5 Things You Need to Know about the Withdrawer in Your Relationship
A while back I wrote a blog about 5 Things You Need to Know about The Pursuer in the Relationship but I got carried away and did not get to write another blog to shine light into the inner world of the other partner in the relationship, the Withdrawer. My apologies to all of the withdrawers out there. I didn’t forget you and I want to take this opportunity to represent you equally as I did in my other blog for your counterpart because you’re important and your experience matters.
The below 5 things you need to know about your withdrawer are based on my years of experience assisting couples and families in overcoming their vicious cycle of communication in couples counseling and family therapy. If you’re finding yourself struggling in a negative cycle with your partner, please seek professional help by finding a marriage counselor or couples therapist near you or through online therapy to help you get started.
Now let’s get to the nitty gritty of the blog.
1. Withdrawers are emotionally intelligent even though they may appear analytical in their interaction with you.
Withdrawers can read the room and sense the tension between them and their partner quickly. They can smell conflict from miles away (I’m exaggerating here but you get my point). It helps them recognize when “we’re okay” vs. “we’re not okay” so they can have a plan on what to do next. That being said, it is difficult for the withdrawer to find words to describe their own feelings and it’s even more challenging for them to find words to describe feelings they pick up from their partner, especially in the middle of a conflict.
This is why the withdrawer leans heavily on their analytical side to make sense of feelings. Being able to analyze an emotion makes them feel safe. It helps soothe anxiety arising within them and it gives them a sense of control of the situation in the hope to be able to “fix” whatever causes their partner to feel upset.
2. Withdrawers are often conflict avoidant.
They avoid engaging in conflict because they worry that they may not be able to stop things from blowing up. They’re afraid to make a situation worse by addressing a conflict. It’s common and makes sense for the pursuer in the relationship to “turn the volume up,” by raising their voice in the hope to get their partner’s attention and to create change. For the withdrawer, it is important to “turn the volume down” by becoming quiet or reserved because they may feel like it’s the best way to maintain the “we’re fine” status quo to avoid any potential damage. However, when the withdrawer tries to “turn the volume down,” they can send the wrong message to their spouse as if they minimize, dismiss, or don’t care about what matters to the other person. This is how your viscous cycle keeps both of you in your negative feedback loop. One person's move to protect self and the relationship by bringing up problems triggers the other person’s drive to “smooth things out” in the opposite direction. When you put these two loops together, you have your cycle conflict.
3. It is easy for the withdrawer to put their walls up when they feel like they did something wrong or that they make a situation worse.
The speed of processing emotions is different between the pursuer and withdrawer. In general, the pursuer can access their emotions at a faster speed and in a shorter amount of time. That strength can sometimes become a double-edged sword by which it may make the pursuer become less patient by wanting to help their partner match their speed. Unfortunately, that desire to help can often appear overwhelming for the withdrawer and leads them to further shut down or become quiet. That’s how your viscous cycle keeps both of you in a lose-lose loop.
So give the withdrawer some time and space to figure out what their experience is before they can verbalize them to you. That way, once they’re able to recover from feeling overwhelmed and their thinking brain comes back online, you’ll have your partner back. The conversation may then become more productive and you may reduce the chance of being caught in your habitual cycle of communication.
4. Withdrawers feel anger too. They just express it differently.
The withdrawer tends not to externalize their anger. Instead, they internalize it. The coping mechanism of internalization may often cause issues of self-loathing and self-shaming, which can send the withdrawer further down into the staircases of uncontrollable emotions.
Withdrawers are skilled at suppressing anger by learning to soothe it on their own. They have trained to sit with themselves for a long time. Regulating feelings alone helps them feel more in control of their emotions while regulating with another person often feels risky and anxiety provoking for them. However, even though self-soothing helps with containing anger, the unresolved energy does not go away; in fact, it builds up over time and potentially turns into resentment. When the unprocessed feeling becomes too much to contain, it can come out in bursts as lashing out or becoming passive aggressive when dysregulation happens.
5. Some withdrawers have their longings and needs closer to the surface and others deep in the cave.
If your partner is a withdrawer, there is a great chance that they feel flooded with words when being asked many questions in a short period of time. “I don’t know” is a common response when the withdrawer feels overwhelmed and is not able to identify effectively what their partner wants them to say or do in a given moment. It can be helpful to allow them to be in the “I don’t know” place to encourage them to get in touch with their feelings and gather their thoughts. It may be an unpleasant practice for the pursuer to do so, and it makes a lot of sense, because you may be afraid that your withdrawer will not come out of their cave if you give them more time. Yet, the more you push for an answer, the more time it will take for them to leave the cave.
I hope you find the above reading helpful in assisting you in mapping out the habitual cycle of interaction in your own marriage or relationship. Each couple is unique and so is their cycle of communication. It’s impossible to have a one size fits all solution. This blog serves as my shared experience of the relationship work I do as a marriage counselor and a trauma therapist to help couples, families, and individuals overcome their own hurdles and strengthen their bond and intimacy. If you’re experiencing distress in your relationship, search for “a relationship therapist or family therapist near me” to help you get started.
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