The 3 Most Common Relationship Patterns and How to Break Them

Stuck in conflict or feeling distant? Here's how you can break free.

Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Key points

• Destructive relationship patterns include pursue/withdraw, withdraw/withdraw, and fight/fight.
• If not addressed, these patterns can snowball out of control due to destructive feedback loops.
• Break the cycle by sharing your feelings and needs gently and clearly to feel connected and stop fighting.

What do lions, tigers, bears, and a sink full of dishes have in common?

Fight, flight, or freeze: our stress system’s responses to threat. When being chased by a lion, we will either run (flight), take our shot at defending ourselves (fight), or, if our nervous system determines the predator too dangerous, play dead (freeze).

We don’t see many lions in our daily lives, but the nervous system is still very concerned with our survival, and our nervous systems believe that our relationships are life or death. We’ve evolved to be social creatures because being a part of a tribe ensured our survival — access to others who cared about and looked out for us kept us alive (and reproducing), while being cast out of the pack was a sure way not to see your next meal. Closeness and connection are safe, distance and isolation are dangerous.

It's no wonder that when our nervous systems perceive a threat to our connection with others, we experience fight/flight/freeze responses. And a sink full of dishes can register within the nervous system as a signal that our feelings aren't being prioritized by our partner, causing a panic akin to a threat to survival, “No one has my back; I’m vulnerable to danger. I’m not safe.”

Because of this hard-wired system, there are three common types of destructive patterns that relationships fall into.

1. Pursue/Withdraw

When stuck in a pursue/withdraw pattern, one partner criticizes or demands (fight responses), whereas the other partner shuts down, hides, or appeases (flight/freeze responses). The pursuing partner longs for closeness and to feel loved and cared about, but expresses these feelings in ways that send the message, “You aren’t loving me right!” This causes the withdrawing partner to feel inadequate, which results in shutting down; they feel shame that makes them want to hide. When their partner withdraws, the pursuing partner feels even more alone and becomes more critical or demanding; thus, the cycle becomes more and more entrenched.

2. Withdraw/Withdraw

In a pattern of mutual withdrawal, both partners tend to avoid tough conversations (flight/freeze responses), leaving both partners with unmet needs in the relationship. Rather than fighting, these partners tend to have a sense that something is missing — emotional intimacy and closeness. They feel more like roommates than partners. Underneath withdrawing behavior is a fear of sharing feelings and asking others for needs to be met. A withdraw/withdraw pattern creates loneliness in a relationship. This becomes a part of the cycle, because the more alone that partners feel, the more they will withdraw into themselves and away from the relationship; creating a destructive positive feedback loop if left unchecked.

3. Pursue/Pursue (aka Fight/Fight)

When both partners get their dukes out, the fight/fight cycle is marked by high levels of anger, demandingness, or criticism from both partners. Most often, this pattern emerges from a pursue/withdraw pattern in which the withdrawer has started to “bite back” rather than shut down. Sick and tired of being steamrolled, the withdrawing partner starts to stand up for themselves against the pursuer’s criticism or demands, often getting defensive. This does not lead to any lasting positive change, however, since feelings and needs are still not being clearly expressed or responded to by either partner.

How to Break Your Pattern

No matter if you find yourself in a relationship with too much conflict or not enough emotional intimacy, the solution to breaking out of your pattern is to:

1. First, work to understand the pattern in which you’re caught. Dive down to the root of your “action tendency” — what you do when your needs aren’t met.

Do you tend to “fight” — get louder, angrier, more demanding, more critical? If so, pause to look inside and ask yourself what you need from your partner when you do these things. Likely, you will find that at the core you want more closeness and connection with your partner. Recognize that when you become more angry, demanding, or critical, your partner is more likely to feel "not good enough" and thus shut down or turn away (or fight back).

Or, do you tend to “flight or freeze” — turn away from the relationship, shutting down or avoiding your partner and tough conversations? If this is you, look inward at what feelings are underneath, causing you to pull away. You may notice a fear of being inadequate or "not good enough" in some way. What you need is to feel fully accepted for who you are and know that being loved is not conditional or based on your “performance”. It’s important to acknowledge that when you withdraw from the relationship, your partner is likely to feel more alone and long for closeness with you, which may show up as them demanding your attention (or pulling away themselves).

2. How can you express your needs in a more authentic, vulnerable, direct way that is true to yourself and makes your needs more clear for your partner?

If you tend to be the pursuer, this might sound like, “I know I’ve been getting on you a lot about the dishes lately. What I think I’m really needing is to know that you care about me and consider how I might feel. If you’d be able to stay on top of the cleaning, it would make me feel loved.”

If you’re the one who tends to withdraw, practice saying something like, “I’ve been reflecting on how I've been shutting down in our conversations when you bring up the dishes in the sink. I think it’s because when you bring it up I feel inadequate as a partner, and I freeze. Would you be able to bring it up in a more gentle way that makes it easier for me to feel capable?”

Cycles feed cycles. The worse a pattern becomes, the more it fuels the unmet needs that lead to fight, flight, or freeze, thus strengthening the destructive pattern. The pattern won’t break itself; the cold hard truth is that if you don’t take intentional action, it will become more entrenched over time.

Don’t let this happen. The good news is that when you learn to get clear on your underlying feelings and unmet needs, along with sharing gently and clearly, you will break the cycle and experience the close, connected, and life-enhancing relationship you have been longing for. It’s time to fight the pattern, not fight your partner.