The Strange Ways We Ask to Be Loved

Why One Person Moves Closer While the Other Moves Away

Sometimes the ways we protect ourselves from being hurt are the very things that keep us from receiving the love we want.

There is a peculiar thing that happens in some marriages. The more desperately one person tries to save the relationship, the more desperately the other person seems to need relief from it.

This makes very little sense at first.

If your marriage is becoming distant, shouldn't somebody move closer? If conversations have become shallow, shouldn't somebody insist that you talk? If affection has disappeared, shouldn't somebody reach for it? If problems have gone unresolved for months, isn't the responsible thing to say, "We need to deal with this"?

I would have thought so.

And then there is the other person.

If every conversation seems to become an examination of the relationship, isn't it reasonable to want a little breathing room? If every silence is interpreted as rejection, every tired evening becomes evidence that something is wrong, and every request for space produces another conversation about why you need space, isn't backing away at least understandable?

I would have thought that too.

And there we have the problem.

Both people can be making perfectly understandable moves while together creating a marriage neither of them wants.

Couples therapists have various names for this. Pursuer-distancer. Demand-withdraw. Anxious-avoidant. The names are useful, but after more than thirty years of sitting with couples, I am increasingly interested in what happens underneath the names.

One person moves toward the relationship when frightened.

The other moves away from the relationship when frightened.

That difference can eventually organize an entire marriage.

Two Ways of Trying to Feel Safe

Imagine a husband who notices that his wife has become distant. She doesn't initiate affection as often. Conversations seem shorter. Sex has become infrequent. Something feels different.

He does what makes sense to him: he moves closer.

"Are we okay?"

She says they are.

He isn't convinced.

"You seem distant."

"I'm just tired."

A few days later he brings it up again. He suggests they spend more time together. He initiates sex. He asks whether she is still attracted to him. Perhaps he buys flowers or plans a date. Eventually he suggests counseling.

From his side of the marriage, these are acts of love.

But imagine being his wife.

She is tired. She may be anxious or depressed. She may have her own disappointments in the marriage that she hasn't found words for. Perhaps physical affection has slowly become loaded with expectation. What once felt spontaneous now seems to come with a question attached:

“Do you still want me?” Now affection is no longer simply affection. It has become evidence. And she feels herself being asked to provide it. So she pulls back.

From his side, her withdrawal confirms his fear: We're losing each other.

From her side, his pursuit confirms hers: I can't breathe.

He moves closer.

She moves farther away.

He notices the distance and increases the pursuit.

She notices the pressure and increases the distance.

Before long, each person has accumulated a substantial body of evidence proving that the other person is the problem.

The tragedy is that the evidence isn't entirely wrong. It just isn't complete.

The Part We Usually Miss

Most of us understand our own behavior from the inside and our partner's behavior from the outside.

I know why I raised my voice. I was frustrated.

I know why I asked the question again. I needed reassurance.

I know why I went quiet. Nothing I said was going to help.

But I don't experience your intentions. I experience what your behavior does to me.

You experience the pursuit as pressure. I experience the withdrawal as rejection.

You experience my questions as criticism. I experience your silence as indifference.

This creates one of the more troublesome realities of intimate relationships: my attempt to solve my fear may become the thing that intensifies yours.

And yours may do the same to me.

That is considerably different from saying one of us is needy and the other is emotionally unavailable. Those descriptions may contain some truth, but they tempt us to locate the problem inside people rather than between them.

Systems thinking asks a different question.

Not simply, “What is wrong with you?” But, “What happens next?” When you do this, what do I do? And when I do that, what happens to you? Then what do you do?

A marriage can spend years answering those questions without either person realizing there is a question being asked.

The Pursuer Isn't Really Pursuing

This is where the labels can fool us. The pursuer appears to want conversation, affection, sex, reassurance, answers, plans, decisions, or change. Sometimes quite a lot of it. But underneath all that activity is often something much simpler: “Please show me that I still matter to you. ‘

That sentence is considerably more frightening to say.

It is easier to say, "Why don't you ever initiate sex?" than "I miss feeling wanted by you."

It is easier to say, "We need to communicate better" than "I'm afraid I'm losing you."

It is easier to demand an answer than to admit how much the answer matters.

So vulnerability dresses itself as persistence. Unfortunately, persistence doesn't always feel like vulnerability to the person receiving it. Sometimes it feels like criticism. And criticism rarely makes frightened people more emotionally available.

The Distancer Isn't Really Distancing

The other label can fool us just as easily. The withdrawing partner may look as though she doesn't care. She becomes quiet, changes the subject, says everything is fine, stays busy, goes to bed, looks at her phone, or says, "I don't want to talk about this right now."

The pursuer sees the obvious conclusion: “You don't care enough to fight for us.”

But withdrawal is not always the absence of emotion. Sometimes it is what people do because there is too much emotion and they don't know what to do with it.

A person may withdraw because she expects to disappoint her partner again. Because every conversation seems to confirm that she is failing. Because she doesn't know what she feels. Because she fears saying the wrong thing. Because the emotional temperature has risen beyond her ability to stay present.

So she does the thing that has worked before. She disappears without leaving. That creates temporary relief for her and considerable alarm for him.

Which, of course, brings him closer. We are back where we started.

The Strange Mathematics of Marriage

There is a kind of relational mathematics operating here. More pursuit does not necessarily produce more closeness. More distance does not necessarily produce more freedom. Sometimes more pursuit produces more distance, and more distance produces more pursuit.

This is why telling the pursuer to "just give her space" or telling the distancer to "communicate more" often doesn't accomplish much. Each person has a reason for doing what they do. Their behavior developed because, at least in the short term, it works.

Pursuing temporarily reduces the terror of helplessness. Withdrawing temporarily reduces the terror of emotional pressure.

The problem comes later.

What protects each person individually begins damaging them relationally.

I have always liked the systems idea that the problem isn't necessarily located in either person. Sometimes the problem has taken up residence in the pattern.

That doesn't eliminate personal responsibility. Quite the opposite. If I am part of a pattern, then what I do matters enormously. But it means I can stop spending all my energy diagnosing you. I can become curious about me.

When Sex Carries More Than Sex

This becomes particularly complicated when the pattern moves into the bedroom. A difference in sexual desire is common in long relationships. But eventually sex can begin carrying meanings neither partner intended it to carry.

For one partner, sex may become reassurance: “You still want me.”

For the other, sex may become pressure: “I have to prove that I still love you.”

Now both people are having an experience that reaches far beyond sex.

A rejection is no longer merely "not tonight." It can feel like a referendum on desirability, love, or the marriage itself. And agreeing to sex may no longer feel like desire. It can feel like responsibility, appeasement, or an attempt to keep the peace.

Once that happens, trying harder to solve the sexual problem can make the sexual problem worse. The bedroom has become the place where the marriage is trying to settle an argument that didn't begin in the bedroom.

Someone Has to Do Something Different

This is the part couples understandably dislike. Once we see the cycle, somebody has to change their part without first requiring the other person to change theirs.

That feels unfair. The pursuer thinks, “Why should I back off when you're the one who keeps withdrawing?” The distancer thinks, “Why should I open up when you're the one making it impossible to talk?”

Both arguments have merit.

And neither one changes anything.

A system changes when something inside the system changes.

For the pursuer, that may mean learning to recognize the frightened question underneath the criticism and asking it more honestly. It means discovering that intimacy cannot be forced into existence by pursuing it harder.

For the distancer, it may mean staying present a little longer when every instinct says to disappear. It means learning that needing space and abandoning the conversation are not quite the same thing.

Both require something more difficult than communication skills.

They require tolerating vulnerability without immediately performing the behavior that has always made vulnerability go away.

Perhaps Love Requires a Little More Courage Than We Thought

I sometimes wonder whether we have made love sound too much like a feeling and not enough like the willingness to remain reachable. Being reachable doesn't mean surrendering boundaries. It doesn't mean having sex when you don't want to, answering every question your partner asks, or remaining in conversations that have become cruel or unsafe.

It means allowing another person to encounter you.

That can be surprisingly difficult.

The pursuer has to become reachable underneath the demands. The distancer has to become reachable underneath the silence.

And both eventually have to face an uncomfortable possibility: the behavior that has protected me may now be preventing the very relationship I am trying to protect.

There is something hopeful hidden inside that idea.

If my partner were simply the problem, I would have very little power. I would have to wait for another human being to become different before anything could change.

But if we have created a pattern together, then my next move matters.

I don't control what you do with it.

I don't know whether you will move closer.

I don't even know whether every marriage can or should be repaired.

But I can stop automatically making the move I have made a thousand times before. And perhaps that is where change in relationships often begins—not when two people finally agree about who caused the problem, but when one of them becomes curious enough to ask:

“What happens between us when I do what I always do?”

And then, perhaps for the first time in a very long while, does something else.

© 2026 Thomas Kurtz. All rights reserved.

Published by Thomas Kurtz Counseling, LLC.