Why We Push Away the People We Love

If you’ve ever caught yourself shutting down, picking a fight, or pulling away from someone you deeply care about, you’re not alone.

And you’re not broken.

In fact, I see this all the time in couples therapy:
People come in frustrated, confused, and hurt.
One says:

“I just want to feel close to them.”
The other responds:
“Then why does it feel like you’re always pushing me away?”

It’s one of the most painful and confusing things about relationships.
When we finally get the closeness, connection, and safety we want something inside us tightens instead of softening.

This Isn’t About Love. It’s About Protection.

What most people don’t realize is that when we push someone away, we’re usually not trying to hurt them.
We’re trying to protect something vulnerable inside ourselves.

The closer someone gets to our most tender parts like our fears, our needs, and our sense of worth, the more likely it is that old defenses come online.

Defenses aren’t always bad behavior to fix. They can be creative, protective strategies. They were built to survive emotional risk, and often, we are doing the best we can with what we learned early on.

Common Defenses in Relationships (That Don’t Always Look Like Defenses)

Here are a few protective strategies I see show up again and again in couples:

• Withdrawal / Emotional Detachment
  “I don’t want to fight, so I just go numb or disappear.”
  Often learned in homes where emotional intensity felt overwhelming or unsafe.

• Criticism / Control
  “If I can get them to do it right, then I’ll finally feel safe.”
  Underneath is often a fear of abandonment or emotional chaos.

• Sarcasm / Intellectualizing
  “If I can make a joke of this or analyze it to death, I won’t have to feel it.”
  Protects from vulnerability by staying in the head, not the heart.

• Shame-Based Self-Blame
  “If I’m the problem, then at least I have some control.”
  Learned when love felt conditional or tied to performance.

• Avoidance of Intimacy
  “I want connection, but when it starts to happen, I panic.”
  Often shows up in people with anxious-avoidant attachment histories.

And here's the thing: these strategies usually made perfect sense at some point in your life, and they actually worked.

They helped you survive emotional environments that didn’t feel fully safe, consistent, or attuned.
But in adult relationships, those same strategies can backfire, especially when both partners are protecting and neither feels truly seen.

Defenses Are Adaptive… Until They Aren’t

 Defenses are meaningful adaptations of where you had to find a workaround to stay in relationship.

But as we grow, defenses that once kept us safe can become walls that keep others out.

The very moment that calls for softness and closeness might be the moment your system says: “This is too risky.”

It’s not because you don’t love your partner.
It’s because your body remembers what it felt like to need and not receive.
To love and be disappointed.
To be vulnerable and unprotected.

In the Therapy Room, We Listen Differently

In relational psychotherapy, we’re not trying to strip away defenses or shame them into submission.

Instead, we get curious.

We wonder together:

• What part of you is trying to protect you right now?

• Where did this strategy first make sense?

• What is this defense afraid will happen if you let it go?

Often, the answer is incredibly tender.

“If I let myself need them, and they don’t come through, I’ll fall apart.”
“If I show them how much I care, and they leave, I won’t be alone.”
“If I stay quiet, I don’t have to risk hearing that I’m too much.”

Once we slow things down and hear the fear under the defense, the relationship starts to shift.

Defenses Begin in Relationship—And Heal There, Too

One of the hardest truths is also one of the most hopeful:
We learned to protect ourselves in relationship. And we can learn to trust again in relationship, too.

When couples begin to name and understand each other’s defenses, not as flaws, but as signs of old pain, something softens. There’s more room for compassion. Less blaming. More safety to show up with the raw stuff.

It’s not quick work. But it’s deeply human.

A Personal Note

If you find yourself pushing away the person you love, try offering yourself some gentleness first. That push isn’t cruelty, it’s caution.

It means something inside you still wants to be protected.

And if you’re the partner being pushed away, try to remember: the withdrawal, the anger, the shutting down, these are strategies, not the whole story.

There’s almost always something underneath.

 Want support decoding your defenses—together?

I work with couples and individuals who are tired of repeating the same painful patterns and ready to understand what’s happening underneath.

If you're ready to explore why you protect yourself the way you do, and what it might mean to feel safe with someone else, let’s talk.

Feel free to reach out, and schedule a free consultation.

You don’t have to keep pushing love away.