It has been going well for a few weeks. They said something kind on Thursday, and since then you have been slower to answer. You canceled Saturday. You told yourself you needed space. By the time they ask if something is wrong, you have stopped making plans with them. It's been a long time since I let anyone get close. Honestly, the idea scares me.
Needing room is ordinary, and so is losing interest. This page is about leaving at the moment things get close.
This is one shape of a wider pattern. The fuller picture is here: why do I need everyone to like me.
01
What you do when it gets close
The timing may be what gives it away.
It tends to start after something good. A kind word, a plan made further ahead than usual, a key, an evening with their friends. Then you get busy. Replies shorten. You find the thing about them that was always going to be a problem.
You may tell it as a story about them. They were too much, too eager, not quite right. Sometimes that is true. There's a voice that says I won't have enough to offer someone.
People call this fear of commitment, or being avoidant. Those words describe the leaving and not what the leaving is for.
You may lose the relationships that were going well, because those are the kind it tends to happen in. And the other person may never learn why it ended.
02
What the leaving may be protecting
One layer down is what you may be leaving before it can happen.
"I need to be chosen."
If being picked is what counts, then being un-picked is the thing to avoid, and one way to avoid it is to go first. Under Chosen, leaving may be a way of never finding out what they would have decided.
Read about Chosen →"Asking creates a debt I don't want to carry."
Closeness can mean needing someone, and letting them give. Under Burden, the pull to leave may come at the point where you would have to start receiving. That I'm too much, that my feelings are too much.
Read about Burden →There are other possibilities, and it may be neither.
03
What is under the rule
Each of these has a fear under it.
Under Chosen, the fear may be that if you are not selected, you were not enough to select. What would answer it is belonging that isn't competitive.
Under Burden, the fear may be that your needs make you too much, and too much gets left. What would answer it is being able to receive without owing.
The question below pictures the same ending for both, with them leaving. The difference is the reason you expect them to have.
04
One question that separates them
When you picture them leaving, is it because you weren't enough, or because you were too much?
Not enough is the Chosen answer. Too much is the Burden answer.
If you picture neither, or can't tell, there is not enough to go on yet, and that is a result.
Some leaving is not a rule. Sometimes you have seen enough to know it will not suit you, and leaving then is a sound decision. And if you are pulling away from someone because you are afraid of them, none of this page applies.The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
This question is a piece of subtraction. It is there to take one explanation away, and what is left still has to account for the other times you left.
05
One thing to try this week
The next time you feel the pull to cancel or go quiet, wait one day before you act on it.
During that day, write down what you pictured happening if you stayed. One or two sentences.
After the day, do whatever you decide. What matters is the sentence you wrote, and whether it was about not being enough or about being too much.
What it looks like when the leaving happens without a word is on Ghosting and Disappearing.