Did you know that some of the very things you do to try to save your distressed marriage are in actual fact destroying it? Seriously. What is even more shocking is that they exist in every marriage.

One of those things that we see everyday is called the pursue-withdraw cycle.

Very simply, you have:

A pursuer: I am going to keep coming at you because I am afraid of losing you. Negative emotional connection feels better than no connection.

And a distancer: I am overwhelmed, I can’t fix this. Maybe if I retreat (withdraw), it’ll be calmer and I won’t lose him/her.

See how they both are trying to keep each other?

Unfortunately, things don’t work out the way each spouse is hoping. The pursuer desperately wants connection, but instead prompts distance. The distance also wants connection (but with the calm, soft part of his/her spouse) and by withdrawing prompts anger and attacking.

For Caleb and me, this is what it looks like:

I flood Caleb with a ton of emotions. I don’t necessarily start out mad, but I’m usually loud and have tears. I just want him to understand how huge this is for me, and how much I hurt.

All he sees is the loud part of me, and he feels completely overwhelmed. He is just trying to process everything, and would love to find a hole to hide in until I blow over as he doesn’t like to see me upset.

He doesn’t respond, so I get louder and (usually, mad by now) try to break through his calm exterior.

It really is a spiral that can escalate quickly. We both want each other, but our ways to attain it are pushing each other away.

So, how does this demand-withdraw pattern work?

The Nature of the Demand/Withdraw Pattern

The demand-withdraw pattern can be defined in the following way: “One member (the demander) criticizes, nags, and makes demands of the other, while the partner (the withdrawer) avoids confrontation, withdraws, and becomes silent.”[i]

Eldridge et al (2007) studied this demand-withdraw pattern in 128 couples who were divided into three groups: severely distressed, moderately distressed, and nondistressed. The researchers used self-report and video-taped discussions of relationship problem topics and analyzed them to come to the following results:

The more distressed the couple, the more demand/withdraw tactics they used.

The pattern of wife-demand/husband-withdraw was more common than husband-demand/wife-withdraw.[ii]

There are a small group of couples that demand-demand or withdraw-withdraw. The first looks very volatile. The last looks like one nasty storm cloud that never actually does anything. It could also be just a plain/stony feel to the marriage.

So, typically, most marriages have a wife that finds herself demanding and a husband that withdraws. Hence the proverbial man-cave and the proverbial nagging wife. They’re proverbial for a reason: we all do this!

Research completed in 2009 gives further information on demand-withdraw patterns. The researchers studied “116 couples who completed diary ratings of instances of marital conflict occurring at home.”[iii] The results of these diary ratings were as follows:

The individual who initiated the conflict predicted the demand-withdraw pattern. When husbands initiated the conflict it led to the husband-demand/wife-withdraw pattern. When wives initiated conflict, it led to the wife-demand/husband-withdraw.

Demand-withdraw patterns were more likely when disagreements concerned the marital relationship, and less likely when it was disagreements about issues outside the relationship.

Demand-withdraw patterns were consistently related to greater likelihood of negative tactics (i.e., threat, physical distress, verbal hostility, aggression) and higher levels of negative emotions (i.e., sadness, anger, fear) and to lower likelihood of constructive tactics (i.e., affection, support, problem solving, compromise) and lower levels of positivity.[iv]

In other words, we all do this,