In today's Ask Steph episode, I'm answering the listener question of "How do I navigate being triggered by my partner's moodiness and irritability?" This is such a common pain point for folks with anxious attachment patterns. I share some context as to why moodiness is so activating for the anxious nervous system, as well as my advice on how to best respond in the moment when your partner is being moody.

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

In this article, I’m going to offer some insights into why you might find a partner’s moodiness so threatening, where that fits in the broader picture of anxious-avoidant relationship dynamics, and my personal advice (that I still rely on in my own relationship!) on how to respond in the moment when you encounter this trigger.

A quick note before we jump in: in the context of this article, I’m talking about what we might call “run-of-the-mill” moodiness — things like being a bit cranky, short, irritable, untalkative, withdrawn, snappy, and so on. I’m not referring to someone being deliberately nasty, going AWOL, stonewalling, or anything of that nature.

Why You Find Moodiness So Triggering

The Role of Inconsistency in the Anxious Attachment Pattern

Consistency and reliability are important to the security of any relationship, and feeling anxious in response to extreme uncertainty, unpredictability, or inconsistency is normal and natural. But for folks with anxious attachment patterns, there is undeniably a heightened sensitivity to changes in the temperature of the relationship, to the point where even the most subtle of shifts can feel very unsettling.

Take this example:​​ Imagine you’ve just spent a really nice weekend with your partner. You felt happy, connected to them, and optimistic about the relationship. You think to yourself, “If it were like this all the time, it would be perfect.”

But on Sunday evening, your partner is suddenly a bit quiet, withdrawn, and low energy. Instead of staying over at your place as you’d assumed they would, they decide to go home and have some alone time. When you ask them (repeatedly) if something’s wrong, they insist that they’re just tired and want to crash.

While someone with secure attachment patterns might be able to look at this picture in context and give their partner the benefit of the doubt (ie, that they’re exhausted after a full weekend and want some time to themselves to decompress), the anxiously attached person is likely to be very alarmed by what feels like an abrupt switch from connection to disconnection.​

You might feel a sting of rejection and hurt that they don’t want to continue hanging out with you. You might wonder what you did wrong to suddenly cause the change in their state. You might feel a sense of unfairness and even anger that they would taint an otherwise nice weekend by being quiet and withdrawn. And you might feel very worried and concerned that there’s something bigger going on that they’re not sharing.

All of these feelings make sense when we consider that inconsistency — and in particular, the shift from connection to disconnection — is a key piece in the origin story of anxious attachment. Somewhere along the way, we learned that love was unreliable. That as good as it felt when we were connected to our closest people, we couldn’t always count on them being there when we reached for them.

And when we derive so much of our sense of security from feeling connected to a partner, the fear that the connection could be taken away at any moment — and that we are powerless to stop it — creates a hypervigilance to all the conditions surrounding the relationship.

This is why we can grip so tightly to the connection when it’s in front of us: because we fear that if we let go for even a moment, it might all unravel very quickly. We struggle to trust in the natural ebb and flow of relationships, because our oldest wounds tell us that to be disconnected from them, even temporarily, puts us in grave danger.

How People-Pleasing Plays a Role

Because anxiety mobilises us into problem-solving mode, we can become really good at monitoring, tracking, and scanning. We notice tiny details that others wouldn’t think twice about, and are quick to form hypotheses as to what they might mean. We have a very low tolerance for friction, and tend to experience other people’s emotions as our own (or at the very least, our responsibility). We convince ourselves that if we can always stay one step ahead of the problem, we can avoid the stress and discomfort of disconnection.

Oftentimes, this manifests as people-pleasing: doing whatever we need to do to make our partner happy. Indeed, for many folks with anxious attachment patterns, our whole sense of self can become wrapped up in striving to be the perfect partner: agreeable, loving, supportive, accommodating, easy-going, and always willing to defer to our partner’s needs and preferences.

Of course, this strategy is a really reliable pathway to self-abandonment (and eventually, resentment) — but in the context of a partner being moody, it can also register as failure. When we’ve made their happiness our responsibility (not to mention our life raft), them being anything other than happy quickly feels like we’ve done something wrong. We can struggle to believe that they could be irritable, moody, or cranky around us without it meaning something about the relationship.

What’s more, we can feel a sense of injustice that they “get to” be short-tempered or snappy with us, when we wouldn’t dream of being that way towards them (thanks to our abovementioned commitment to being the perfect partner).

The double-standard, even if self-imposed, can feel terribly unfair.

How Anxious-Avoidant Dynamics Exacerbate the Problem

It’s important to note that this is often playing out in an anxious-avoidant relationship dynamic — ie, where the person on the other side of the equation has more avoidant attachment patterns.

For the purposes of this discussion, a couple of things bear mentioning.

First, unlike anxious attachers for whom stress activates the attachment system and dials up attachment needs, stress (of any sort) will generally prompt someone with avoidant patterns to retreat into solitude. They might be less talkative, withdrawn, and want alone time, because their system tells them to disconnect and go it alone.

Second, moodiness and irritability can be part of the avoidant deactivation pattern — ie, something they experience when intimacy becomes overwhelming, which urges them to pull back for breathing room. This can be directed towards a partner, which of course feels very personal — but in actuality is less about you, and more about them creating distance between themselves and the feelings that intimacy brings them into contact with.

Irrespective of where the moodiness is arising from — from general stress or from deactivation — the anxious attacher’s tendency to rush in with questions like “What’s wrong?” “Is everything okay?” “Why are you so quiet?” “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Clearly something’s wrong, can you just tell me?” is guaranteed to make things worse. To put it bluntly, flooding someone with your anxiety when they are already in retreat is not going to land well — and they are almost certainly not going to have the willingness or capacity to provide the reassurance you’re seeking in that moment. Instead, they’ll likely brush you off, snap at you, or shut down further, reinforcing your fear that something is, indeed, very wrong.

How to Respond to a Partner’s Moodiness

So, if hovering around them and peppering them with questions about what’s wrong isn’t the solution, what is?

My go-to — which I still to this day deploy in my own relationship with my wonderful-but-sometimes-moody partner — is this: do nothing.

Yep, you heard me: do nothing. Carry on with your life as if there is no present threat to you, and no problem for you to solve.

Because guess what? There is no present threat to you, nor is there a problem for you to solve.

Your partner is a grown adult, a separate person from you, who will on occasion experience fatigue, stress, irritability, frustration, and anger. Trust in their capacity to navigate basic human emotions and experiences without your (generally unwelcome) attempts at rescuing them. Trust that your relationship can withstand minor friction and disconnection without falling apart. Trust that, if they need your support or guidance, they can and will ask for it. And trust in your own ability to remain sturdy and grounded in the face of something that has historically been uncomfortable and even distressing for you.

Practically speaking, it can be helpful to have a few tricks up your sleeve for these moments — reliable ways to redirect your attention and remove the temptation to join in their storm. If you just keep hanging around and absorbing their mood, the muscle memory urging you to move in and try to fix can be overpowering. So instead, you might run yourself a nice bath, go for a walk and listen to a podcast, read a book, or go to an exercise class.

More often than not, the storm passes before long, and you will realise that there was no grave threat to the relationship. If they were particularly rude or reactive when in the midst of their moodiness, you might mention it later — saying something like “Hey, I know you were stressed earlier, but it didn’t feel great when you said [XYZ thing] to me. Can you please try not to take that out on me in future?” No big post-mortem to be had, just simple, compassionate, and mature self-advocacy.

I do hope that this grants you some spaciousness, and that you can find relief in knowing that your job is not (and has never been) to be responsible for your partner’s happiness. And most of all, that you can take this permission slip into your relationship the next time you feel triggered by your partner’s bad mood, and simply do nothing about it. Freedom!

And while no one but you can ultimately make that call, in today’s episode I’m sharing some guidance on the qualities and attributes that I find essential to making long-term relationships work.

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

I’ll share some thoughts on managing expectations around a break-up, the difference between thoughts and actions, and how you can move through a challenging period with self-respect and dignity.

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

I share guidance around how to be mindful of your own tendency to overfunction, and how this can lead you into codependent dynamics. I also offer some thoughts on how best to lovingly support your fearful avoidant partner, while also honouring yourself and ensuring there is accountability around any difficult behaviours in the relationship.

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: Click Here

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: Click Here

• Other free resources: Click Here

Links

• Free workshop on how to heal anxious attachment: http://stephanierigg.com/haa-webinar-opt-in

• Free workshop on healing from a break-up: http://stephanierigg.com/hl-webinar-opt-in

• Other free resources: stephanierigg.com/free-resources

But for those of us with anxious attachment patterns, conflict can bring with it a whole different dimension of fear and insecurity — and as such, can provoke in us a litany of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that send us spiralling.

In this article, I want to sift through the layers of why conflict is such a minefield for anxiously attached people — and how our core attachment needs (things like security, connection, attunement, validation, and so on) can end up competing with each other. I also want to offer some thoughts as to why your head-on attempts at fixing your conflict cycles may not have worked terribly well in the past, and present an alternative approach — one grounded in compassion, care and respect for both you and your partner.

A Hypersensitivity to Relational Threat

We know that anxiously attached people experience a hypersensitivity to perceived relational threats. We have a tendency to both magnify (ie, make bigger) and generalise (ie, make broader) any issues in our relational field, meaning that our worries can feel so big and all-consuming. And when we do perceive an issue — which, let’s be honest, is often — our system can ramp up quickly, sending us into overdrive and urging us to do something to solve the problem before it gets worse.

This problem-solving impulse isn’t all bad. Indeed, our willingness to confront relationship challenges head-on can be an asset, if used wisely. But when anxiety grabs the wheel, tactfulness and perspective tend to take a back-seat — and we can find ourselves approaching conflict and communication with an intensity that generally doesn’t land well.

The “Neediness” Paradox

All of this is made more complicated by our internal struggles around “neediness”. Thanks to a lifetime of being the caretaker of everyone else’s needs, we often carry a deep-seated belief that there isn’t space in our relationships for us to be cared for and accommodated. We feel that we are burdensome and “too much”, so we aim to minimise our needs and feign low-maintenance. Of course, there’s a whole different conversation to be had about our tendency to seek out relationship dynamics where this proves true — but that’s one for another day.

Early on in our relationships, we generally default to going with the flow, being extremely flexible, and orienting ourselves around making the other person’s life easier. We can sometimes operate under the (false) belief that our only true need is for them to love and choose us — or at least, that we can deal with the other stuff later once we’ve managed to secure their love.

Of course, this approach is misguided and unsustainable, and always comes back to bite us. When we create a status quo that does not include space for us to have needs, worries, concerns, or boundaries, we naturally experience a rising anxiety and internal conflict.

Because here’s the thing: we do have needs, worries, concerns, and boundaries. And we must be able to bring them to the person we are in a relationship with. But the more we convince ourselves that to do so will threaten the relationship, the more our internal pressure gauge rises. We end up consumed by the inner conflict of whether, how and when to raise things with our partner, such that when we ultimately do have these conversations, they tend to be laced with fear and anxiety.

How Our Patterns Backfire in Conflict

Unfortunately, our anxious attachment patterns don’t provide us with a very helpful blueprint around hard conversations and conflict. In my experience, this tends to go one of two ways:

1. The planned conversation: We ask to talk about something that’s been bothering us, and we end up anxiously offloading a monologue of words, presenting our brief of evidence, explaining ourselves, caveating and cushioning whatever we’re saying, giving far more detail and context than is necessary, and continuing to fill any silences with... more words. While not particularly effective, it makes sense that we’d do this, given that by the time we arrive to these conversations, we’ve typically spent a long time rehearsing for them. Unfortunately, this tends to overwhelm the person on the other side, and make it really hard for them to hear us. But because we’ve got such an urgency about us in these moments, we can easily interpret their overwhelm as a lack of care.

2. The trigger that sets off a fight: We get activated by something that happens, and it tips us over the edge. Out pours a torrent of accusation, criticism, and blame — a desperate and frantic attempt to convey the overwhelming pain that we’ve been carrying. We stack complaints one on top of the other in the vain hope that this will somehow make our feelings irrefutable. But of course, ambushing someone in this manner will always register as threatening and thus, will always elicit self-defence. Our emotions get pushed back onto us, we get labelled as “unreasonable”, and we feel more alone and uncared for than ever.

So, we can agree that neither of these approaches tend to go very well — with anyone, but especially with a partner who leans towards avoidant attachment patterns. Often we see ourselves doing it in real time, knowing that it doesn’t work, but feeling so “in it” that we can’t quite stop ourselves (or maybe don’t even want to).

Naturally, every negative experience we have reinforces the original belief that voicing needs or concerns puts the relationship under threat, therein creating more anxiety, doubt, and stress the next time we need to have a hard conversation.

To make matters worse, repair — which is an essential practice in any healthy relationship — tends to be woefully inadequate in these dynamics. Our conflict cycle can be so draining that we just run out of gas, and end up “making up” just to restore some semblance of peace and harmony.

But of course, this does nothing to address the underlying issues that led to the conflict in the first place. We may have temporarily reset the pressure gauge, but we know it’ll only be a matter of time before it implodes once again.

The Solution Starts Within

Based on this vignette, one could logically assume that the “fix” is to tackle the problem head-on. And look, there have been many wonderful books written on how to communicate more effectively, express needs, and shift conflict cycles. Indeed, I read many of them voraciously when I was struggling in my previous, very insecure relationship.

But while they offered great insight, I personally struggled to effectively implement them. I would highlight and flag pages that I felt perfectly articulated the dynamics we were stuck in, and would excitedly show them to my partner — only to have him shrug them off, and quickly dismiss the conversation. This would inevitably launch me back into anger, frustration, blame, and criticism — and confirm my assessment that he was, unequivocally, the problem. After all, I was doing everything right, and he wasn’t even trying.

What I see now is that, while I was sincerely looking for solutions, my feverish attempts at problem-solving were actually an expression of my anxious attachment patterns rather than a shift away from them. That my relentless fixing (with a side of righteous indignance and judgment) naturally elicited defensiveness and disengagement from my partner, which in turn amplified my anger and criticism towards him. Cue: more defensiveness and disengagement.

What actually allowed me to develop a healthier template around conflict was not using more “I” statements, or expressing my desires rather than my complaints, or taking a time-out when things got heated (even though I absolutely aim to do all of those things).

No, what shifted my experience of conflict was doing the inner work to deeply believe in the validity of my own feelings, needs, and concerns, such that I could bring them to a partner with an entirely different energy. Rather than needing to convince, persuade, and advocate for the rightness of my experience, I learned to simply share vulnerably what was on my mind — and give space for my partner to share in turn. I also stopped viewing our perceptions as competing, and started viewing them as equally real — even if I didn’t “agree” with my partner’s perspective.

The point I’m trying to make is that it’s so much less about what you do, and so much more about where it comes from within you. You can say all the “right” things, but if you’re saying them from a place of profound insecurity, self-doubt, and a deep fear of being alone, it won’t carry any weight. Because when push comes to shove, you will always choose holding onto the relationship over standing sturdily for what you know is right. And that ultimately feeds a sense of vulnerability and powerlessness that makes conflict feel inherently threatening.

This is why, in my work with anxiously attached folks, all roads lead back to self-worth. We need to be able to step towards our relationships on a level footing, and it’s near-impossible to do that when we don’t know ourselves, like ourselves, trust ourselves, or advocate for ourselves.

If this piece resonated with you, I would love for you to come along to my upcoming free workshop on Understanding Anxious Attachment Protest Behaviours. You can register here.

In today’s Ask Steph episode, I’m answering the question of “How long to keep pursuing a connection with someone who’s great and ticks all my boxes — except that I’m not physically attracted to them?”

I share some thoughts on why this can happen — particularly if your attraction template has historically gravitated towards inconsistent and unpredictable connections — and how long you should wait and see before calling it.

In this new series on attachment and conflict, we’re exploring the deeper layers that make relational conflict so challenging, and how we can shift those patterns. This first instalment is all about the anxious attachment experience of conflict: how we can swing between conflict-avoidance and conflict-pursuit, and how our efforts at safeguarding the connection can backfire.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the series!

Links

• Free resources for anxious attachment: stephanierigg.com/free-resources

• Subscribe to my Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmxC4jls4uolRKhFWV_RIoA/

• Visit my website: stephanierigg.com

In this episode, I’m sharing thoughts on how to bridge that gap so that you don’t find yourself on a never-ending hamster wheel of information-gathering that keeps you from experiencing relationships differently.

Links

• Free training on healing anxious attachment: http://stephanierigg.com/haa-webinar-opt-in

• Free resources: http://stephanierigg.com/free-resources

• Attachment quiz: http://stephanierigg.com/quiz

And while far from being exhaustive, my hope is that today’s episode will offer a roadmap to support you on your path to healing if you struggle with fearful avoidant patterns.

Missed the first two instalments of this series? You can catch Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

As is often the case, the ending wasn’t clean, and there was a lot of unfinished business. The break-up came after a string of painful fights — he would pull away, go quiet, express doubt, and eventually call it off, only to come back days or weeks later full of remorse and wanting to try again. Each time, she took him back, clinging desperately to the apologies and the promise that this time would be different.

But the cycle kept repeating, and each iteration left her worse off than the last — heartbroken, deeply disappointed and increasingly ashamed of herself for believing him again, despite all the mounting evidence against what he was saying.

She confessed she felt almost pathetic for continuing to accept so little from him. But while she knew, rationally, that she deserved more, underneath that knowing was abject terror at the thought of closing the door for good.

Something — even something so painful — still seemed better than nothing.

She wanted to know how she could make it easier for herself to let go.

What I told her is what I’ve told a great many people in her position over the years, in one form or another.

Whether it’s the situationship that never became anything more, the person who ghosted you or left you without warning, or something in between, the experience of obsessing over someone is familiar to many of us.

But as we’ll talk about, it’s often less about them, and more about what we make it mean about ourselves.

Links

• Free break-up training

• Free training for healing anxious attachment

I’ve never met someone who is terrified of rejection, who doesn’t also reject, criticise, and shame parts of themselves on a daily basis.

I’ve never met someone who constantly feels like an afterthought to others, who is genuinely good at prioritising themselves.

I’ve never met someone desperate for reassurance, who deeply trusts that they will have their own back — no matter what.

I’ve never met someone who struggles with boundaries in relationships, who holds clear and consistent boundaries with themselves.

The things we fear in relationships are so often reflections of the relationship we have with ourselves. This is where our work begins.

This premise — that our relationships are an extension of how we relate to ourselves — is at the heart of everything I teach. And for many of us, self-abandonment is a defining feature of that inner relationship, shaping not only how we navigate connection with others, but how we treat ourselves.

In this article, I want to explore the nooks and crannies of self-abandonment: what it is, why we do it, how it manifests, what purpose it’s serving, what it costs us, and — perhaps most importantly — how we can start to do things differently.

What is Self-Abandonment?

In its most general sense, I think of self-abandonment as anything we do in relationships where we choose connection to someone else at the cost of connection to ourselves. That might sound a little abstract, so let’s look at some specific examples of how it can show up:

• Pretending to be fine with something that you’re actually deeply uncomfortable with

• Making yourself responsible for (and trying to control) other people’s emotions and behaviour

• Continuing to tolerate something that you said you would no longer tolerate

• Avoiding an important conversation because you are afraid of the truth it may reveal

• Hiding parts of yourself that wouldn’t be acceptable to the people in your life

• Taking on more than you have capacity for in order to maintain your identity as the “helpful” one

• Overfunctioning, people-pleasing, and caretaking to the point of burnout and resentment

• Blaming ourselves for other people’s treatment of us, and trying to prove our worth to make them change

• Chasing after people who are inconsistent, non-committal, or otherwise unavailable for the kind of relationship we want and need

This isn’t anywhere near an exhaustive list, but it gives you a sense of just how pervasive these patterns can be.

To be clear, I don’t think we have to scrutinise any and every instance of self-abandonment. We’ve all bitten our tongue to keep the peace, said yes when we meant no, done things out of guilt rather than true desire or generosity, and caved on a boundary that we insisted we’d hold.

But for many people — particularly those of us who tend towards anxious attachment patterns — self-abandonment isn’t the exception. It’s the rule.

The Protective Intent Behind Self-Abandonment

When confronted with an awareness of their unhealthy relationship patterns, most people’s instinct is to ask: “Okay, so how do I stop doing that?” That’s a logical response — if the behaviour is harmful and destructive, the goal should be to stop it, right?

Well, yes and no. Of course, we want to ultimately shift away from patterns that are blocking us from experiencing wholeness within ourselves and safety in our relationships. But trying to do so by shutting down those patterns forcibly will always, always backfire, as it ends up being yet another expression of the self-rejection we’re already burdened by.

Because the truth is, your patterns of self-abandonment are in place for good reason. They are not random defects or insecurities, but adaptive strategies that once helped you to get by in an environment where, for whatever reason, your most important relationships could not be counted on.

Maybe you learned to be infinitely agreeable and low-maintenance because there was so much stress in your family system that you had no other viable option. Maybe you learned to avoid hard conversations because you knew from experience that they never ended well. Maybe you developed a hypersensitivity to other people’s moods and energy as a way to detect and mitigate any emotional storms that might be brewing. Maybe you learned that it was your job to make people happy, to make them change, or to make them stay.

When our early environment is one where relationships feel inherently unreliable — when we never quite know what we’re going to get, whether connection will be available, and when it might be taken away — we become laser-focused on all the variables that exist outside of us. Our anxiety moves us into a curatorial role, monitoring the conditions surrounding our relationships to maximise our chances of securing and maintaining connection. We become conditioned into believing that success looks like keeping everyone stable, and everything under control.

But of course, the more time and energy we direct out there, the more disconnected we become from our inner world — our own feelings, needs, and desires. And that kicks off a predictable descent into codependent dynamics rife with frustration, resentment, and a felt sense of powerlessness. The inner monologue tends to sound something like, “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?!”

Safety from the Inside Out

Reading this, you might then conclude that the remedy is to change your relationship patterns head-on, by doing the opposite of the thing you’ve always done. For example, if your brand of self-abandonment shows up as always biting your tongue, the solution might be to be more assertive. If you’ve always suppressed your needs to caretake everyone else’s, the correction must be to become a keen advocate for all your long-neglected needs.

If only it were so simple and obvious! Alas, I find this approach tends not to be very effective long-term — almost akin to treating the symptom rather than healing the underlying cause.

What I often observe is this: we might voice the need, set the boundary, raise the hard conversation — but until we do the inner work to really believe that we are worthy and deserving of care, respect, and reciprocity, any pushback or opposition will send us right back to our old patterns. This is where I’ll often hear complaints like, “I expressed my needs and they’re still not changing!” or “I made my boundaries clear but they’re not respecting them! What am I meant to do now?”.

This is why I will always guide people back to the self, first. Not in a “you have to love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you” trope-y kind of way — but simply because it’s unlikely that you will be able to attract (or create) a healthy, secure relationship if your starting point is self-abandonment and self-devaluation.

The truth is, if you really want to shift these patterns, the work is not to find the perfect partner with whom you don’t have to fear being abandoned or rejected or betrayed. I’d argue that that’s just another expression of the belief that you are only okay if everything goes to plan and people do what you want them to.

Rather, the work is in knowing that, even if the very worst were to happen, you would be okay because you would have your own back through the darkest of days.

It may sound counterintuitive, but our relationships become so much healthier and more balanced when we feel we would be okay without them. That’s not to say we should strive to care less, or feel indifferent, or not rely on others. The goal is not to become so “healed” that you don’t want a relationship. But there’s a vast difference between a relationship feeling like a lifeline — something you need in order to feel okay — and a relationship being something you choose because of what it adds to your life.

It is this shift from fear to choice which is at the root of all healing.

If this resonated, I’d love for you to register for my free workshop on How to Heal Anxious Attachment & Finally Feel Secure in Life & Love. Click here to save your seat.

Should you be friends with an ex? It depends.

How long should you wait for a relationship to get better before walking away? It depends.

How do you know if you’re ready to date again after a break-up? It depends.

Annoying, I know — but honest. I’m sure I could get a lot more traction on social media if I were willing to lean more into the flashy clickbait headlines, but alas, I can’t bring myself to do it.

The reality is, relationships are messy, layered, and highly dependent on individual circumstances.

But.

There are a handful of things that I’m unequivocal about — things that just so rarely end well — and I want to share one of them with you here.

Please don’t ever try to convince someone to be in a relationship with you.

Ever.

Whether it’s in dating and you’re trying to nudge someone towards a committed relationship despite them expressing ambivalence, a person who you’ve been on-and-off with and can’t seem to let go of, or a long-term partner who can’t (or won’t) fully choose you, trying to persuade someone out of their doubts so that they don’t leave you is one of the worst things you can do for your self-worth.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that absolute certainty is a prerequisite for relationships — that’s an unrealistically high bar. But there’s a difference between someone working through their doubts and choosing to continue in the relationship of their own free will, and you pressuring them out of their doubts by frantically reassuring them that they have nothing to worry about and everything’s going to be fine.

The former is part of doing the work together, whereas the latter is a recipe for ongoing anxiety.

Why You Should Never Convince Someone to Be With You

First, let’s acknowledge that it’s usually folks with anxious attachment patterns who engage in this kind of behaviour in the first place — ie, doing whatever we can to hold onto someone who seems to be slipping away. We convince ourselves that if we can just make them feel safe, have one more conversation, reassure them, apologise, explain… then everything will be okay.

In my experience, this tends to go one of two ways (and neither of them are good).

1. You try to convince them, beg them, plead with them, and they still don’t choose you. You feel rejected, heartbroken, desperate, and ashamed, because you’ve just collected some solid evidence for the story you already carried that “No matter how hard I try, people always leave me.” You emerge with your self-respect in tatters.

2. You successfully talk them off the ledge, convince them to try one more time, to stay a little longer, to not freak out. And then? The whole relationship becomes a balancing act where you are hyper-aware of any and every cue that they might be pulling away — and you become smaller and smaller, knowing that you can’t afford to make their life difficult in any way. No needs, no requests, no boundaries, no conflict. All of that is far too risky when you know that they wanted to walk away the last time things felt hard, and that the only reason they’re still here is because you had to convince them.

In other words, if you convince them to stay once when their instinct was to leave, you’ll feel like you have to keep convincing them to stay forever. And that sets up a power imbalance that is really hard to correct later on — because the simple fact is, the person who is less invested, who withholds, who is willing to walk away, always has the upper hand.

Unfair perhaps — but it’s as true in relationships as it is in a business negotiation. The person who wants the deal more is in a vulnerable position, particularly when their cards are all on the table.

I’ve been there, too.

In my mid-20s, I landed in a fairly tumultuous relationship. (More on that in this video, if you’re interested). From the very start, it was very chaotic and dysfunctional — but for whatever reason, I was hooked. We were seeing each other for months before making it official, and in that time, I was hard at work trying to convince him to want to be with me, notwithstanding his extremely inconsistent and flip-flopping behaviour.

I tried all sorts of tactics, from the more subtle (trying to be the ultimate low-maintenance, easy-going, fun-loving girlfriend) to the very overt (pressuring him with all sorts of toothless ultimatums).

Eventually, it “worked” — we ended up dating for several years — but believe me when I say it was the ultimate Pyrrhic victory. In hindsight, there was no way a relationship that started out on such an insecure footing was ever going to feel healthy, balanced, and fulfilling.

When I eventually left, I made a commitment to myself that I was never going to do that again. That I was only available for people who were all in, and that I wouldn’t degrade myself by trying to convince someone to want or choose me.

Not long after, I entered a relationship with my current partner, Joel. He has fearful avoidant attachment patterns, which, in case you’re not familiar, can involve significant fear and anxiety around relationships. We moved pretty quickly at the start, going from friends to living together as a couple in a matter of months.

I remember one particular occasion where we had had an argument about something and Joel started to express doubts, saying things like “Maybe we jumped into this too quickly”. While in my previous relationship, I would’ve hurried to soothe those worries and convince him otherwise, I remember sitting calmly and saying, “I get that this is hard for you. And, I’m not going to try and persuade you to be here if you don’t want to be. If you want to go, go.”

Lo and behold, my grounded response must have jolted Joel out of his panic, as he quickly realised that he was reacting from fear rather than from what he truly wanted. And while I can’t say how it might’ve gone if I’d reacted differently, my guess is that if I’d freaked out and leapt into anxious reassuring and pressuring him to change his mind, he probably would’ve felt vindicated in his fear and responded by pulling away further.

The moral of the story: self-abandonment and self-devaluation are not how you get someone to choose you. If diminishing yourself is the only way to make them stay, let them go. I know it feels so hard, and everything within you wants to hold on, but just know that when the path is paved with insecurity, you shouldn’t expect the destination to be any different.

Thanks for reading! If this resonated, I’d love for you to come to my free workshop on How to Heal Anxious Attachment & Finally Feel Secure in Life & Love. You can register for free here.

Like most popular sayings, “If they wanted to, they would” contains a kernel of truth — but also a good dose of oversimplification. In other words, it depends heavily on context and circumstances.

So, let’s unpack it.

To state the obvious, in some circumstances, people’s behaviour is a fairly direct reflection of their choices, willingness, and level of investment.

For example, if someone consistently doesn’t return your calls, makes little effort to see you, or avoids spending time together, it’s generally reasonable to take that behaviour at face value.

In such cases, “If they wanted to, they would” can be a helpful reality check — not as a judgment of their character, but as information. It tells you something important about their level of interest and where you sit on their list of priorities.

Remember, continuing to pour effort into one-sided relationships is rarely a good use of your time and energy.

Where I tend to take issue with the “if they wanted to, they would” phrase is when it’s applied indiscriminately, as if to suggest that all behaviour is a function of desire and willpower.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

There are many situations in which people genuinely want to show up differently — they want to be more communicative, more emotionally expressive, more affectionate, more vulnerable — but they just can’t.

Not in a “won’t try hard enough” way, but in a capacity way.

In much the same way that you can want to stop feeling anxious and yet still feel really anxious, someone can want intimacy and find that their nervous system, their attachment patterns, or their current emotional skillset simply won’t let them go there.

When we characterise those situations as a matter of, “If they wanted to, they would,” we miss a big part of the picture. We’re reducing something complex and layered into something righteous and frankly, judgy.

A protest I often hear at this point is: but what if I’ve seen them do it before? What if they were vulnerable at the start, or showed up consistently early on, and now they won’t? Isn’t that proof that they DO have capacity — and that the change must therefore signal a lack of interest or effort?

Maybe — but it’s important to understand that capacity isn’t just the ability to show up once. It’s being able to do so consistently, especially as the stakes get higher.

Many people find it easier to be more vulnerable and expressive in the early stages of a relationship, when things feel lighter and less emotionally demanding. But as intimacy deepens and the parameters change, that same behaviour can start to feel overwhelming or unsafe. In such cases, the capacity constraint might show up as one step forward followed by a sharp pullback, rather than a consistent lack.

Now, with all of that being said—

Recognising limits in someone’s capacity doesn’t mean you should excuse or tolerate behaviour that leaves you feeling consistently confused, insecure, or anxious. Understanding why something is hard for someone doesn’t require you to stay in a dynamic that costs you your wellbeing.

This is where I think the conversation is missing a layer.

Sometimes we become so invested in analysing and contextualising someone’s behaviour that we forget to actually respond to it. We look for the explanation, the origin story, the missing piece — and in doing so, we avoid taking action on what’s happening in front of us.

So, rather than getting stuck ruminating on whether someone’s behaviour is a function of their unwillingness or their lack of capacity — their interest level or their fear — the more important question is actually: does this work for me? Does the relationship, in its current form, allow me to feel secure, respected, and safe?

The hard truth is, if someone is showing you, over time, that they either don’t want to or can’t show up in the way you need in order to feel good in the relationship, then the work becomes yours. Not to fix, persuade, or coach them into readiness — but to decide how you want to respond to reality as it is.

And choosing to step away from someone who can’t love you the way you need them to — someone whose wounds cause you too much pain — is one of the most self-honouring things you can do.