Years ago, when I was in my 20s and a newly trained therapist, I was struggling with my romantic life. I communicated. I reflected. I tried to do things “right.” I was a therapist, for goodness’ sake. And yet I kept finding myself in relationships where I was reaching and the other person was slowly pulling away.
At one point, I genuinely wondered if I was destined to be alone.
My own therapist—my training taught me that we must do our own work before sitting with other people’s pain—told me to imagine life as a game board and your relationship as pieces on that game board. If you’re looking for partnership, you will want to find someone who is willing to play the game of life with you. One person wanting connection isn’t enough. Both people have to want it and be willing to work for it, especially when life gets hard.
I didn’t fully understand how true that was until years later, when my clinical training finally caught up with my lived experience.
That was when I encountered the work of Sue Johnson, the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy. Her research gave me language for something I had felt for years but could never quite name.
In her work, she describes one of the most common dynamics couples get stuck in: the negative pursuer–withdrawer cycle.
One partner moves toward connection. They name concerns. They ask to talk. They try to repair what’s not working in the relationship. We call this person the pursuer.
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The other partner, the withdrawer, pulls back in the face of conflict. They go quiet, get defensive or feel overwhelmed by emotional intensity. Not because they don’t care, but because the intensity feels like too much. Distance feels safer to them and withdrawing feels like regulation.
Of course, these roles are not fixed, permanent identities—two pursuers can find themselves in a relationship with each other and two withdrawers can find the same, and your role might change in a different relationship. But it’s a common dynamic. And even healthy couples can get stuck in this negative cycle. The problem arises when the cycle goes unaddressed for too long, and something else begins to happen. After 15 years as a couples therapist, I’ve seen many couples reach a critical stage that is incredibly difficult to repair once they’re there: the burned-out pursuer stage.
The pursuer is the partner who carries the emotional pulse of the relationship. They notice when something feels off. They initiate the hard conversations. They say things like, “I miss you,” or “Can we talk about what happened?” or “Something doesn’t feel right between us.” They read the books, send the podcast episodes, reach out for therapy.
Pursuers keep trying to connect because they still believe in the relationship and desperately want it to feel safe again. But instead of partnership when they reach out, they hit walls. Sometimes they’re told they’re too sensitive. Too much. That it can wait. That it’s not a big deal.
Until one day, something shifts. It is rarely dramatic. There’s usually no explosion or big exit. It’s quiet. They stop pushing. They stop reaching. They stop hoping. This is the moment that can worry us couples therapists. A burned-out pursuer is not someone who stopped caring. It’s someone who cared deeply for too long without feeling met, and they’ve hit their limit.
Here’s what many people misunderstand, in my experience as a therapist: When your partner is still naming problems, still asking to talk, still saying, “I need more,” that isn’t an attack. It’s someone fighting for the relationship, not against it. To be fair, pursuers can come on too strong sometimes, and their attempts at connection may feel like criticism to a withdrawer. But, dismiss those bids for connection long enough, and eventually the pursuer stops trying.
When the pursuer goes quiet, it’s almost never because everything is fine. It’s because they no longer see a path forward. That’s what makes this stage so difficult to recover from.
The key is to avoid getting to that point. So what can couples do when they recognize they’re approaching this stage?
For the pursuer, that may mean naming the burnout directly and stepping back, not as punishment, but as self-preservation. Reconnecting with who you are outside the relationship matters when resentment has taken hold. For the withdrawer, this stage requires stepping forward without being prompted. Listening with curiosity instead of defensiveness. Leading the repair rather than asking to be told what to do.
Support helps most when it’s sought early, not as a last resort. Therapy can help couples rebalance emotional labor, work through resentment, and interrupt the cycle before silence becomes permanent.
I didn’t truly understand what secure connection felt like until I met my husband, even though when conflict hits, he can withdraw, while I have a tendency to pursue. I also didn’t understand what it was like to be a pursuer and to feel heard and taken seriously by a withdrawer. He has my back, even if talking about the hard stuff isn’t natural for him like it is for me. He often reminds me, “I am not a therapist.” It’s helped us to be able to understand and name our cycle so that when we get stuck in it, we have a roadmap on how to navigate it and come back together.
That doesn’t mean it’s perfect or easy. But my husband is willing to play the game of life with me. To stay in it. To understand that relationships aren’t something you get right once and coast on forever, but something you choose and tend to again and again, even when it’s hard.
Healthy relationships aren’t defined by the absence of conflict. They’re defined by two people who are willing to stay emotionally present, name their part in the negative cycle and take responsibility, and find each other again when things feel strained.
Healthy love, in my opinion, is not easy all the time. It takes work, commitment and effort. Finding someone who will do the work with you is necessary.
Melissa Divaris Thompson is a licensed marriage and family therapist and owner of Embracing Joy Marriage and Family Therapy, a group psychotherapy practice in New York City.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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