People often need to have space in their relationships. Even if you have a passionate and great relationship, there has to be balance and intimacy in the relationship. People need to be interdependent and not codependent on each other.
If you are not balancing your needs, you will see that you are causing there to be distance in the relationship and you will not realize what is causing the relationship to fail.
Pursuer and Distancer
There is a pursuer and distancer in the relationship. The Pursuer wants to be more intimate and the distancer wants to have more space. People are connected are the pursuers and they want to think about things, share their feelings and talk about stuff such as rejection or fear. They often withdraw and become angry.
People that want distance will distance themselves because they enjoy their own independence. They want to look at things, be vulnerable, have personal relationships outside of work and home and they want to do activities alone. When the relationship starts getting hard, this is the person that wants to end it and walk away.
Changes in Life
We attract people in our lives based on their traits. The Distancer and pursuer often get into the relationships together because they are different. They will develop an opposite balance and sometimes things become selfish and one sided.
When you have this kind of connection, chances are that you had a hard childhood where you felt like you weren’t loved or cared for adequately. You will then attract the wrong kinds of people and you will have fear with the relationship that you will be disappointed. This will cause you to be needy and to want more attention. This will lead to rejection.
Distancers will be there and have had childhoods where they have been hurt a lot and they feel that they have to protect themselves from this hurt. They will be independent, and they will attract pursuers.
As the relationships grows, distancers will feel smothered and the pursuer will want more attention. They will fear intimacy, and this will cause them to be disappointed.
How Do People Become These Things?
People that have had hard childhoods where they were told not to cry, and they were not nurtured often end up anxious and worried. They respond to things in situations differently than other people. They are highly anxious where other people have calm parents that taught them that things are just okay.
When a parent responds to the child’s needs without being overly excited, this is good mothering and allows the children to learn to stay calm and collected.
Many parents are anxious and often neglected their children and didn’t give them the attention or love that they needed. This causes them to feel separated and can make them feel that they are not loved.
Self-Defeat
The distancers will often work hard to stop having anxiety in any situation and the pursuer will cause anxiety because they will feel that their partner is not giving them the attention that they need.
This will lead to a lot of arguing and seeking a connection. This will focus on the person that has the least emotional response to what is going on. The distancer will become angry and will want to have their independence no matter what.
The Pursuer will express that they want to be more intimate but the distancer will not recognize this connection. If one person in the relationship is doing all of the pursuing, it will cause the distancer to likely fall out of love with them and to not want to be with that person anymore.
If the distancer makes too much distance, the pursuer will never see the relationship grow and they will eventually grow tired of trying to seek this connection with their partner.
Knowing the Needs
You have to learn to see the needs from both sides. There has to be intimacy and interdependence. If you can do this, you can learn to connect with each other and satisfy both needs. When we realize that we need to have balance, it can cause much less frustration.
The pursuer has to draw back their needs and learn to find things to do that they love to do on their own. This means that they have to give their partner more space and then when they do this, it will break the cycle and allow love to come that was not imagined.
As soon as the pursuer has their own space, they will stop being so needy and the distancer will come back into the relationship.
Distancer
The distancer will have power in the relationship because they will make the choice to be connected. They will have fear and weakness in the pursuer but they will learn to make the relationship better.
If the distancer needs to have space before they talk, they can tell their partner that they will talk later and learn to take time alone for a while.
The distancer needs to make sure to schedule time to talk to their partner and to make a connection. When they make a connection, this allows there to be time together without the pursuer having to be pushy.
Other Ideas
Women that are needy will often feel that they are suffocating their partner to get them to talk to them. Once they realize that they can connect without being pushy, they will see that they can spend time together in peace and happiness.
One you feel that you have this connection, the pursuer will not be pushy and the distancer will want to spend this time with them and will feel more attracted to them because they are calm and confident and not desperate.
As time goes on, they will learn to schedule things around each other and to meet their individual needs. They will be able to make togetherness work and they will desire each other more than ever.
