Why do I push my partner away even though I love them?

By Orit Krug  |  July 1st, 2020

Confession: I used to push my partner away ALL the time and it felt horrible.

I knew I wanted to keep him for life, but there was an uncontrollable force inside of me that wouldn’t stop. It was only after I sent ANOTHER angry text that I was filled with deep regret yet again.

“Why can’t I control myself?” 

“Why can’t I stop?”

I asked myself these questions over and over. 

If you’re going through a similar experience, I know how it feels… and it sucks. 

I also know how it feels NOW to fully let in my partner’s love without pushing him away. 

Today, I want to share with you how you can also break this self-sabotaging pattern and get ALL the love you deserve, even if you’ve been trying to break this pattern for years.

You push your partner away because it’s how you learned to survive.

You experienced such deep hurt and abandonment in the past. Now, your nervous system doesn’t feel safe to let anyone close to you, including your partner.

This is NOT your fault.

When we have old trauma stored in our bodies, we become wired to protect and defend against anything that might risk hurting us again. This instinct is primal and usually cannot be changed through “positive self-talk,” affirmations, or other cognitive-based therapies / techniques. 

Whether your partner lovingly embraces you or gives you frustrated look, red sirens immediately go off in your body that makes you impulsively push them away.

In your mind, you know that your current relationship is nothing like the ones from the past, but the trauma stored in your body wins every time and reacts before you can even THINK about behaving differently.

Rewire your survival response to let in your partner’s love.

You may have tried to convince your mind to behave differently the next time you get triggered. Maybe you’ve spent hours in couples therapy talking about how you’ll approach each other differently the next time. But it hasn’t worked (enough).

Many people with past trauma assume that they’re broken or “damaged goods” because they can’t break this pattern, even after years of professional support. But that’s bulllshhhh*t. Giving up on yourself is the easy way out. There IS a way through when you heal with neuroscience-backed somatic therapy.

Because you’re currently hardwired to reject your partner, you must rewire your nervous system in order to stop pushing them away. Rewiring allows you to expand your Window of Tolerance, which gives you the ability to be in command of your body’s responses and CHOOSE different behaviors.

Once you release the trauma that’s driving these unhealthy patterns, and let go of the old story that love and intimacy aren’t safe, you’ll be able to fully let in your partner’s love without sabotaging the relationship. 

Determine if you’re capable of rewiring your nervous system.

You may have told yourself a thousand times that there’s something specifically wrong with YOU, and that’s why you can’t heal. Scientifically speaking – that’s not how this works.

Since you’re a human being with a nervous system (you’re human and not a bot, right?!), you are fully capable of rewiring and releasing old trauma.

You are NOT broken, nor do you have a special breed of resistance to healing.

My client Corrie used to have thoughts of leaving her husband every single day. She’d been through decades of talk therapy and alternative approaches trying to resolve this because she knew this was her trauma sabotaging her ability to stay in her relationship.

She consistently came home from work and flipped out at her husband and daughter. Her constant baseline was snappy and frustrated.

When she didn’t blame this on herself for being “broken,” she blamed it on the relationship.

She felt intense urges to run away, which was her Flight response hijacking her body and emotions. The threat of being in her relationship felt so real, like stumbling upon a bear on a hike. She truly felt she needed to escape FAST to save her life.

While she spent all those years feeling like damaged goods, she didn’t realize how much her nervous system controlled & intensified her fear of being in her marriage.

But once Corrie released the trauma through her BODY, she said all of her relationship doubts & anxiety dissipated. She finally felt calm and rooted, not only in her relationship, but inside her body as well.

Corrie went from thinking she was in the wrong relationship DAILY to becoming so much closer with her husband and daughter. 

For the first time, she enjoyed her life with her family and felt excited about their future together.

She had such a ripple effect of transformation not only within her marriage but also in her career.

Corrie almost pushed away her partner. She almost followed her body’s primal urges to leave, which would’ve broken apart her family.

All because of false beliefs due to old trauma that made her feel unsafe in even a healthy and supportive relationship.

And, really, she almost gave up on herself, believing the lies that she was incapable of healing. But she was always capable… and so are you.

You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.