#189: Why Anxiously Attached People Struggle with Jealousy
Jealousy is one of the most common—and most shamed—experiences for people with anxious attachment. In this episode, we’re exploring where jealousy really comes from, how it manifests in relationships, and why it makes so much sense through the lens of self-worth and attachment wounding.
For those with anxious attachment, jealousy tends to hit differently. It’s not just a fleeting emotion—it can feel all-consuming. And often, we carry a lot of shame about it. We judge ourselves for being “crazy” or “needy,” bury the feeling, and pretend everything is fine, while quietly spiralling inside. But when we approach jealousy with curiosity instead of criticism, we can start to understand what it’s really trying to show us.
The Roots of Jealousy in Anxious Attachment
At the core of anxious attachment lies a fear that we’re not enough. Not good enough, not attractive enough, not lovable enough. And if we believe that, it’s easy to imagine that someone “better” might come along and take our place.
So we stay hyper-alert. We scan our environment for threats. We compare ourselves to others—exes, colleagues, strangers on social media. We try to control the narrative, to protect what feels fragile. We might find ourselves engaging in behaviours we’re not proud of—stalking an ex online, obsessively seeking reassurance, snooping through a partner’s phone. And then we feel even worse about ourselves, reinforcing that deep-seated belief: “Something must be wrong with me.”
This kind of jealousy isn’t always about a specific person or threat. Sometimes it’s more subtle. We might feel jealous of our partner’s time, their work, their friends—anything that feels like it pulls them away from us. And underneath that? A longing to feel like a priority. A longing to feel chosen.
When Jealousy Is a Signal (Not a Symptom)
Of course, not all jealousy is irrational. Sometimes, there are valid concerns — boundary crossings, breaches of trust, emotional unavailability. But in this context, I’m speaking to the kind of jealousy that persists even in the absence of concrete red flags. The kind that has followed you from one relationship to the next. The kind that seems more rooted in your own self-worth than your partner’s behaviour.
When we start to see jealousy as a signal — not a character flaw — we can begin to respond to it more compassionately. What is this feeling trying to show me? What part of me is scared, hurting, or longing for something I haven’t yet learned to give myself?
The Shame Spiral
Jealousy is one of those emotions we’re culturally conditioned to suppress. It’s labelled as immature, controlling, embarrassing. So when it shows up, we often respond with shame. But shame doesn’t resolve jealousy—it magnifies it.
And when we add shame to an already vulnerable emotional cocktail of fear, insecurity, and comparison, we tend to act in ways that don’t align with our values. We might get clingy, controlling, or shut down. Then we beat ourselves up for being “too much,” which only reinforces the belief that we’re not enough.
It’s a cycle. But it’s not one you’re doomed to repeat forever.
The Role of Self-Worth
If there’s one thing I’ve learned — both personally and from working with thousands of people on healing anxious attachment — it’s this: so many of our relational struggles trace back to self-worth.
When we don’t believe we’re inherently worthy, we try to earn love. We chase it. We monitor it. We compare ourselves to anyone who might seem more worthy of it. But when we build genuine self-worth, jealousy starts to lose its grip. We no longer feel as threatened by someone else’s success, beauty, or charm. We don’t panic when our partner is late to text back or wants a night out with friends.
That doesn’t mean we never feel a twinge of jealousy — it just doesn’t hijack our nervous system. We’re able to stay grounded, get curious, and respond rather than react.
Moving Through Jealousy With Compassion
If this resonates, please know there’s nothing wrong with you. Jealousy is human. It doesn’t make you broken or unlovable. But it can be an invitation—to strengthen your inner foundation, to get to know your triggers, and to care for the parts of you that feel scared and small.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
When you notice feelings of jealousy arising in your relationship (or even outside of a relationship), what thoughts and beliefs tend to come up for you? Do you see any patterns in how you respond to these emotions?
How do you typically relate to your own experience of jealousy or envy? Is your first instinct to judge yourself, or can you approach these feelings with curiosity and compassion?
Reflect on a recent situation where you felt jealous—what do you believe was underneath that emotion? Was it a fear of being replaced, a sense of low self-worth, or something else entirely?
Do you catch yourself comparing yourself to others—friends, ex-partners, social media connections, or even strangers? What do you notice about how these comparisons impact your sense of self-worth?
In your relationships, do you ever feel like you're not a priority? How do you respond to that feeling, and what stories do you tell yourself about what it means?
When jealousy shows up, are you more likely to engage in behaviours like seeking reassurance, social media “stalking”, or over-analysing interactions? What needs do you think these behaviours are trying to meet?
Looking back, can you identify any longstanding core beliefs (for example, “I’m not good enough” or “Love can be taken away at any moment”) that might be driving your experience of jealousy?
How do you tend to handle situations where your jealousy feels overwhelming? Are there self-soothing strategies (or self-shaming habits) you notice yourself relying on?
What would it look like to address the root causes of jealousy through building self-worth, rather than trying to “fix” the jealousy itself?
How do you feel about the idea that, when you genuinely like and accept yourself, jealousy and comparison might naturally soften? What would need to shift internally for you to reach that place?
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:32]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about jealousy and in particular, why anxiously attached people struggle so much with jealousy. Now, if you are someone with anxious attachment patterns, you are probably very intimate with this struggle. It is really something that I'm answering questions on several times a week, every week from students in my healing anxious attachment course. It feels like a constant companion for a lot of us with anxious attachment patterns. And as we're going to talk about today, that makes a whole heap of sense because I think looking at the core wounds and beliefs of anxious attachment, jealousy emerges as a very, very natural consequence of feeling like we are not good enough, feeling like love can be taken away at any moment, comparison, unworthiness, fear of rejection. I think that all of those different expressions of our insecurity can often converge to create jealousy, and that jealousy can be really all consuming. I say that as someone who used to really, really struggle with jealousy. It used to be almost crippling for me, and yet it was something that I felt so much shame around that I buried it.
[00:01:44]:
No one would have known that I was wildly jealous. It's not something that I necessarily externalized and voiced to my partners. It was just something that I carried silently and yet it was so all consuming. I would engage in all of the behaviors that we'll talk about a little more in today's episode, the social media stalking, the obsessive comparison with other women, stuff like that was just, like, par for the course for me. It was a daily struggle. And so I wanna talk a little more about where this comes from, what sits underneath it in a way that hopefully allows you to reflect upon your own relationship with jealousy from a more neutral standpoint. Because I think one of the really big problems with jealousy is that collectively, societally, we tend to have a negative judgment attached to experiences of jealousy. It's not an emotion that many of us feel positively about.
[00:02:36]:
And so I think we associate jealousy with, like, craziness or being clingy or being desperate. And so then when we experience jealousy and maybe we experience it really intensely, we tend to shame ourselves for that, and that only makes it worse. It does nothing to help the underlying insecurities that are driving that jealousy in the first place. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, and my hope is that you can walk away from today's episode with the ability to look compassionately and inquisitively at your jealousy. Approaching ourselves with curiosity is so much more fruitful than just labeling ourselves as bad and going, how can I stop being so jealous because it's ruining everything? As I always say, when we kind of heap shame and blame and wrongness on top of an experience we're having that's already really challenging, that invariably makes it worse and bigger. Now before we get into today's episode, couple of quick announcements. The first being my twenty eight day Secure Self Challenge is coming back. I'm gonna be running the challenge kicking off in mid June, and Monday, June will kick off.
[00:03:40]:
It's a four week challenge all about building self worth. And as we'll talk about today, so many of our relational struggles, whether it's jealousy or comparison or anxiety, all words lead back to self worth. And that's really the core of my teaching across so many different topics is that when our relational patterns are so other focused, which they are in anxious attachment, we tend to focus so much on the relationship and the other person, and we become so preoccupied with everything that's going on out there. And that is almost always to the detriment of our inner relationship and our sense of self worth and self esteem. And rather than trying to solve those issues in isolation, I'm always telling people, focus on you, build up your sense of self worth so that you don't feel so vulnerable to what's going on out there, so that you don't feel like you are just treading water and clutching at anyone and anything that might make you feel better temporarily. So all roads lead back to building self worth, and that's what the Secure Soft Challenge is all about. It's a really nice, short and sweet, not too content heavy way to reset, irrespective of whether you're currently in a relationship and feeling a bit stuck, whether you're just out of a breakup, whether you're dating and feeling like you're spinning out a bit. It's just a really nice way to come back to center, get really clear on who am I, who do I wanna be, how do I wanna show up, and be really intentional about all of that and and really flipping the script from the inside out.
[00:05:03]:
So if you're interested in that, I'm offering super early bird pricing for the next few days. You can sign up to the challenge for just $97 US dollars, and that includes the challenge materials, a pop up community for the four weeks, as well as two live calls with me. So it's a really great value offer. And you can sign up for that by heading to my website, stephaniewrigg.com, or the link to sign up is also included in the show notes. Okay. So let's talk about anxious attachment and jealousy. Now before we get into the meat of this discussion, I do just wanna offer a quick disclaimer or caveat. And I always like to say this before going into any discussion of things like trust or jealousy.
[00:05:41]:
Because I think sometimes people can say, oh, I don't know why I'm so jealous, or I don't know why I struggle with trust. And then they go on to tell me about several experiences where trust has been breached or lines have been crossed in their current relationship with their current partner, and yet they're making it an end problem. So I just wanna frame that I'm not so much talking in this discussion about jealousy as a natural response to inappropriate behavior in your relationship or boundary violations in your relationship. I think that is a different conversation, and it's not one that we want to be solving as a, I just need to stop being so jealous. I need to make myself fine with things that I'm clearly not fine with. Really, what I'm talking about here is where jealousy has followed you throughout your life, and you know that it's something to do with your inner relationship. And maybe it's even when you're not in a relationship, you struggle with jealousy, you are very envious of other people, you struggle with comparison a lot. All of those things signal, like, this is a self worth problem.
[00:06:40]:
And so it is something that I can really get curious about in terms of what is it in my own inner relationship and my own subconscious beliefs about myself and others that is producing this experience of constant jealousy. So I think for anxiously attached people, jealousy can feel like a minefield. And I think it can be useful when we're talking about jealousy to distinguish between jealousy as in I have to be possessive and protective of what is mine, and jealousy that can take more the form of envy in that I want something that someone else has or I'm I'm envious of what they have. And I think anxiously attached people experience both of those things. So you might look at other people, compare yourself to them, and feel less than and go, I'm so jealous of them and what they have or what they are that I am not. And we can use that as a way to feed our stories of low self worth, or it can be jealousy in the sense of, like, get away from my partner. I don't trust that person. I don't want them anywhere near my partner.
[00:07:37]:
I don't want my partner interacting with them, looking at them, having any sort of proximity to them at all because I feel the need to protect what is mine against those perceived outside threats. And I think that, as I said, anxiously attached people probably grapple with both of those flavors of jealousy. But it can be useful to reflect on, like, what's this really about? Is it me protecting what is mine, or is it me wanting what someone else has that I feel I lack? And neither is better or worse there. It's just interesting always to find what is this really about for me. And I think that maybe depending on the answer to that, the the fix might be different. So I think there can be lots of expressions of jealousy for anxiously attached people. There's the comparison. There's the low self worth.
[00:08:18]:
There's the fear of being replaced. So this sense that if my partner comes into contact with other people who I perceive as being my competitors, then they're going to realize that those people are better than me. More attractive, more confident, more intelligent, more charming, more whatever. And if given the opportunity, they're gonna want them instead of me. And so I'm going to be rejected. I'm going to be left. I'm gonna be replaced. And so jealousy emerges as this way to prevent that from happening to try and control the situation because I feel that I can't just release the group.
[00:08:58]:
I can't just be because I'm not enough as I am, and I need to make sure that my partner doesn't find out about that. They don't realize that, and certainly that they don't get the opportunity to trade up if I think that that's always a looming threat. So we can see that there are a lot of really tender fears that sit underneath jealousy, and that's why it's so important to actually dig a little and try and be compassionate because this stuff runs really deep. And if we just shame ourselves and go like, oh, I'm so whatever. Why am I like this? I need to stop being like this. And when we're already feeling so unworthy, so not enough, so insecure that we think that an attractive person that our partner passes on the street is a threat to everything in our relationship. That is a very, very vulnerable way to be in a relationship, and not the good kind of vulnerability. Vulnerable in the sense of so fragile.
[00:09:50]:
It's It's little wonder that if that's how we're operating, that we feel so shaky. We feel so anxious all the time because we are so primed to see and perceive threats everywhere we look. And now I think when we are operating from those subconscious scripts and subconscious beliefs around jealousy, maybe not even subconscious, maybe they're very front of mind for you that I'm not good enough. I'm not attractive enough. I can't trust in my relationship. It doesn't feel sturdy enough for me to just believe that my partner actually values me, loves me, wants me, chooses me. My partner's gonna leave me at a moment's notice. Like, all of those beliefs can drive a lot of our so called anxious attachment behaviors, our maybe not so healthy relationship behaviors.
[00:10:37]:
So things like social media stalking, things like maybe snooping through your partner's phone if you are really jealous and you're hypervigilant about that colleague. And what are their emails to each other like? And do I need to monitor for the tone in those emails? Is that flotation? Is it all of those things? Right? And our anxious parts go, like, you need to gather information because there are threats here, and I know there are threats here, and I need to go hunting for them. Some of the other behaviors that can come from jealousy are, like, incessant reassurance seeking. So asking someone, like, do you love me? Do you love her? Do you find her attractive? Why did you and your ex break up? Are you sure you don't have feelings for her? These patterns of questioning and reassurance seeking that never really scratch the itch. And I think that is so often the case with anxious attachment. It's so hard to take it in because if you fundamentally don't believe that your partner loves you and is choosing you, and you're always testing and you're always moving the goalposts, you can never take it in because you just don't believe it. And you're always looking for more evidence that it's not true or that it's going to be taken away or that something bad is going to happen. I think that can get you in a real loop of seeking that reassurance only to not take it in, and then your partner feels a bit like, what are we doing here? What's the point? Nothing I say is enough to alleviate your fears.
[00:11:55]:
I don't know why you don't trust me, And that can obviously be very exhausting for a partner and kind of exhausting for a relationship to be in that kind of cycle. Now, again, I just wanna emphasize that I'm not so much talking about situations where there are genuine breaches of trust going on. There are genuine, like, causes for concern. I'm talking more about where jealousy arises from that low self worth place within us and drives all of these behaviors when maybe there's not much to it. It is more in the form of paranoia and fear rather than a rational response to something that is going on that is not okay. I think another really interesting branch off the tree when it comes to the jealousy conversation is feeling like you are not a priority. And so feeling jealous of anyone and anything. So it can extend beyond people, and you can be jealous of a partner's work or hobbies or things that they spend time on that aren't you.
[00:12:54]:
I think this could almost be a whole episode in and of itself. In fact, I'm sure it could be because I think it's something we don't talk enough about how anxiously attached people constantly feel like they are not enough of a priority in their partner's life. And so they fight for their place, and they feel like they have to earn their place in someone's life and work really hard for that. And so they perceive all of these other things, whether it is, like, work or other people, friends, as their competitors again. That, like, I kind of need to be scrambling, elbowing these other people out of the way and convincing you that you should wanna spend time with me and not them. And so I think jealousy can come up when we feel hurt or rejected or neglected in a relationship. And it's this sense of, like, why don't you wanna spend time with me? Why aren't I good enough? Why isn't spending time with me the thing that you wanna do above everything else? Because I put you above everything else, and I think that's the the right thing to do in a relationship is to put you above everything else. So the fact that you don't necessarily reciprocate that or mirror that to the same degree must mean that you don't love me the way I love you, and that makes me feel hurt, rejected less than.
[00:14:05]:
And so that's a really, really common one. I actually hear this a lot from people in the context of often women who are dating men who have children from a previous relationship and feeling that they rank way down the list in terms of priorities in spending time together that the person they're seeing puts their kids first and maybe even their ex first and work and all of these things. And because they're busy and they're being pulled in many directions, people feeling like, I don't know where I stand with you because there are so many things ahead of me in the queue, and I'm always feeling like I'm just waiting around for any opportunity to spend time with you. And that's not something that you're really actively prioritizing, and that can really touch at some of our most sensitive wounds and and feelings of not being good enough, of not being, you know, if I were more something, then you would wanna spend time with me. You would make me a priority. And so I try and prove my worth. I try and strive for a place in your life. And oftentimes in doing so, I just feel like a failure.
[00:15:07]:
I feel nothing I do is enough for you to make me a priority. And so even though we wouldn't necessarily think of that as a jealousy thing, I think jealousy can arise in that kind of setting because we get jealous of even a partner's kids who are in previous relationship or a partner's ex if they're communicating with them even just functionally about co parenting or a partner's friends or people they play golf with or whatever. It can feel like all of these people rank ahead of me. What would it take for me to be higher on the list? And so we can feel really envious and jealous of all of those things that are taking our partner away from us when all we want is to be close. So all of that is painting the picture of how jealousy can look and where it can come from, and the various permutations and expressions of jealousy that anxiously attached people will often experience in relationships, and some of the behaviors that can spring from it, that maybe then feed these shame cycles of I'm feeling really insecure, and so I behave in these ways that then I shame myself for, that then leads me to feel more insecure. And then on and on, I spiral into that loop of kind of berating myself for not being more secure, but that insecurity then feeds all of the behaviors that make me shame myself more. So what do we do with all of this? I think, as I said earlier, the remedy can depend a little on the specifics of the situation. Sometimes we need to have a conversation with someone.
[00:16:32]:
Maybe there are boundaries that need to be clarified. Maybe we need to advocate more for what we want and need in a relationship. But I think oftentimes, in fact, almost always, your experience of jealousy will be at least somewhat alleviated by focusing on building self worth. Because I think that underpinning all of those expressions of jealousy is a feeling of unworthiness and I am not enough. And so I have to prove myself to you so that you don't leave me, reject me, so that you want me more, so that you choose me, so that you show up for me. But I'm making whatever's going on out there a me problem, and I'm feeding the story that I have to prove myself. So when I can really heal that at the root within myself and build genuine self confidence and genuine self esteem so that I can stand firm in, like, I know who I am, and I'm comfortable in who I am. And I don't think that something as fleeting and innocuous as, like, an attractive person in a restaurant, I don't feel threatened by that.
[00:17:31]:
That has nothing to do with me or my relationship. I say this again as someone who absolutely used to see those threats everywhere and feel genuinely destabilized by them. Noticing things like, Is my partner looking at that person? Oh, is this colleague a threat? Is that person in the extended friendship group a threat? All of these things, it was just such hypersensitivity to anyone and anything that I thought could be a source of danger to me and my relationship that already felt so fragile. So, I really understand this, And I can guarantee you that when you learn to really embody sincere self confidence and really actually learning to like yourself, never mind learning to love yourself. I think that could come later, but just focusing on, can I really hand on heart say, like, I'm comfortable with who I am and I like myself? I think that jealousy falls away. It just feels less relevant. It feels way less acute. It's not something that occupies so much of your mental and emotional energy because you really start to trust in your relationships.
[00:18:34]:
And I think your relationships start to be healthier and more balanced, so that you're not constantly scrambling for someone's attention. And I think your ability to see a relationship for what it is and go, Is this aligned? Or am I asking for something from someone who's never gonna be able to give it to me? So I think that, like, it all bleeds out and ripples out into a healthier and more balanced way of being in relationship. And I think jealousy is not one that we then need to solve as a standalone issue in isolation because I do find that it naturally softens as a result of working on building self worth and and being more comfortable in who we are. So I hope that that's been helpful and has given you something to think about if you are someone who struggles a lot with jealousy and envy and comparison. Please know that it is nothing to be ashamed of. It really is, a, completely human. Like, jealousy is something every single one of us has experienced. Envy too.
[00:19:30]:
I think we can have, as I said, like, all these really heavy negative connotations attached to these emotions, but they're just emotions like any other. The more that we can look at them with compassion and and a degree of neutrality, the more we can see a point of this and go, okay, what's really going on for me here, and how might I support myself to feel a little more grounded so that I don't feel like I'm at the mercy of these spirals that I can get into around jealousy and comparison and feeling so insecure and unstable in myself and my relationships. Okay. I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me today, guys. I really hope that this has been helpful. A reminder again about the Secure Self Challenge, which is kicking off in a couple weeks' time. If you haven't already checked out my free training on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love, that is a great free option as well if you wanna go deeper on some of the themes that we talked about here today. Okay. Thanks so much for joining me, guys. I'll see you again next time.
[00:20:27]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
healing anxious attachment, attachment styles, relationships, single vs in a relationship, personal growth, self-awareness, romantic triggers, emotional safety, inner relationship, self-esteem, corrective experiences, core wounds, nervous system, somatic healing, belief reprogramming, communication skills, setting boundaries, conflict resolution, relationship patterns, vulnerability, intimacy, self-advocacy, relationship breakups, dating, transformation, personal development, emotional regulation, being triggered, relational wounds, decision making in healing
#188: When Your Relationship Feels Stuck (& What to Do About It)
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.
It’s a painful and confusing place to be — when your relationship feels heavy, distant, or tense, and nothing you try seems to bring you closer. You’re having the conversations (or trying to), you’re showing up, putting in effort, perhaps even using every tool you’ve learned — and still, it’s not landing. The connection feels brittle or broken. And you’re left wondering: Is this just how it is now? Is it always going to feel like this?
The truth is, every relationship will go through seasons of disconnection. No matter how strong your connection, there will be times when life gets in the way — stress builds, communication misfires, and the warmth between you dims. While this is completely normal, it can also feel deeply unsettling. Especially if you have an anxious attachment style, these periods of emotional distance can feel threatening, even catastrophic.
So how do we shift out of a relationship rut — without spiralling into over-functioning, blame, or despair?
Let’s explore three powerful shifts that can help you find your way back to each other.
1. Zoom Out: Your Relationship Reflects the Broader Landscape
Before jumping to fix the relationship, pause to consider what’s going on around it. Often, a relationship becomes a sponge for everything else happening in our lives—work stress, family pressure, financial worries, exhaustion. When our own capacity is depleted, we show up to our relationships with less patience, less playfulness, and less generosity.
For those with anxious attachment, this often means seeking more closeness and reassurance—trying to lean in to the relationship as a source of relief. For those with avoidant patterns, stress may prompt the opposite—a withdrawal from connection to conserve energy. In either case, the dynamic can quickly become misaligned, and the meaning we apply to our partner’s behaviour can fuel conflict. We might interpret their distance as disinterest or rejection, and respond with protest behaviours that push them further away.
Start by asking: What might be happening outside the relationship that’s bleeding into it? You may find that the problem is less about the relationship itself and more about what’s happening around it.
2. Shift the Emotional Climate
One of the most common pitfalls in a relationship rut is over-focusing on what's wrong. If you’ve been caught in endless conversations about unmet needs, disappointments, and frustrations, it’s understandable—but likely unhelpful.
Especially in anxious-avoidant dynamics, this can become entrenched. The anxious partner wants to address issues head-on, believing that if we don’t fix the cracks, everything will fall apart. But for the avoidant partner, this often feels demoralising, like there’s no space to win—no matter what they do, it’s never enough.
So what’s the alternative?
Reorient your focus to what’s working. What do you appreciate about your partner? What’s good in your relationship? What brought you together in the first place?
This isn’t about ignoring problems or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about creating a relational space that feels warm, safe, and generative—because positivity is far more motivating than criticism.
Try this as a two-week experiment: each day, express sincere appreciation to your partner. Notice the effect. Often, small shifts in tone and energy can create a ripple effect that shifts the entire relational dynamic.
3. Reintroduce Lightness and Play
If your relationship has been feeling emotionally dense or weighed down by repeated “big” conversations, it may be time to reconnect through shared experience, not just analysis.
Plan something fun. Go for a hike. Cook a new recipe together. Watch a comedy. Go dancing. Book a weekend getaway. Do something you don’t normally do. These moments of novelty and play remind you of who you are outside the context of your problems. They create shared joy, which is the soil in which deeper intimacy can grow.
Sometimes the most healing thing you can do for your relationship isn’t another conversation—it’s a laugh, a shared adventure, a reminder that this can be fun.
4. If All Else Fails, Focus on You
If your partner isn’t open to engaging or you’re feeling stuck in one-sided effort, the most empowering move you can make is to bring your attention back to yourself.
Ask: What do I need right now? What’s going to nourish me, lift me, support me?
Focusing on your own vitality doesn’t mean giving up on the relationship — it means reclaiming your power within it. When we’re feeling disconnected, it’s easy to enmesh ourselves in our partner’s energy and behaviour, losing sight of our own needs, values, and wellbeing. Shifting the focus back to you can create the internal spaciousness needed to approach the relationship with more clarity and strength.
Final Thoughts
Getting stuck in a relationship rut doesn’t mean your relationship is broken. But how you respond to that season matters. Keep perspective, zoom out, and resist the urge to problem-solve your way out of disconnection in ways that may deepen it.
Try appreciation. Try play. Try turning inward.
Connection ebbs and flows — but with the right tools and mindset, you can ride those waves without losing each other in the process.
And if you're craving deeper support on how to regulate your nervous system, break anxious patterns, and build a secure foundation in life and love, I’d love for you to check out my free masterclass, How to Heal Your Anxious Attachment & Finally Feel Secure in Life & Love. You can register via the link here.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
When you notice your relationship feeling “stuck” or disconnected, what is your usual instinct – to push for connection, to pull away, or something else? How effective has that pattern been for you in the past?
In times of tension with your partner, do you tend to focus on what’s not working? What might shift if you intentionally directed your attention towards what you appreciate about your partner or relationship?
Are you someone who prefers to address relationship issues head-on, or do you often avoid or delay those conversations? How does that align with your attachment style, and how does it impact your relationship dynamics?
When you’re in a rut, do you find yourself longing for emotionally heavy conversations as a form of connection? Could introducing more lightness, fun, or novelty offer a circuit breaker to heavy patterns?
Reflect on a time when your partner’s response to stress felt threatening or confusing to you. Can you see a link between their behaviour and their attachment style? How did you interpret and respond to their actions?
What are some activities, big or small, that bring fun or positivity to your connection? How could you make space for more of these, even when things feel strained?
Do you ever feel like it’s “all on you” to fix what’s feeling off in your relationship? How does that affect your energy, mindset, and sense of agency?
When things feel challenging in your relationship, how well do you look after your own well-being? What would it look like for you to turn towards self-care rather than trying to “solve” your relationship?
Are you willing to experiment with focusing on gratitude or appreciation for a few weeks, as suggested in the episode? What resistance, if any, comes up for you — and what is behind it?
How do you remind yourself that all relationships go through ups and downs, and that feeling disconnected isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong or broken? How might adopting this perspective change how you approach tough times?
Feel free to choose the questions that resonate most and explore them in your own time, whether through journalling or thoughtful conversation with a partner.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
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 going to be like this? Am I always going to feel as lonely as I do right now? Because I think when we're in a relationship, right, we typically feel really lonely because we've turned our backs on each other. And that disconnection is really, really challenging.
[00:01:48]:
So I'm going to 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 going to 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 seventy five 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.
[00:03:10]:
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, would love for you to register.
[00:04:20]:
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, stephaniewrigg.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 a 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.
[00:04:52]:
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, over extended, then the way we're showing up to our relationship is probably going to reflect that. And depending on whether you're 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 going to 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 or whatever, then the meaning that you apply to that is often catastrophic.
[00:06:32]:
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 as 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 stressors or stressors 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 got to really stay on top of all the things that are wrong and unsatisfactory, right? But what that creates is a relational space where we're 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 us really demoralizing, and the thing you'll hear over and over again from people with avoidant patterns is, you're 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.
[00:08:40]:
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 want to 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 will 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 is going to 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.
[00:09:54]:
So what do we do with all of that? If you're listening and you're like, yes, been 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 going to be this bad? Are we just going to 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 want to 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.
[00:11:35]:
You might be like, 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're not going to lose anything by doing that. Okay? Reassure your anxious parts that don't want to let go of the problem for fear that it's just going to 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're 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 what 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? Because 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 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 going to focus on the negatives, I'm not going to 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.
[00:14:23]:
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. K. 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 because 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 going to 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.
[00:16:11]:
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 want to 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're 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 one thing, and they're not really interested at all, and that's leaving you feeling a bit helpless, like your hands are tied, 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.
[00:17:17]:
Am I focusing on my own well-being, 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, there 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 well-being 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 going to be affected by that. But I think the more that we can consciously orient ourselves back to supporting our own well-being, 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 well-being, as much as I possibly can.
[00:18:59]:
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 will 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.
[00:19:52]:
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.
[00:20:14]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
relationship rut, attachment styles, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, relationship disconnection, relationship conflict, overcoming insecurity, healthy relationships, communication in relationships, relationship expectations, stress and relationships, external stressors, unmet needs, fixing relationships, relational dynamics, emotional connection, loneliness in relationships, self-trust, self-agency, building connection, gratitude in relationships, relationship advice, relationship challenges, healing attachment, practical relationship tools, relationship resilience, self-care, reflecting on relationships, healthy conflict resolution, relationship tips, personal growth in relationships