It's Thursday night, on a quiet terrace in Dubai Marina, and the evening has been easy in a way that evenings rarely are.
Three months in. They laugh at the right things. They remembered the name of your manager and the meeting you were dreading. Then, over the last of the coffee, they say it, lightly, the way people say important things: "My sister's in town next weekend. I'd love you to meet her."
Something in you goes still.
You smile. You say "sounds nice". And on the drive home you notice you're already composing reasons. They talk a bit too much about their family. They want things to move faster than you do. Maybe you're not that compatible after all. By Sunday you haven't replied to two messages, you're "just really busy this week", and a part of you feels relieved, while another part, quieter, watches the whole thing happen again and wonders why.
You don't want to be alone. You want exactly what was on that terrace. So why does closeness make you leave?
Why do I push people away when they get close?
Because, somewhere early, getting close wasn't safe. Being seen led to being hurt, controlled, disappointed or left, and a rule formed to protect you: don't let anyone that near. The rule still fires when someone gets close. It isn't coldness. It's an old guard doing its job.
And it isn't a verdict on whether you can love. It's a rule. Rules were learned, and what was learned can come off.
Where does the urge to pull away come from?
From a time when closeness had a price.
For some people it was a parent who was warm one day and gone the next, so letting someone in meant bracing for the moment they left. For others, closeness meant being watched, managed or needed too much: a parent who leaned on a child for comfort, or a house where every feeling you showed was used later. For some it was simply that sharing what you felt got you laughed at, ignored or told to stop. Nothing dramatic has to have happened. A child only has to learn, often enough, that being fully seen goes badly.
A child in that position draws a conclusion that's brilliant for a child: if I keep a little distance, I can't be hurt as badly. Stay friendly. Stay useful. Stay a step back.
That conclusion kept you safe. It's why I'd call the pushing loyal. It isn't sabotage. It's the same protection that worked when you were small, still working, in a life that no longer needs it.
If you're in the middle of this right now and would rather talk it through with a person, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers a free 20 to 40 minute mentoring session on Zoom. Or read on.
What does pushing people away look like?
It rarely looks like pushing. It usually looks reasonable.
It looks like finding a flaw at exactly the moment things get good. Like getting very busy after a lovely weekend. Like picking a small fight before a trip together, or going quiet and calling it needing space. Like being warm and generous with everyone at a distance, the colleague, the friend you see twice a year, and cool with the one person who's actually close. Like choosing people who are already halfway out of the door, because they'll never get near enough to set off the alarm.
Each of these has a good story attached. That's what makes the pattern so hard to see from inside. You're not pushing anyone away. You're just being realistic.
It's the mirror image of fear of abandonment. That fear grips when someone pulls back. This rule pulls back when someone comes close. Some people carry both, and swing between them with the same person, which I've written about in childhood patterns in adult relationships.
Why can't I just choose to let people in?
Because the rule doesn't live in your opinions. It lives in your body.
Think of a house that once caught fire. In the worst of it, someone set the thermostat to fight the heat, and it worked. The fire went out. But nobody touched the dial again. So now, years later, whenever any warmth comes into the house, a candle, a summer evening, someone sitting close on the sofa, the system reads it as fire and blasts cold air through every room. Nothing is broken. It's doing exactly what it was set to do.
That's what happens on the terrace. "I'd love you to meet my sister" is warmth. Your system reads it as heat, and the cold air arrives before you've had a single thought about it. By the time your mind catches up, you're already finding reasons.
Every pattern like this is a thought fused to a charge, a memory with weight the body put on it. The thought says "if they get close, I'll get hurt". The charge is the alarm that fires when someone does. Deciding to be more open argues with the thought. It never touches the charge, which is why you can promise yourself on Monday and pull away on Thursday.
When the charge comes off, something simple happens. The memory stays. The weight goes. You still know what happened back then. It just stops setting off the alarm, so closeness becomes ordinary again, the way it was always supposed to be. The freedom is in the removal.
You can probably see this pattern now that it's named. Seeing which rule is running it, and how deep it goes, is easier with someone steady across from you. That's what a free session with Sara is for: twenty to forty minutes on Zoom, just you and her, to look at what you've been carrying and what can be done about it.
What can I do the next time I feel myself pulling back?
Keep a distance log for the next two weeks. It takes two minutes each time, and it works best on the evening the urge arrives.
- Write down the moment of closeness, in one line. Not the reason you're pulling away. The moment just before. "They asked me to meet their sister."
- Write down your move. The exact thing you did or wanted to do. Went quiet. Found a flaw. Got busy. Made a joke. Picked a small fight.
- Write down what your body did, and where. Tight chest, heat in the face, a sinking in the stomach, a sudden flat feeling. One line.
- Ask: "If I let them closer, what's the worst thing that happens?" Take the first answer, however strange. "They'll see who I really am and leave." "I'll disappear." "They'll need too much."
- Ask: "How old does that answer feel?" Don't calculate. Write the first number that comes.
- Send one small true sentence instead of the move. For example: "I've gone quiet this week. It's not about you. Closeness is something I'm working on." Only send it if it feels safe to do so.
After two weeks, read the log back in one sitting. You'll notice the moments are different, and the move is almost always the same. That sameness is the rule. It also shows you, plainly, that the danger it's guarding against belongs to a much younger you.
Is something wrong with me?
No.
If you push people away, you may have spent years being told you're cold, difficult or commitment-shy, and quietly believing it. But the person who leaves on Sunday is the same person who was moved on Thursday. Both are you. One of you is running an old rule.
You are not broken. You are buried.
Underneath the rule is someone who could let people in without bracing, the person you were before you learned that closeness had a price. That person didn't go anywhere.
A note before we go on. Pushing people away can sit alongside things that need clinical care. If yours comes with low mood, panic, isolation you can't climb out of, or thoughts of harming yourself, please see a doctor or a mental health professional, and if you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. If you're already working with one, keep going. Nothing here replaces that. Their work has its place, and this works on a different layer.
What would it take for closeness to stop feeling dangerous?
Not forcing yourself to stay, and not finding a partner patient enough to wait forever. Whatever finally changes this has to do three things.
- It has to find the rule itself, not just the behaviour. The excuses change every time. The rule behind them doesn't, and until it's named, you'll keep calling it realism.
- It has to take the charge off, not argue with it. The cold air comes on faster than reason, so reasoning with it was always going to lose.
- It has to happen with someone steady across from you. The rule was learned when closeness went badly. It comes off more easily in the company of a person who isn't put off by it, and doesn't need anything from you.
In my experience, when that charge comes off, people describe something quite ordinary, and it means the world to them. Someone says "I'd love you to meet my sister", and they just feel glad. No cold air. No reasons. That's the unbecoming. What follows is the remembering: closeness from the person you were before the rule.
Changes like that look small from the outside and rarely feel small from the inside. In Talya Whitaker's words, about her own life: "There are no words for how this has changed my life, changed every cell of my being." There are more stories like that one on our stories page.
If you saw yourself on that terrace, you don't have to work it out alone. Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers a free 20 to 40 minute mentoring session on Zoom. Just you and her. She'll listen, help you see what you're carrying and what can be done about it, and if we're not the right fit for you, she'll say so.
Book your free mentoring session with Sara
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. The next time someone gets close, you'll probably feel the cold air before you've decided anything, and the reasons will follow. Before that evening comes, give yourself twenty to forty minutes to find out where it's coming from. Book your session with Sara.