When He Pulls Away, the Trouble Starts

I understand what's happening. When he pulls away, you become anxious--most likely you fear that he is cheating and that he's going to leave you.

You can't contain the anxiety, so you go into action and accuse him of cheating. He becomes hurt, to be falsely accused I imagine, and then angry and then he goes in to action and threatens to leave you.

The only way to break this cyle is for you to handle your anxiety very differently. The next time he pulls away, you need to first examine yourself. Realize that your terror stems all the way back to when you were young. Somebody close to you--most likely mom or dad--abandoned you or threatened to abandon you or you saw your mom or dad get abandoned.

In either case, you have been traumatized and you are bracing yourself being traumatized again. The worst part about your situation is that you are actually bringing about your worst fear and driving him away from you. So, realize the origin of your fear and start talking about that with your boyfriend.

In fact, when you become frightened by his pulling away, don't accuse him of anything. Just talk about yourself and describe what his distancing reminds you of (from when you were young). Talking about your early fears and hurts will serve many functions.

Talking about yourself takes the blame off of your boyfriend. When he stops feeling blamed, he will be in a frame of mind to understand and comfort you, which will help you to heal your problem and bring him closer to you at the same time. This strategy is a win/win for you and for the relationship.

You also could encourage your boyfriend to start talking about his feelings, rather than act them out. He distances himself from you when feelings that he doesn't know how to handle are triggered by something you say or do. Tell him that you want him to share with you all his feelings, especially the negative ones.

Obviously distancing helps him to temporarily escape bad feelings, but this pattern doesn't solve the problems and it breaks your connection. Get him to start becoming aware of the urge to pull away before he does so. Then have him identify the feeling he wants to run from and then have him talk about it with you. Keep in mind that his need for space and distance from you is normal. You aren't siamese twins!

So the challenge here is for him to become clear on when he's distancing to escape rather than deal directly with feelings, and when he's taking space just because he needs time to himself. If he becomes adept at identifying his feelings and talking about them, then he will also be able to talk with you about when he needs space, just because he needs it.

If he talks about the wish before taking off, you will feel emotionally embraced and less anxious when he does go off. The rule of thumb here is when you're in a relationship, you should never do anything that has an impact on the other person without discussing first. This includes taking space.

Let me know how you make out.