On Attachment

#188: When Your Relationship Feels Stuck (& What to Do About It)

• Stephanie Rigg • Season 1 • Episode 188

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Feeling stuck in your relationship? Like things are off, disconnected, or just… heavy? You're not alone. Relationship ruts are common — and they're often more about what's bleeding into the relationship (stress, burnout, life overload) than about the relationship itself.

For those in anxious-avoidant dynamics, these ruts can feel especially charged. The anxious partner often wants to fix it, while the avoidant may feel overwhelmed or pressured — leading to even more distance.

In this episode, I share 3 powerful shifts to help you move out of a rut and back into connection:

  • Shift your focus to what is working — Appreciation and warmth go further than criticism.
  • Reconnect through something light — Play, fun, and novelty can do what words sometimes can’t.
  • Tend to your own world — Reclaim your centre so the relationship doesn’t carry the full weight of your wellbeing.

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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about how to shift out of a relationship rut. So if you've been in a period in your relationship where things are feeling tense or strained, where you feel disconnected, maybe you're fighting more than usual. things are just feeling off and you feel that all of your attempts at solving that, at reestablishing connection, at talking about whatever's going on, it's all falling flat and maybe it's actually making things worse rather than better. And I think that when we find ourselves in that, whether it's a short term rut or a really, really long term one, we can feel really powerless. We can feel at a loss on how to shift things. And oftentimes even though we're using all of our tools and we're giving so much energy and attention to the relationship, nothing seems to be moving the dial. And that can be really frustrating and confusing and can leave us doubting the relationship overall feeling like, is it always gonna be like this? Am I always gonna feel as lonely as I do right now? Because I think when we're in a relationship rut, we typically feel really lonely because we've turned our backs on each other and that disconnection is really, really challenging. So I'm gonna be sharing some thoughts today on how you can navigate that if that's something that you're in right now. Or maybe it's just something you've been in before and you'd like to reflect on what you might have done differently so that the next time you come up against this in the future, you're better prepared. And I think it's important to name that. We'll all go through periods of disconnection in relationships, in long-term relationships, expecting that it will be smooth sailing. Connection and ease 100% of the time is totally unrealistic. So I think that it is something that's going to affect all of us sooner or later. And again, having realistic expectations around that and having different ways of looking at it can really help us to approach it in the best way possible. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Before I dive into that, just to remind, I know I've been sharing about this the past few weeks, but for anyone who hasn't yet heard me talk about it or signed up for my new free training, how to Heal Anxious Attachment and finally Feel Secure in Life and Love, I would love for you to check it out it is a 75 minute training. It's totally free. And it's all about the process for healing anxious attachment. So I share the methodology that I've taught to thousands of people I share some common blocks to healing. So many anxiously attached. People work so hard at trying to fix themselves, right? And read all the books, and listen to all the podcasts and do all of the things, and still feel this sense of. Brokenness, like I'm trying so hard and nothing's working. And I think that can be really demoralizing and can really bruise our confidence around our ability to, to heal and grow. So I speak to that and some reasons why you might be stuck despite all the work you've been doing. And I also speak to a really common. Question, which is, how do I know if my dissatisfaction or the struggles that I'm coming up against in my relationship, how do I know if these things are just my anxious attachment or, just a product of my anxiety or whether anyone would take issue with these things. So like, is the problem with my partner and the way they're behaving or my perception of the way they're behaving? And I speak to some specific signs of this is objectively not great behavior while also talking about how to build your own self-trust and discernment so that you don't have to outsource that judgment so much of the time. So all of that is included in this free training. As I said, we'd love for you to register. I think we've had a couple of thousand people go through it now and it's gotten some really, really beautiful feedback. The link to that is in the show notes. You can also head straight to my website, stephanie rig.com or you can come find me on Instagram and it's all linked there as well. Okay, so let's talk about this, how to shift out of our relationship rut. Now, as I said in the introduction, relationship ruts are really, really normal. And so much of the time. Our relationship will reflect all of the other stuff that's going on in life. It will be a sponge for stresses that we're experiencing with work or other relationships, maybe, broader family dynamics or kids or, you know, so many other things that, our relationship becomes the container for so much of our emotional landscape. And so if we are feeling. Totally strung out and overwhelmed and way beyond our capacity overextended, then the way we're showing up to our relationship is probably going to reflect that and depending on whether you are more anxious or more avoidant in your attachment patterns. The way that you show up to a relationship in times of stress is going to be different. So for someone who's more anxious in times of stress, you're probably going to require more connection and you're gonna really lean on your relationship to provide relief from all of that stress. Whereas if you're more avoidant during times of stress, you're likely to turn inward and pull away from a relationship. Because a relationship for a lot of avoidant people can take energy from them rather than give them energy so recognizing that it might not be primarily about the relationship it might just be a reflection of what else is going on, what are the broader conditions surrounding our relationship and our lives at the moment that might be then bleeding into the way we're showing up to and feeling about the relationship. Now I think where it can get tricky is what we make that mean. So again, if you're more anxious and your partner is experiencing stress and that's leading them to pull away or withdraw whatever, then the meaning that you apply to that is often catastrophic. We make that wrong and we experience it as being very threatening to our sense of safety, because for us, connection equals safety and so disconnection or a change in the temperature of connection or a feeling that we can't really reach our partner, that there's stuff that they're holding back. All of that registers is really alarming to our system, and that's really hard. And so we might then. Push and try and get closer and, try and pull them back from this place of, distance that they're occupying. And often that will be received by them as unwelcome pressure or, you trying to control or feeling judged or all of these other things that can lead them further into their withdrawal. And so whether the dynamics in the relationship are arising from external stresses or stresses within the relationship. And I think that is another source of relationship rut is feeling like there are unmet needs within the relationship, and the focus of the relationship becomes about what's wrong. Again, this is a very common pattern in anxious avoidant dynamics where the anxious partner's preoccupation with fixing what is wrong in the relationship, which tends to be a very proactive strategy of we need to make sure that everything is perfect and that there's no little cracks at all because all of that feels like a precursor to the relationship unraveling, and that feels so terrifying to me. So we've gotta really stay on top of all the things that are wrong and unsatisfactory, right? But what that creates is. A relational space where we are talking about all of the things that aren't working. A lot of the time, we're giving so much airtime to that, that for someone with more avoidant patterns, it tends to land as really demoralizing. And the thing you'll hear over and over again from people with avoidant patterns is you are always upset about something. What's the point? Like no matter what I do or don't do, or say or don't say. There's always something and that feels really exhausting and really uninspiring and really unmotivating. And I think that can lead us into these relationship ruts and keep us there because when we're in a relationship rut, guess what? Anxiously attached people wanna solve it. And so want to keep talking about the fact that we're in a relationship rut. And again, for someone with more avoidant patterns who might have the belief, which, we can have a different conversation about whether this is a helpful or realistic belief, but we'll often have the belief that like relationships shouldn't be this hard. If it's this much work all the time, then like maybe this just isn't the right relationship. Your respective capacities for working on a relationship are wildly different if one of you is anxious and one is avoidant. So recognizing that you are coming at that from different places and when you're in that place of disconnection that your idea of how to solve that is wildly different and the anxious partner's gonna want to go head on and like, let's sit down on the couch and talk about it again, even though we've talked about it and not gotten anywhere. Let's just keep going. Because at least when we're addressing it, it feels like we're doing something about it. And anxious partners will always favor like action and mobilization on an issue rather than turning away from it, which is a more avoidant response. So I. What do we do with all of that? If you're listening and you're like, yes, being there, or maybe I'm there at the moment, this feels very familiar. And I think what can often be challenging is even as we're doing it, particularly as the more anxious partner, like you probably know, it's not effective, right? That you're not really making any headway with that strategy of just continuing to push in the face of someone's disengagement and someone's pulling away and yet. The alternative of Do nothing feels impossible because that feels like you're just allowing things to go from bad to worse and worse to even worse. And is it always gonna be this bad? Are we just gonna ride this wave into disconnection forever and ever? That feels intolerable as an option. And so we keep doing the thing that isn't working, which is pushing. So I guess what I want to offer to you is a different approach, which is not just follow my instincts to keep pushing and keep talking about the relationship and keep having these long, drawn out conversations about all the things that are wrong and all of the ways that my needs are going unmet. And also isn't just do nothing and ignore the problem and sweep it under the rug because obviously neither of those things are effective. I think we, again, we know this, we know this from experience, that neither of those things solve the underlying problem. So a couple of things that I wanna suggest, and these are really, I hope, actionable and relatively straightforward. One is reorient your focus to what is good and working and what you appreciate and are grateful for about your partner, about the relationship. Create a relational environment that is positive. Now you might have some resistance to that. You might be like how can I just ignore all of the ways that they're blah, blah, blah, not meeting my needs and all of the things that are unsatisfactory. Isn't that just, I just want you to pause on that and trust me when I say that being generous with your appreciation and consciously orienting yourself away from all of that negative stuff towards the positive, you are not gonna lose anything by doing that. Okay. Reassure your anxious parts that don't wanna let go of the problem for fear that it's just gonna get bigger. That the thing that we've been trying hasn't been working, so can we just try this different thing? Because the reality is that blame and shame and negativity is not inspiring. It does not inspire change in the vast majority of people. And even though we think like we just have to keep explaining ourselves to our partner until they finally get it and magically start doing things differently, actually, people tend to be inspired and particularly avoidant people tend to be inspired by feeling like they're doing a good job. That brings people to the table far more than being told like, you are disappointing me again and you're not meeting my needs. Think about if you were working a job and your boss sat you down once a week to tell you all of the things that you were still doing wrong, despite your best efforts, or that all of the new problems that you didn't realize were there with the way that you were performing your role and not really giving much airtime to all of the things that you do do and all of the ways that you are reliable or whatever. You get the point, right? Your job satisfaction would be really, really low and you'd maybe be thinking about, should I just get a different job?'cause this I feel defeated and like I'm just not being recognized here. Whereas if you had a boss who was really encouraging and who did see and recognize and voice appreciation for your efforts and all of the things that you do well, like that's a job that you want to show up to and continue to work hard at because it feels like a worthy investment of your time. I want you to apply that same sort of framework to your relationship. And it sounds kind of obvious when we take it out of that context and, and put it into one that we're maybe more familiar with around job performance. But often a lot of us by default do just focus on everything that's wrong and disappointing and frustrating, and we expect our partner to be encouraged or inspired by that. So try and really spend, even if it's just for the next two weeks, run a little experiment where I'm not gonna focus on the negatives. I'm not gonna focus on what's wrong or what's missing. I'm just going to be really, really generous with my warmth, my kindness, my gratitude, my appreciation my recognition of effort my recognition of all the things my partner does. Just run the experiment and see what happens. You might be really surprised at the positive ripple effect that that has in totally shifting the heavy negative tone that your relationship is characterized by at the moment. Okay. My next piece of advice is find ways to connect that are not emotionally dense and heavy. So if you've been doing a lot of sitting down and having long drawn out conversations for three hours about unmet needs, and you both end up coming out of those conversations feeling defeated and unsatisfied'cause you didn't get what you wanted out of it and you don't actually feel. That encouraged or you maybe don't believe that anything's gonna change and it all feels like a big waste of time and energy it can be really, really helpful to spend time together in collaboration in fun, in play, in lightness, in novelty. So maybe you decide to shake things up and plan to go for a hike or something next weekend, if that's not something you might usually do, or you might find that there's a festival on that you could go to or a cooking class that you could do together, or something out of the ordinary that feels light and fun and connective that can breathe some life into the relationship and be a bit of a reprieve from all of the seriousness and the heaviness. It's not about turning away from or ignoring or dismissing or sweeping under the rug all of the things that might need your attention. But again, like those things aren't going anywhere, right? Our anxious parts want to just keep bringing those things back to center stage for fear that they're gonna go ignored. But I think we need to remind ourselves zoom out. It's okay. We can afford to have some fun. Okay. We don't need to be talking about the serious stuff 100% of the time. How might we breathe? Some different energy into the relational space just so we can see what happens. Because I think oftentimes when we do that, we can remind ourselves like, oh yeah, I love this person. We do have a beautiful relationship. We do work well together as a team. We do have fun together. And being reminded of that, not just in theory, but through experience, can be a really positive way to shift out of a rut if that's where you've been stuck. And the third piece of advice that I wanna give you if you're in this space and this is helpful for everyone, but particularly if you feel like those first two options require a level of cooperation from your partner that you're not sure you're gonna get. So if things are really feeling very strained and maybe you are hardly talking to your partner or they're really blocking any attempts at connection any suggestions you might have on let's go do this fun thing. And they're not really interested at all. And that's leaving you feeling a bit helpless, like your hands are tired. Then I think always good advice is focus on yourself. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, you'd know that I always come back to this am I focusing on my own wellbeing, my own vitality, my own sense of fulfillment? All of those things can fall by the wayside when we are feeling stressed in our relationship and we can really just get so laser focused on. Again, trying to fix what's broken. Trying to get our partner to come to the table, trying to get them to show up differently so that we feel better and we really lose sight of our agency and the things that we do have control over. And so if things are feeling really hard and really sticky in your relationship, they can be huge value in actually just shifting your focus away from the relationship altogether and going okay. Things have felt hard recently. What do I need? Not what do I need them to do so I feel better? What do I need that I can give to myself? How can I best support my wellbeing during this time? How can I really dial up my own inner relationship the way that I'm showing up so that I'm not getting bogged down in the heaviness that I'm feeling in my relationship at the moment? Now, of course, easier said than done. If things feel really hard, of course we're gonna be affected by that. But I think the more that we can consciously orient ourselves back to supporting our own wellbeing that can really shift our relationship because it differentiates us from our relationship. It creates this sense of separateness and we don't have this same experience of being enmeshed in the dynamics of our relationship. We can draw a line and say like, yes, that's happening over there. Yes, that's feeling hard, and I'm gonna take responsibility for my own happiness, my own wellbeing as much as I possibly can. So what is within my control here? How can I take steps towards supporting that for myself rather than just feeling powerless and kind of swirling around in that and going, everything sucks because my relationship feels hard at the moment. Okay. So I hope that that's been helpful. If you're in this at the moment, sending you so much love. I know that it's hard. As I said, it happens to all of us. It's still, from time to time Joel and I'll experience a season of disconnection and it feels hard and it feels sticky. And these are the same tools that I come back to time and time again. And inevitably the storm passes connection returns. And I think that the more we can keep a. Somewhat level head about it, rather than spiraling into those protective strategies that maybe actually do the opposite of what we're wanting. We employ those strategies to try and grab hold of the connection and force it, and it actually can drive it further away. So, zooming out, reminding ourselves of the big picture of our relationship, what we can control all of that tends to help us get through that period relatively unscathed, even if it is challenging. So sending you lots of love. Hope that's been helpful and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks guys,