Emotional withdrawal is a silent yet profoundly destabilising dynamic in intimate relationships. Whether it manifests as a tendency to disengage, ‘ghost,’ or stonewall, its impact is far-reaching. Unlike overt conflict, these behaviours operate subtly, leaving the affected person with shattered trust and a destabilised sense of connection, relational template, and even grasp on their own sense of reality. This first section explores the different forms of emotional withdrawal, their roots, the psychological toll they take, and the broader context of their harm - then exploring how to cope with being on the receiving end of this pattern of avoidance from a partner.
The dynamics of emotional withdrawal are not limited to a single pattern but exist on a spectrum. Here are three distancing tendencies, though the experience can manifest in a variety of ways depending on the individual, the situation, and the relational dynamics involved. These behaviours range from subtle distancing or emotional disengagement to more overt forms of silence and avoidance, each leaving its own distinct emotional impact on the partner.
General Withdrawal and Avoidance Tendencies in Relationship
• This refers to subtle distancing behaviours, such as avoiding conversations, reducing emotional engagement, or becoming less present in a relationship to the point of dissociation. Often, these tendencies are unconscious, stemming from a discomfort with vulnerability or conflict. While not always deliberate, chronic withdrawal can create confusion and insecurity, leaving the other partner feeling alone in the relationship.
Ghosting in Relationship
• Ghosting involves the sudden and complete cessation of communication without warning or explanation. This behaviour often leaves the person affected questioning their worth and reality. Ghosting destabilises the relational template, as it offers no closure or opportunity for resolution, and its abrupt nature magnifies the emotional fallout.
Stonewalling in Relationship
• Stonewalling is the most severe and damaging form of withdrawal. It occurs when one partner shuts down communication entirely, either during conflict or when emotionally distant. Stonewalling often acts as a means of control, as the silent partner holds all the power by refusing to engage. This leaves the other person in emotional limbo, amplifying feelings of helplessness and rejection. This behaviour is particularly destructive because it actively blocks resolution and creates long-term relational harm.
Roots of Emotional Withdrawal: Adaptations That Become Maladaptive
Many forms of emotional withdrawal stem from adaptations to early childhood environments. For example, children who grow up in emotionally or physically volatile, unpredictable, or neglectful households often learn to withdraw as a way of self-protection. Dissociation, shutting down, or retreating into silence may have been necessary for survival and the only means to gain control or avoid dangerous escalation. However, these adaptations often become maladaptive in adult relationships. While they may temporarily protect the withdrawing partner from discomfort, they erode trust and connection in the relationship.
As relationship expert Jillian Turecki suggests:
“If you are the one who has a habit of doing this, then recognise that it is a habit and it’s a coping mechanism. But I want you to challenge yourself to stay and sit with your discomfort and communicate every time you want to withdraw. Because to be in a relationship with someone who feels powerless is not going to be any fun for you, and it’s definitely not good for the relationship. The goal is to stay connected, and every time we withhold our love from the person we care about, all we do is weaken the connection, often to the point of no return.”
Compassion for the Avoidant: Acknowledging Attachment Styles Versus Abusive Tactics
It’s compassionate to recognise that the avoidant partner’s emotional disengagement may stem from an attachment style, which is not inherently abusive but rather a pattern learned from painful and likely unconscious past experiences. But whilst its roots may lie in unconscious adaptations, without accountability, these behaviours perpetuate harm.. and if emotional disengagement is used as a deliberate tactic for control or punishment, then, the person is consciously choosing to withhold communication as a means of punishment, revealing that they are not emotionally safe enough for intimate relationships.
It may be that you (if you are the more anxiously attached partner) have also experienced emotionally unsafe people in your childhood, and therefore have a pattern of attracting avoidant or emotionally unsafe partners into your experience (you can work on this in therapy). You need to know that if your partner cannot meet you halfway - whether because of their attachment style or a darker need for control - that you cannot have a healthy relationship with them. The best course of action in this case is to step away, do the work to heal your own wounds and grieve the loss of the relationship, and focus on attracting a healthy, emotionally safe partner in the future.
The Psychological Impact of Emotional Withdrawal and it's relationship to PTSD
Emotional withdrawal without communication in an intimate relationship causes profound harm, damaging the affected person’s relational template, leaving the affected partner left grappling with feelings of confusion, rejection, powerlessness, and emotional abandonment.
Research underscores the unique impact of interpersonal trauma, the severity of this kind of attachment dysfunction and therefore the responsibility to support our partner’s psychological health in intimate relationships. Statistics show:
• Women are 33% more likely to develop PTSD following interpersonal trauma than from non-relational incidents.
• For men, the likelihood of PTSD doubles after interpersonal trauma compared to other forms of trauma.
This heightened vulnerability stems from the intimacy of relationships, where defences are lowered and trust has been offered. When this intimate trust is betrayed through silence or disengagement, the impact can be deeply destabilising, particularly for those with a history of abandonment or trauma.
As Jillian Turecki puts it:
“The person who consistently pulls away in their relationship, the one who’s always emotionally distancing themselves whenever there is a problem, is the person who has all the control in the relationship. And so if you’ve been on the receiving end of this, it’s no wonder you feel powerless and out of control.”
This imbalance of power can leave the other partner questioning not only their worth but also their reality.
Recent neuroscience research provides insight into how external input - or its absence - can profoundly impact an individual’s perception of reality. In studies using fMRI scans, participants who were falsely told they had done something they hadn’t showed activation in brain areas associated with those actions or emotions, such as guilt or shame. This demonstrates that the brain processes external input - whether real, false, or absent - as though it were true, reinforcing emotional responses.
In the context of silence within an intimate relationship, this is especially relevant. For an anxiously attached individual, the absence of communication may be interpreted as a definitive message: “You don’t exist, and this relationship doesn’t exist.” The brain, in its effort to make sense of the silence, encodes it as a confirmation of rejection or non-existence. Without reassurance or explanation, this deeply destabilises their sense of reality, leaving them questioning whether the connection they believed in was ever real and profoundly undermining their self-worth.
Silence as a Weapon: The Broader Context
The harm caused by emotional withdrawal mirrors patterns of exclusion and isolation used in other contexts. Silence has long been recognised as a form of psychological control:
Bullying and Social Exclusion
• In schools, “sending someone to Coventry” is a form of bullying where a person is ostracised and ignored. This relational aggression isolates the target, leaving them disoriented and excluded from their social environment.
Solitary Confinement
• In extreme cases, such as solitary confinement, considered one of the most extreme forms of punishment, silence and isolation are used as methods of psychological torture. The UN recognises solitary confinement lasting longer than 15 days as a form of inhumane treatment because of its profound destabilising effects on mental health.
The comparison to these broader forms of isolation highlights the gravity of emotional withdrawal in relationships. It is not merely a passive act but an aggressive one, wielding silence as a means of control.
Emotional withdrawal is a deeply harmful dynamic that undermines connection, trust, and relational health. Whether it manifests as ghosting, stonewalling, or chronic distancing, it destabilises the affected partner’s sense of self and relational security.
In the next section, we will explore how to recover from the effects of emotional withdrawal and rebuild both your sense of self and your relational health.
Recovering from Relational Rupture: The Anxious Partner’s Perspective
When an extreme relational rupture occurs - where intimacy and connection abruptly vanish - the anxious partner who is seeking connection and proximity to repair the rupture and reconnect is often left in a state of profound shock. The landscape of their relationship, once steady and familiar, is suddenly altered without warning, leaving them disoriented and uncertain. This experience combines the destabilisation of shock with the emotional weight of complex grief, all in the silence of the relationship.
Shock: A Sudden Disruption of Reality
Gabor Maté describes trauma as an “invisible force that shapes our lives,” affecting how we perceive the world and ourselves. Relational ruptures, especially when a partner disappears or withdraws without explanation, disrupt this sense of reality. The anxious partner’s world, once grounded in connection, is violently upended.
Abrupt Absence: One day, the anxious partner may feel secure in their bond, sharing daily life and intimacy with their partner. The next, their partner vanishes emotionally or physically, leaving the anxious partner in shock and confusion. The anxious partner is left questioning the reality they once knew, feeling as though the very foundation of their life has been shaken.
The Emotional Experience: Complex Grief Meets Shock
The disappearance of a partner can feel like a death - unexpected, unacknowledged, and devastating. There is no closure, no formal recognition of the loss, yet the experience can be as painful as any physical death.
Complex Grief: Unresolved Loss: Unlike physical death, where there is a clear end, the disappearance of a partner creates grief without closure. The person is still alive, yet emotionally gone, leaving the anxious partner in an ambiguous, painful state of grief.
Lack of Closure: With no explanation or dialogue, the anxious partner is left unable to resolve their feelings. The questions, doubts, and uncertainties remain, preventing emotional healing.
Undermining of Reality: Questioning Perception: The silence and sudden disconnection can lead the anxious partner to question everything about the relationship. The sudden absence undermines their understanding of what was once real, making them doubt their own perceptions and worth. Isolation: The lack of recognition or external validation makes the anxious partner feel isolated in their grief. The pain they are experiencing is invisible to others, deepening their sense of loneliness and abandonment.
Self-Doubt: The absence of closure leaves the anxious partner reeling (perhaps by design). They replay past events, search for answers, often blaming themselves, even though the responsibility for the rupture lies with the partner who withdrew.
As poet and philosopher Yung Pueblo asks: Is the Relationship Even Real?
“Ask yourself: is the connection real if there is no space to be vulnerable?”
The emotional rupture of a continued silence is so profound that it can taint the entire history of the relationship, creating the belief that it’s impossible to return to what was once shared.
What should you do right now if your partner has disengaged completely from the relationship?
Reclaiming Your Power
As the more anxious partner (rather than the avoidant) in this dynamic, if you find yourself in this situation where your partner has emotionally withdrawn or disappeared, the first step is to be very clear about your boundaries and your intentions. It’s essential to stop engaging in the cycle of uncertainty. Once you have been clear about wanting to communicate, expressed your availability, and shown a willingness to meet your partner halfway, if they are still unable or unwilling to communicate, then this is information about them, that you need to acknowledge: This is not a person of integrity - they are not honouring you with truthful communication. They are not a mature enough person to engage with you respectfully. Ask yourself - do you want to be with a partner who is like this?
You will experience pain. Try and reframe this pain as an opportunity for your growth - because truly, it is. The pain comes from the deep rupture in something you trusted, and it is traumatic. Self-care now is crucial. When your partner has withdrawn, a natural response is reactivity - anger, hurt, confusion. But this is also a powerful opportunity to tend to the wounds that have likely been triggered from your own childhood.
If you’ve drawn an avoidant partner into your life, the likelihood is that you have experienced some form of abandonment in your history. This is where the real healing begins. In Hindu cultures, this might be understood as samskaras - the deep-rooted patterns of emotional pain that shape us. In modern psychology, we might refer to them as core wounds or attachment traumas. These wounds are not just memories; they are carried within us, ready to be triggered by similar relational dynamics.
This is an opportunity for you to step into the fire, to face the pain directly and transform. If you can take responsibility for your feelings and sit with the pain without projecting or blaming, you have the power to reclaim parts of yourself that have been lost. The goal is to reconnect with the truth of who you are and recognise that your partner’s inability to meet you is not a reflection of your worth, but of their own unresolved issues.
One of the hardest things about someone disengaging is that it can be difficult to process and to find closure. However, you can find closure for yourself in the absence of the other and, in fact, you must. You can become the safe other to yourself that you long to receive from your partner. You must now be the one who provides yourself with the care and compassion that you need right now. You can tend to the wounded child within you - the part of you that feels abandoned or unloved - and reassure that part of you that they are safe with you now.
The pain you feel, the sense of abandonment, is information. It points to deeper wounds rooted in your younger self that need to be healed. But here’s the reassuring truth: An adult cannot be abandoned - they can be left, yes, but only a child can be abandoned. So, if you feel abandoned, it is your inner child that has been triggered. This is not a small thing. This requires tenderness and care, bringing that child part of you back to a place of safety. Your inner child has been triggered and overwhelmed the whole of you - though you can get yourself back onto safe ground and become the safe other to yourself, essentially reparenting the overwhelmed child part that has been triggered within you.
This is big inner child healing work. And when we reframe this kind of relational trauma as something that can transform us, it becomes a noble adversary, a dark angel that shows us exactly where we need to heal. The rupture is the very thing that shows us where we’ve been disempowered, and through this pain, we can reclaim our own power. This is radical work, and it is the only way to heal the wounds that might otherwise be carried forward into future relationships.
So, your focus must now shift inward. Instead of continuing to ask for validation or connection from the partner who has disappeared, you need to reclaim the power you’ve given them. Their emotional withdrawal has quietly undermined you in a very insidious and violent way. The dynamic has eroded your sovereignty, and it’s time to take that back.
This is an opportunity to regain control over your own experience. You must recognise that your pain, rather than being something to be fixed externally, is the key to your healing. You can use the pain to heal your history and move toward the future. This process will be transformative. Keep your heart open, feel the pain fully, and allow it to fuel your healing.
If you’re ready to do the deep work required to heal, and you want someone to walk with you on that path, I’m here to support you. Book a Session with me and let's begin..
