about enough because we've been told a story about relationships that women pursue and men withdraw, that she reaches and he shuts down. But over the last few episodes, we've already started to gently challenge that. In our last episode, we talked about female withdrawers and how withdrawal doesn't always look like silence. Sometimes it looks like work, functioning, keeping busy, filling every available space so there's no room left to feel. And what we saw there is the cycle isn't about gender. It's about protection. It's about safety. It's about what each nervous system learnt to do when connection didn't feel safe. And today, I want to stay with that idea, but turn it slightly because sometimes when one partner withdraws, the other one reaches, and sometimes That person is the man. So today I want to slow this down and gently explore what's really happening when a man becomes the pursuer in a relationship. Because this isn't just about attachment. It's about attachment meeting identity, meeting everything that a man has been taught about what it means to need somebody. Let's start here. Because underneath every pursuer, regardless of gender, there is a reach, a longing for connection, a question that sits just under the surface. Do I matter to you? Am I important to you? Are you still here with me? And for many pursuers, that question doesn't just come from the present. It comes from something older, moments where connection felt uncertain, inconsistent, or just out of reach. But when that pursuer is a man, that reach can feel a lot more complicated. Because many men have not been taught how to hold that kind of emotional vulnerability. They've been taught something very different, to stay in control. to not need too much, to not be too emotional. And this is where this links back to what we spoke about in the last episode. Because just like the female withdrawer who learnt to move away from emotion to stay safe, many male pursuers learnt something different. Not to move away, but to override, to push forward. to act, to do something with the discomfort. So when that need for connection shows up, it doesn't always come out of softness. It doesn't always sound like, I miss you, I feel alone, I need you. Instead, it can come out as frustration, irritability, tension, sometimes even anger. And this is where I want to widen this out for a moment. Because when we talk about male pursuers, we're often talking about a heterosexual frame. But this shows up in same sex male relationships too. And in some ways, it can become even more complex. Because now, we're not just talking about one partner navigating conditioning around emotional expression. We're looking at both partners having grown up in environments that often didn't make emotional vulnerability feel safe. So what can happen is that both partners carry similar messages. Don't need too much. Don't be too emotional. Stay in control. Stay composed. And when connection starts to feel uncertain, those messages don't just sit quietly in the background. They shape how each person responds. So you might see something like one partner begins to reach, to ask questions, to try to close the distance, but that reach can still come out through doing, through intensity, through directness, sometimes through frustration. And the other partner, may experience that not as a reach, but as pressure, as something overwhelming, as something that confirms this isn't safe. So they pull back, they create space, they go quiet, they move into distance, and suddenly you have the same cycle. Pursue, withdraw, reach, distance. But what can make this even more complex is that both partners may struggle to access and express the softer layer underneath because that softer layer has often not been modeled or welcomed or made safe. So instead of, miss you, I feel alone, I don't know where I stand with you, it can stay in frustration. silence, disconnection. And just like in any relationship, that doesn't mean the need isn't there. It just means the pathway to expressing it hasn't felt safe enough yet. So this is where the work becomes so powerful because when even one partner can begin to soften that reach, to move from, why are you like this, into, I feel far away from you. It creates something new in the space between them. Not because the cycle disappears overnight, but because something underneath it is finally being seen. And this is where things get misunderstood. Because from the outside, it can look like criticism, like pressure, like something that feels hard to receive. But underneath that, for many male pursuers, there's something much more vulnerable happening. Something like, I don't feel close to you. I don't know where I stand. I feel like I'm losing you. But here's the painful part. That's not what their partner hears. What their partner often hears is, you're not doing enough. You're getting it wrong. You're failing me. And if we bring this back to the dynamic we explored last time, if one partner is withdrawing into work, into space, into distance, and the other is moving toward, you can start to see how quickly this cycle escalates. Because now, he pushes forward, she pulls back, he gets louder. She gets further away and both of them are trying to feel safe. And this is the moment the cycle locks in. Because now he looks intense, she looks unavailable, and both of them are sitting in something much quieter underneath. Hurt, disconnection, and often shame. Because for many male pursuers there is another layer here. It's not just, I feel disconnected. It's, what does it mean about me that I need this? What does it say about me that I'm the one reaching? And that question can feel incredibly exposing. So what we often see instead Is the protest getting louder? More urgency? More intensity? More attempts to get a response? Or sometimes a shift? Where the pursuit stops altogether? This is something I see quite often. A man who has been reaching, trying, pushing for connection, and when that doesn't land, he pulls back. He goes quiet. He shuts down. And again, if we think about what we explored last time, this can look like withdrawal, but it's not the same kind of withdrawal. This is often Pursuer Burnout, a nervous system that has reached and reached and reached and hasn't felt met, so it stops. not because the need is gone, but because it no longer feels safe to express it. And sometimes, that silence doesn't stay silent, it builds until something small happens. And it all comes out at once, not because of the moment, but because of everything that has been building underneath. And again, This can be misunderstood because now it looks like anger, but underneath that is often grief, disappointment, longing, a sense of not being chosen. So when we look at male pursuers, we have to look deeper than behavior. We have to look at what the behavior is trying to do because often, Their way of reaching is not through emotional language. It's through doing, trying to fix things, trying to solve problems, initiating sex, asking direct questions. What's wrong? Why are you being distant? Can we just sort this out? And again, on the surface, that can feel confronting. but underneath that is often a very simple reach. I want to feel close to you again. So where does this leave us? In emotionally focused therapy, we're not trying to get rid of the pursuit. We're trying to understand it, to slow it down, to help both partners begin to see what's happening underneath the reactions. Because when we only respond to the anger, we miss the attachment. When we only respond to the tone, we miss the vulnerability. And something really powerful can happen when that vulnerability starts to come into the room. Because in my experience, when a male pursuer risks saying something like, I don't feel important to you. I feel like I'm losing you. I don't know if I matter here. This is not a small moment. This is a nervous system doing something it was taught that was unsafe. And when that moment is met, with care, with openness, with responsiveness, something begins to shift. The cycle softens. Defensiveness softens. And instead of Why you like this? we begin to hear, ⁓ this is what's happening underneath. And this is where things begin to change. Not because one person is right or one person is wrong, but because the pattern is finally being seen. So if you're listening to this today and you recognise yourself in this, if you're the one who reaches who tries, who feels the distance, there is nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you for needing connection. And if you're listening and you're partnered with somebody like this, it might not always come out as the easiest thing to hear, but underneath that intensity, there is often a very real longing to feel close to you. Because this isn't about men versus women. It's not about getting the roles right. It's about understanding how the cycle interacts with history, with identity, with safety. And when we begin to see that clearly, something powerful happens. Blame softens. Distance softens. And the relationship begins to feel like a place where both people can be seen. And this is where project secure attachment begins. Thanks for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode.