It can be challenging when one partner wants to feel connected just when the other feels a need for space. Having these opposite needs at the same time is very common. Most couples can fall out of sync in this way on a daily basis. But how a couple negotiates being together vs. being alone will determine how secure they feel with each other.
Unfortunately, these differing needs often turn into a “dance of polarities,” of push vs. pull, or as Imago calls it “Turtle/Alligator dance. It can happen whenever one partner is pushing the other for closeness and connection—while the other partner is withdrawing, pulling away or becoming more distant.
The more one pushes connection, the more the other pulls away. Equally, the more that partner pulls away, the more the first pushes. As this escalates over time, misery and anguish in each partner grows. The more separate and polarized they become the levels of upset and suffering escalates.
How Do You Overcome this Turtle/Alligator Dynamic?
How a couple negotiates being together vs. being alone determines how secure and connected they feel with each other. Unfortunately, these differing needs often turn into a dance of polarity—withdrawer/pursuer and it can happen whenever one partner is pursuing the other for closeness and connection—while the other partner is withdrawing or becoming more distant.
In Imago we use the metaphor Turtle/Alligator to talk about this dynamic. As such, the more the alligator pursues and chases connection, the more the turtle withdraws or runs way.
Similarly, the more that turtle-partner distances, the more the alligator-partner pursues. As this heightens over time, distress in each partner increases. As they polarize or split, their levels of upset and distress spirals downward into a hole.
Fears of abandonment or fear not being important can get triggered in the partner needing to feel close. Conversely, fears of feelings of overwhelmed or a fear of being trapped or smothered can rise up in the partner who distances.
These upset feelings get magnified by each partners’ past emotional baggage carried around since childhood.
What is the “blast from the past” in this case? Simply put, it has to do with how we were originally programmed and/or socialized around closeness and distance, and how this affects us emotionally today.
There have been thousands of scientific studies in the arena called attachment theory, which has to do with how human-being emotionally bond in pairs.
Our earliest pair bonding, of course, was, of course with our parents or significant caretakers. Our parents (primary caretakers), were our original significant others, and the wiring for our emotional attachment was shaped by interactions with them. This wiring lives in parts of our brain that are effectively unconscious to us, and operate without our awareness or our permission. And this same wiring drives how we communicate and behave with our current significant other.
Therefore how our parents responded to us taught us what to expect and how to emotionally bond with another.
We adapted to what was available in our original “home.” And our long-term memory systems operates unconsciously to bring this forward into our current feeling of “home” with our partner.
Exactly how was our attachment emotional-circuitry programmed? It was program by how our parents responded to our signals that we had a particular need when we were young. This relates to a physiological and biological process called we call co-regulation.
For example, if our parents were consistent in attuning to and giving us what we needed and giving us physical affection like—holding, hugging, rocking, kissing—then we developed healthy expectations, healthy emotional responses, and healthy ways of communicating our needs. They were co-regulating us in the same way all species do for their young.
Cats and dogs lick their young. Monkeys and humans hold their young. Ask any biologist. They will even describe the importance of this at birth and call it an important imprint. This is important in our first two years of development, long before we learned to use words. The most basic form of communication is—body-to-body.
Unfortunately, many of us did not receive that kind of consistent physical nurturing. Many parents were led astray by a culture, illness, work, alcoholism, depression, addiction, etc., which makes children self-sufficient. Parents who did respond and who held their children may not have been consistent. This creates relational maladaptation.
Relational maladaption not an illness, it’s not a syndrome, or pathology, but rather a dynamic that the child and parent construct together to circumvent the vulnerability associated with intimacy. We quickly learn our parent’s relational rules. How we adapted to our original home environment is in our attachment wiring today. Operating unconsciously, it automatically affects how we communicate, behave, feel, and react with our partner.
In adapting to our environment as children, many became “turtle-ish”— and learned to avoid or preoccupied-self as an attachment style. They became kids who rarely cried or ran to an adult if they were upset. They were low-maintenance and self-entertaining.
As adults, “turtle-ish” partners value independence and alone time. They become easily overwhelmed by too much closeness or interpersonal stress. Emotions can overwhelm them—theirs and others. When they get overwhelmed, because they were trained to be self-sufficient, they withdraw, avoid, distance, or shut down.
Seldom do “turtles” know that their philosophy of self-sufficiency is based on emotional neglect in childhood. Nor will they understand why their self-sufficient behaviors can trigger their partner to feel neglected by them.
- “Turtles” are lower in verbal expression about themselves and may appear to be filtered or guarded in what they say—even secretive.
- Their facial expressions are low in amplitude, making them good at poker, but hard to read by their partners.
- They tend to focus on work, performance, and activities—and often have difficulty reconnecting after being alone.
- They can be prone to feelings of inadequacy, blame, shame, or overwhelm by their partner, which results in withdrawal, distancing, or shutting down.
The “alligator” is an adaptation to an upbringing where children grew up experiencing inconsistent responses to their needs or cries of distress. Maybe their parents were not always there or were otherwise preoccupied. In some cases, parents themselves fell into distressed emotional states and this left the tiger having to care for their caregiver in a classic reversal of roles. Whatever the source of inconsistency, the young “alligator” adapted by increasing their signals of distress. They cried more, became clingy or fussy, and were harder to calm down.
In essence, they were engaging in angry protest over the inconsistent care delivered by their caregiver. This grew into the expectation that the other person would not be there for them—and a deep sensitivity to being abandoned.
As adults, “alligator-ish” partners seek closeness and connection, sometimes to the point of seeming clingy.
- They value emotions and have higher than average expressiveness about their feelings.
- Their speech output is driven by the non-linear, emotion-based right brain—where one thing leads to another in a seemingly unfiltered and tangential stream. This may easily overwhelm a more “turtle-ish” partner, who is left-brain dominant, linear and logical.
- Similarly, “tigers” are high in facial and gestural expressiveness.
- They have difficulty separating and being alone, yet they may express this in a negative way in pursuer behaviors like; complaining, getting critical or going on the attack.
Seldom do “alligator-ish” partners realize their angry protest is a “blast from their past—amplified by unresolved expectations of abandonment—and that the manner in which they are reaching out for connection is actually overwhelming and pushing a more “turtle-ish” partner away.
It’s important to know that childhood programming is not the only source of the dance of polarities–turtle/alligator. The adult relationship itself creates its particular context. How you interact with your partner around needing closeness or distance can set into motion similar insecure dynamics (turtle/alligator reactive cycle). Or you can learn to create a new secure pattern even if never experienced in childhood. It all comes down to how responsive you are to each other’s needs for closeness or distance—and how you signal these needs.
Your Turn:
Do you consciously negotiate any differences in your needs, making sure that both partners end up getting what each needs?
Or are you overtaken by an unconscious Dance of Polarities Reactive Cycle, where the way you signal for your need to be met actually gets you the opposite reaction from your partner?
When this dance is left unconscious, it will escalate over time and trigger the survival states of fight, flight, or freeze. One person will end up pursuing and chasing and the other fleeing or shutting down. As old buttons are getting pushed in this dance, partners start to feel more anxious, angry or numb.
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