Sarah’s marriage ended years ago. Since then, she’s built a good life — a career she’s proud of, her close friends, and independence.
She’s been seeing someone new for a few months. He’s kind, consistent, easy to talk to. Their first conversation lasted three hours. He asks real questions and listens to the answers. It’s going well.
One Thursday night they’re at their favorite restaurant. He’s explaining how he handled a client who panicked over a missed deadline. She’s nodding, saying the right things, but her mind is elsewhere: the email she forgot to send, what she needs from the grocery store. Anything but this moment.
He reaches across the table, touches her hand. “You okay? You seem distant.”
“Just tired from work,” she says.
It’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening.
Later, sitting in her car before driving home, she notices something—relief. Like she can finally breathe.
The next week he texts about Saturday — a concert he thought she’d enjoy. She sees the message but doesn’t answer for five hours. Not because she’s busy. She’s on her couch, scrolling through her phone. She just doesn’t want to respond.
When she finally does, she says she already has plans. She doesn’t.
A few days later, her closest friend asks how it’s going.
“Good,” Sarah says, then hesitates. “I don’t know. He’s great. I think I just need some space.”
Her friend raises an eyebrow. “Space from what? You see him once a week.”
Sarah doesn’t have an answer.
What she can’t quite name — what she’s not ready to face — is that when things start feeling secure, part of her wants to disappear.
When he’s warm and affectionate, she tenses. When he compliments her, she turns it into a joke. When he talks about plans three weeks out, she feels trapped.
It’s not that she doesn’t care. She does. But the closer he gets, the more distance she creates.
And this isn’t new — the same thing happened with the one before him, and the one before that. Different men, same ending. She’s always told herself it was about them: wrong timing, not enough spark, something missing.
But sitting alone on the Saturday she pretended to be busy, Sarah feels something different. Maybe it isn’t about them. Maybe it’s about her.
What’s Really Happening
What’s really happening when closeness starts to feel uncomfortable?
It might look like you’ve lost interest. But often, it’s fear.
Your chest tightens when he says he’s falling for you. You feel the impulse to pull back when things start to feel settled.
Being close to a man can feel risky — wanting more than he can give, being left, losing what’s begun.
It’s not logical. It’s emotional. Visceral.
So you pull back. You become less available — slower to respond, harder to read, quieter.
When he tells you he loves how smart you are, you laugh it off: “You haven’t seen me try to parallel park.”
When he reaches for your hand in public, you let him hold it for a moment, then find a reason to pull away — check your phone, adjust your bag.
When he asks deeper questions — about your past, your fears, what you really want — you give short answers and change the subject.
There’s a fear of intimacy underneath all of this: if he gets too close, something bad will happen. What exactly? You might not even know. Just that closeness feels dangerous.
What’s Underneath This Fear
So why does closeness feel so dangerous?
When we’re young and the people who are supposed to love us are critical, distant, or unpredictable – we don’t blame them. We blame ourselves.
Children don’t think “My parent has a problem.” They think “There must be something wrong with me.”
That’s how feeling unlovable begins — believing you’re the reason love doesn’t last.
If that doubt is still there—even buried deep—the fear isn’t crazy.
You expect him to leave once he really knows you. Why wouldn’t he?
And before you realize it, you’ve pulled back.
What Gets Lost
When he asks how you’re doing, or what’s wrong, you tell him you’re fine.
You need something but don’t ask because you don’t want to seem like a burden.
You’re scared or uncertain. You hide it, change the subject.
You don’t plan to pull away. It just happens.
He’s there, but you keep him at arm’s length.
You can be in a relationship and still be alone.
What Makes It Complicated
Maybe you’re not wrong to protect yourself.
Maybe you learned early that opening up meant getting hurt. Maybe your parents were critical, or distant, or unpredictable. Maybe someone you trusted let you down when you needed them most.
You learned to keep your guard up. This emotional self-protection made sense. It kept you safer.
The question now is whether safety is still the thing you need most.
Because that protection comes at a cost. It keeps you alone.
It happens automatically – the pulling back, the deflecting, the distance. You’re not consciously choosing it.
But when you start to see it happening, you have a choice you didn’t have before.
That’s where change becomes possible.
Approaching Dating Deliberately
Meeting a man with real potential doesn’t happen often enough to take lightly.
You’re a woman who prepares for what matters. You didn’t build a life of meaning by leaving anything to chance.
Your career reflects intelligence, discipline, and discernment — years of decisions that built something lasting.
Now you want that same clarity in your love life.
I’m a psychiatrist who works privately with accomplished women who are serious about creating relationships that last. Women who know attraction isn’t luck — it can build or fade depending on how it’s handled.
When you understand what strengthens connection and what makes it lose momentum, you bring the same mastery to love that you bring to everything else.
This is the work I do with women—one-to-one, in complete confidence. Please contact me here.
