You know you do it. You might even know it pushes them away. You do it anyway. What is that about?
The Compulsive Behavior
There’s a behavior you repeat. Testing them. Withdrawing to see if they pursue. Picking fights when things are too good. Creating distance when closeness gets scary.
You see it happening. Part of you watches yourself push. Part of you tries to stop. The pushing continues anyway. It’s automatic. It’s older than your awareness of it.
What the behavior accomplishes isn’t what you consciously want. You want them close. The behavior pushes them away. The behavior is serving something other than your stated goal. Something deeper. Something scared.
What You’re Really Seeking
Testing whether they’ll stay is often underneath. If you push and they remain, they must really love you. The push is a loyalty test disguised as rejection.
Creating distance before they can hurt you is self-protective. If you leave first, you can’t be left. If you push them away, you controlled the abandonment. It hurts, but you controlled it.
Confirming you’re unlovable is darker. Somewhere you believe you don’t deserve this. The pushing creates evidence for that belief. When they finally leave, you can say “See? I knew it.”
The behavior serves the wound, not you. The wound wants to be right. The wound wants to be confirmed. Even if being right means being alone.
Awareness Without Change
Knowing doesn’t stop it. This is the frustrating part. You can see exactly what you’re doing. You can understand why you’re doing it. You do it anyway.
The gap between insight and action is where most people get stuck. Understanding the pattern doesn’t break it. The pattern has momentum. It has its own logic. It doesn’t care that you’ve analyzed it.
Why knowing isn’t enough: because the behavior is emotional, not rational. It comes from a part of you that doesn’t respond to logic. It responds to felt safety, which logic can’t provide.
Insight is necessary but not sufficient. You need the awareness. But awareness alone won’t stop you mid-push.
Breaking the Pattern
Catching it in real-time is the skill to develop. Not afterward, when you’re analyzing what happened. In the moment, when the push is starting. That’s where change happens.
Pausing before the push requires something different from understanding. It requires capacity. The ability to feel the urge and not act on it. To tolerate the discomfort that the pushing was meant to relieve.
Doing something different instead is the intervention. When you notice the pull to test, to withdraw, to create distance: do something else. Move toward instead of away. Reach out instead of push.
This will feel wrong. The push feels necessary. Doing something different will feel dangerous. That’s the point. You’re learning that safety doesn’t require pushing.
What They’re Experiencing
They don’t know why you push. From their side, it looks like rejection. Like you don’t want them. Like they’ve done something wrong.
The confusion created by your behavior strains connection. They can’t predict when you’ll be available and when you’ll retreat. The inconsistency is exhausting. They start bracing.
What they might tolerate has limits. Everyone does. At some point, the pushing succeeds. They leave. And you’re right: you are alone. You made it happen.
Telling them what’s happening can help. “I notice I push away when I get scared. It’s not about you. I’m working on it.” The transparency creates room. The secrecy creates damage.
The Choice You’re Making
Every push is a choice. Not a conscious one, maybe. But a choice. You’re choosing fear over connection. Protection over intimacy. The wound’s needs over your relationship’s needs.
You can make a different choice. It won’t be easy. The pattern is deep. But you can catch it, pause, and choose differently. Once. Then again. Then it becomes less automatic.
What’s at stake is real. This relationship. This person. The future you could have with them. Every push risks it. Every push says the protection matters more than the connection.
Is that true? Does the protection still matter more? If not, stop pushing. If it does, be honest about what you’re choosing.
The thing that pushes them away is you. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But you. Only you can stop. Only you can choose differently. The question is whether you will.
Sources
- Self-sabotage in relationships: Peel, R. & Caltabiano, N. (2021). Self-sabotage in intimate relationships. Personal Relationships.
- Attachment and pushing away: Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in Adulthood.
- Compulsive relational behaviors: Bartholomew, K. & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Breaking relational patterns: Johnson, S. M. & Whiffen, V. E. (2003). Attachment Processes in Couple and Family Therapy.