Does your relationship need a ‘pulse check’?
Convey your needs and be open about how you’re feeling, experts advise
You meet someone. You hit it off. You’ve been texting, casually hanging out and hooking up, and then seemingly out of nowhere, you get that feeling. Something is off; something has changed. Perhaps it’s your instincts, or perhaps they’re no longer initiating messages, are taking longer to respond, or are no longer available to get together.
It’s natural to go down a thought spiral wondering and obsessing about where you went wrong. The best thing to do in this scenario, instead of plotting, planning and pushing? Take a pulse check.
A pulse check is a way to take ownership and acknowledge that the dynamic of the casual relationship has changed. It allows you to take control in an attempt to prevent yourself from getting lost in your thoughts or getting ghosted when the person you’re been casually seeing pulls back.
Sure, when you keep texting someone and they keep saying no to repeated invitations, one would assume they are no longer interested and you can make this assumption and back off, but although being passive aggressive is easier and less awkward, the healthiest thing is to check in so you can know with certainty where you stand.
“An abrupt change in communication with someone you’re dating is noticeable, and when the flow breaks, it’s easy to think the worst, that the person you’ve been dating has lost interest or found someone else,” says dating expert Julie Spira.
When a love interest changes their communication style or backs off it can affect your psyche and cause anxiety. This is thanks to — what psychologist and clinical director of Straight Up Health in Toronto, Jake Ernst — calls our “relational scripts.” He describes these as relational maps we were exposed to growing up that typically form the basis for our relationships in adulthood.
“This can result in us falling into patterns of secure relating or insecure relating in our friendships and even our intimate relationships,” Ernst said.
One simple solution here is to be communicative about your needs. This doesn’t make you a needy person, but instead, says Ernst, it makes you a person with needs. “As a culture, we seem to have pathologized and problematized genuine human needs; the need for love, for connection, for safety, and for intimacy,” Ernst said. “Many of us have grown up thinking that it’s uncool or unflattering to communicate what we need or how we’re feeling. So communicate your needs!”
His tips? Be open about how you’re feeling and check in. “This can be tricky at first but honesty and openness are important relational strategies that help our relationships thrive,” Ernst said. “Ambivalence isn’t sexy. Ambivalence isn’t cool.”
He suggests texting: “Hey, just wanted to check in. How are you feeling about how things are going between us?” This gives them the opportunity to take an easy out if they’ve been having doubts, and allows you to move forward without questioning yourself or dragging something on with someone who’s no longer interested.
Keep in mind, if they don’t respond or don’t answer the way you hoped, don’t personalize their behaviour, says sex and relationship expert, Jess O’Reilly. “The way they opt to communicate or act isn’t your fault, so don’t let it affect the way you feel about yourself,” O’Reilly said. “Sometimes we seek a reason rooted in self-blame for other people’s behaviour, for example, I talked too much about my work and that’s why they’re not interested, but oftentimes their behaviour is unrelated.”
Don’t spend too much time trying to decide whether your instincts are right and instead, she agrees with Ernst that you should be proactive. “The only way to know is to ask,” says O’Reilly. She suggests saying something like: “I see you’re busy right now. Do you still want to hang or do you want to take a break and perhaps reach out when you have more time?” Or: “I like you and want to hang, but if you don’t feel the same, I get it. Let me know what’s up so that I know whether or not we’re on the same page.”
Keep in mind that people pull back for multiple reasons, O’Reilly says. “They’ve been taught that they ought to play games (for example: you’ll be more attractive if you’re less available, which is not accurate,) and because we don’t have the tools to communicate our needs clearly, rather than setting a verbal boundary (for example, saying: I’m seeing other people as well and need more space), we communicate through withdrawal.”
She says the healthiest way to approach this situation is to ask for clarification directly and don’t respond with games, even if they’re playing them or if you’re hoping for a different outcome.
If you’ve been hanging out with someone and have lost interest, it’s obviously easier to slowly back off than having to tell them you are no longer interested, but there’s a healthier approach than ghosting. “Let them know,” O’Reilly said.
“Rejection can be difficult for both the rejector and the rejectee, but we need to practise rejection with grace,” she said. The longer you drag it out, the more intense the rejection may feel, so try to be honest from the onset.
And just because this situationship didn’t work out the way you hoped, doesn’t take away from what you shared. “I think we have to remember that the longevity of a relationship does not determine its quality; it’s OK to have shorter term relationships,” O’Reilly said. Hopefully, they respond to your pulse check by being open and honest, so you can both move on without any confusion or resentment.
On the flip side, you may have to accept that you won’t always get a full explanation. “We often believe that closure is attached to having all of our questions answered and receiving detailed explanations about why a relationship dissolved, but closure is tied to how we work through our feelings; it’s something we can cultivate on our own,” O’Reilly said.
“We have to remember that the longevity of a relationship does not determine its quality.”
JESS O’REILLY RELATIONSHIP EXPERT
“Honesty and openness are important relational strategies that help our relationships thrive.”
JAKE ERNST PSYCHOLOGIST