If you’re in a relationship with someone, either dating or married, stress is something that could totally ruin the day for a couple. If you’re like most people, you probably have dealt with it at some point. Dealing with someone that doesn’t have the best abilities to handle stress can end up stressing you out. To the point that could mentally block you and not be careful in how she treats you, leading to pushing you away. The best things you can do is:
- Understand the problem is Not You, is something else.
- Try to find out what’s causing her stress.
- If she doesn’t want to tell you, wait.
- Keep your Boundaries straight.
- Come back to talk about it later.
After learning each of this steps more in depth, you’re going to be a pro and super prepared so that you can handle a stressful situation with your partner in the best possible way.
This post is all about what to do when she pushes you away because of stress.
1. Understand the Problem is Not You
When someone is indirectly or directly mean to you out of nowhere, the automatic thought of a normal person is “what did I do wrong?”. And it’s something that you should totally question, because when she pushes you away because of stress, 98% of the time, you did nothing wrong.
When someone is stressed they can take it out on someone else if they are not careful on the way they think. Picture the next example:
A random guy knocks in your door and yells at you, insults you, and punches you. Then he leaves to a different country and you never see him aguen. But you are really mad at him for what he did. Then right after that, your mom knocks in your door, and since she’s just the next person in front of you, you take out your anger on her.
When this happens you’re not really thinking. It might sound kinda crazy to think about in that way. Nevertheless bring it to a more day to day example. If your husband/boyfriend/significant other had a bad day at work, and they come home and they seem angry, moody or annoyed, they’re doing the same thing, just at a lower mean level. But the same concept applies.
So if she’s pushing you away because of stress, you have very little to do with it. The main cause is something else in most cases. And understanding this will be key to manage your emotions in a much better way.
2. Find out what’s causing Her Stress
Finding out what your significant other is stressed about can be difficult, because when people are stressed and don’t know how to manage it, they tend to block themselves and push others away.
If she’s pushing you away it might be hard to find out what her stress is about, but you can try to do the following to increase the chances of getting a positive response as much as you can:
- Hold her hand and remind her you’re there.
- Validate the Stress. Gently communicate you’ve noticed there’s something bothering her and that’s okay, it happens to everyone.
- Ask her Why.
- Offer help with anything she needs.
As you can notice, in step 1 & 2 we’re preparing the ground so that the question on step 3 has the best chances of getting a positive answer. So don’t skip to step 3 right away, give the first steps the proper importance. They will help.
If you got her to tell you and to help her, congratulations! the problem is most likely solved. If this is something that’s normally a pattern you can skip to step 5 down below.
3. If she doesn’t want to tell, wait.
It can be tempting to keep pushing if she hasn’t told you what she’s stressed about. But, as the 3rd Law of Newton says “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction” if you keep pushing her, and you make her mad, you’re inviting her to attack you with the same amount of force in an opposite way. Which we call fights. This law is used in physics but can be applied to relationships. See the laws of Newton here.
The point is, just wait if she doesn’t want to talk. Don’t beg her because it’ll always make it worse. Just stay calm, you can definitely find out what was stressing her out later on.
4. Keep Your Boundaries Straight
Is very important to have boundaries in a relationship, is one of the most important things. Boundaries are like a fence that keeps the good in and the bad out. If there’s something bad going on outside you won’t let it inside you because of your fences, which are your boundaries.
If she’s pushing you away because of stress, and you already tried reaching to her in a nice way, you already did everything you could. Now it’s on her if she’s still pushing you away. There’s no reason to feel guilty if she’s still pushing you away or being mean. That’s her responsibility to not do.
Boundaries say that if she’s being mean or pushing you away, you will give her space and wait until she can stop behaving that way, because you don’t deserve to be ignored or treated bad. You’ll wait until she’s able to treat you good.
Here’s a great book about Boundaries.
5. Come Back To Talk About It Later
If there’s something common in relationships, is that things that should be talked about, are talked about in the wrong moment, and if they aren’t, they aren’t talked about later. The best moment to talk about a previous conflict or problematic patterns with your significant other is in a totally different day when things are going perfect.
It’s easy to forget to bring it back up to talk about. But it’s really important to talk about it, because this can really help to stop a destructive pattern of behavior for the future.
So if she didn’t want to talk about her stress in the moment, here’s what you can do later: You can talk to her gently, and say that sometimes when she gets stressed, she pushes you away. You can say things like “getting stressed is something that happens to everyone, it’s totally normal, but I would like to see how I can help you. But for that to happen I need you to communicate with me. And I promise, it’ll be for the benefit of both of us”.
You can also tell her “I need you to talk to me when something bothers you, if not there’s no possible way I can help you”.
Letting her know that this is a problem it’s a starting point so it doesn’t happen aguen in the future, or that it happens less and less.
Remember that the purpose of this conversation is to find solutions to help both of you.
This post was all about the best things to do when she pushes you away because of stress so that you can be as prepared as possible to encounter this situation in the best possible way.
