Wanting too much from your partner can quietly damage even the strongest bonds. When you start demanding too much in a relationship, unmet relationship expectations can create distance instead of closeness.
When you understand the role of emotional dependence in relationships, you find the balance between love, space, and self-sufficiency.
KEY POINTS
- Some partners may need more space in a relationship.
- Your partner may not be able to make up for your losses.
- Demanding too much from your partner may cause you to lose them.
Wanting Too Much From Your Partner? Here’s Why It Backfires
In a scenario that’s familiar to attachment theorists, some partners cannot separate from their mates for too long a time without experiencing anxiety, sadness, or rejection.
Ironically, many of these individuals become angry enough to threaten divorce—a contemplation which defies logic because it is replacing a loss with an even bigger loss.
In the context of couple therapy, this dynamic resembles the infamous pursuer-distancer dance where one partner takes on the role of the pursuer, pursuing time with the other, while the other plays the role of the distancer, seeking space in the relationship.
The pursuer feels rejected and experiences a deep sense of loss; the distancer feels trapped and experiences a sense of intrusion.
Historically, the professional literature has perceived women to be pursuers and men to be distancers, although many scholars have since agreed that the pursuer-distancer dynamic, when fixed, is one in which both have difficulty achieving intimacy.
Related: The Difference Between Needing And Wanting A Man
I have recently treated several male pursuer-female distancer relationships. And in each case, the male had lost his mother at a very young age because of death or abandonment.
Given this loss, the male then developed not only a neediness for a female mother figure, but an entitlement to one. The female who partnered with this type of male was parentified in her family of origin.
In the beginning of her intimate relationships, she dutifully played the caretaker role. But she soon tired and began to demand space, thus setting off her male counterpart’s abandonment issues.
So far, not much of what I have said is very surprising or original.
But what struck me as particularly odd was that these men, even when their behavior was correlated with the earlier loss of the mother-figure, continued to relentlessly pursue their female partners, thus chasing them away.
I concluded from this dynamic that the men were in conflict. That is, part of them wanted a mother figure to substitute for the mother they lost in childhood. But another part of them could not negotiate space with the substitute mother.
This behavior may reflect an underlying rage at being abandoned, or a sense of unworthiness, as if they did not deserve to fill this void.
Nevertheless, they sabotaged the very thing they claimed to want in the worst way, only to replace a loss with a bigger loss—a Greek tragedy played out in real time.
Written by Stephen J. Betchen D.S.W.
Originally Appeared on Psychology Today
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