Latest / Just Listen To Me / The Pattern Making You Both Feel Alone in Your Relationship
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. And welcome back to season two. I hope you all had a gentle Easter break. Today I wanna talk about something that creates a lot of confusion for couples. and a lot of unnecessary hurt. The difference between attachment styles and conflict styles. Because they aren't the same thing. And when we mix them up, we often misread each other completely. In earlier episodes, we've talked about attachment styles, secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. In emotionally focused therapy, We often simplify this into the pursuer-withdrawer dynamic, the negative cycle. One partner reaches, the other pulls back, and underneath that are fears about closeness, rejection, and not being enough. But then there's another layer, conflict style. This is how you respond in moments of tension. Do you fight? Do you shut down? Do you leave? Do you freeze? And here's where it gets important. Your conflict style does not always match your attachment style. Let's start with the stereotype. We often assume that the pursuer is loud, emotional, intense. The one who pushes, protests, escalates. And yes, Sometimes that's true, but not always. There are many pursuers who don't get louder in conflict. They actually go quiet. They shut down. They freeze. They withdraw in the moment. Not because they don't care, but because the emotional intensity becomes too much to hold. This is what I often describe as a withdrawing pursuer. Someone who at their core still longs for closeness, but in moments of conflict, their system goes into shutdown. And there's another version of this that can develop over time. What is known as Pursuer Burnout. This is where a partner has spent so long reaching, so long trying to connect, so long feeling like they're the only one holding the relationship. that something in them starts to collapse. They stop reaching, not because they no longer care, but because it feels too painful to keep trying. And from the outside, this can look like they've become the withdraw. But underneath that, the longing is still there. It's just buried under exhaustion and hurt. And often when I sit with people in this place, What they describe isn't just distance. It's a kind of quiet resignation. I can't keep doing this. Not because they don't want the relationship. Because they don't know how to keep wanting it without it hurting this much. And the same is true on the other side. We often assume that withdrawers avoid conflict. That they shut down go silent, disengage. And again, sometimes they do, but not always. Some withdrawers become reactive when they feel overwhelmed. They raise their voice, they argue, they might even say things they regret. Not because they want closeness, but because they feel flooded, exposed, not enough. So instead of quietly withdrawing, they push back and suddenly the withdraw looks like the pursuer. And this is where couples get really confused. I often hear this in sessions. We don't fit the pursuer withdraw dynamic, but when we slow it down, what we usually find is this. The attachment pattern is still there, but the conflict style is disguising it. Let me give you an example. I worked with a couple where the female partner, who was the pursuer, would completely shut down during conflict. She couldn't speak. She would freeze. And her partner became louder, more demanding, more activated. On the surface, it looked like she was the withdrawer and he was the pursuer. But when we looked deeper, She was driven by a fear of abandonment, a longing for closeness, a need for reassurance. Even though she shut down in the moment, she was still the one reaching in the relationship. And he was pulling back emotionally, because he feared he wasn't enough. So the attachment pattern was still pursue a withdrawal. But the conflict styles had flipped the presentation. And without understanding that, they were completely misreading each other. There's another pattern I want to name here, something often called Pursuer Cocooning. This tends to happen when a pursuer has experienced deeper wounds, family of origin trauma, past relationship injuries, or betrayal in the current relationship. In moments of conflict, instead of pushing forward, they suddenly pull away. They leave the room. They get in the car. They disappear. Not because they want distance, but because the pain of perceived rejection has become too overwhelming. So they take control of the distance. They create it first. And underneath that, there is often a quiet, unspoken hope. Will you come after me? Will you choose me? And if we slow that moment down even further, what's often sitting underneath that isn't just hope, it's heartbreak. It's that feeling of, if I matter to you, you'll come. And when they don't, it doesn't just feel like space. It feels like confirmation. I'm not chosen. And that is a very old pain for many people. Not just about this relationship, but about every moment in their life where they felt unseen, unimportant, or left alone in something they couldn't hold by themselves. But here's where the cycle deepens. The withdrawer often takes this at face value. They think they need space. So they give space, because that's what they would want. And in doing so, they unintentionally confirm the pursuer's deepest fear, while at the same time feeling like they've done the right thing. And this is how both partners end up feeling alone in the very moment they needed each other most. This is the heart of it. When we only look at behaviour, Who's yelling? Who's shutting down? Who's leaving? We miss the deeper truth. Because underneath every reaction is an attachment need. The pursuer is asking, do I matter to you? The withdrawer is asking, am I enough for you? And when those questions don't feel safe to ask directly, They come out sideways as conflict, as silence, as escalation, as withdrawal. There are many variations of this dynamic. The classic fight-flight, angry pursuer, withdrawn partner. The withdrawing pursuer, reactive withdrawer, flipped on the surface. The fight-fight couple, both escalate. often very explosive. The freeze-freeze or avoidant pairing where nothing gets addressed at all. And each of these come with its own challenges. Some are volatile, some are silent, but all of them are shaped by the same core question. Is it safe to be close to you? This is where Project Secure Attachment begins. Not by trying to fix communication. Not by teaching better arguments. But by slowing the moment down and asking, what is happening underneath this reaction? What is the fear? What is the longing? What is the story your nervous system is telling you right now? Because when couples begin to see the pattern, something shifts. Blame softens, defensiveness softens, and compassion starts to enter the room. So if you're listening today, I want you to gently reflect on this. What is your conflict style? Do you fight? Do you shut down? Do you leave? Do you freeze? And how might that be different from your deeper attachment need? Because when you can see both layers, you stop seeing your partner as the problem and you start seeing the cycle. And that is where change begins. Because secure attachment isn't built by winning arguments, it's built by learning how to find each other again inside the hard moments. Thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you again soon with another episode.