How to Fix Your Relationship When You’re the Only One Trying

By Figs O’Sullivan, LMFT

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You’re reading every book. Listening to every podcast. Trying every technique you can find online. And your partner is doing… nothing. Or worse, they’re actively resisting. Rolling their eyes when you suggest “talking about it.” Leaving the room when you try to share what you’ve learned.

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You keep wondering if carrying this alone ever works.

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And the voice in your head keeps saying: “If they loved me, they’d try. The fact that I’m the only one trying means this relationship is already over.”

A couple in my office last week painted a perfectly agonizing picture of
uneven effort. The wife sat on the edge of the couch, exhausted and tearful,
pointing to a literal stack of relationship books she had purchased and listing
the podcasts she had begged her husband to listen to. Her husband sat completely
frozen on the far side of the sofa, staring blankly at the floor in absolute
silence. She turned to me and wept, saying she was entirely done because she
felt like she was the only one trying to save their marriage. I have watched
this hundreds of times in my sixteen years of clinical practice. Well meaning
friends and pop psychology blogs will tell you that a partner who refuses to
read the books or do the exercises has simply checked out and does not care
anymore. As a clinician, I have to tell you that this common assumption is
completely wrong. When you feel like you are the only one fighting for your
relationship, your partner has not stopped caring. Their nervous system has
simply gone into a profound state of biological protection.

What I actually see inside the partner who appears to be doing absolutely
nothing is a terrified human being who is drowning in the fear of inadequacy.
You are both trapped in a severe negative cycle that I clinically call the Waltz
of Pain. In this cycle, the anxious partner desperately pursues connection to
avoid abandonment, and right now, that pursuit looks like frantically
researching relationship advice and demanding that your spouse engage. But to
the avoidant partner, your intense effort feels like a massive, suffocating wave
of engulfment. They hear every podcast recommendation and therapy request as
devastating proof that they are an utter disappointment who can never get it
right. They know they are already failing at home, and the thought of failing at
relationship homework is simply too much to bear. So, their amygdala fires,
their prefrontal cortex goes entirely offline, and they withdraw into dead
silence to survive the emotional flood of shame.

That pursue and withdraw loop has a name in my work, and I explain every step of it in my guide to the Waltz of Pain.

The profound tragedy of this dynamic is that the harder you try to force your
partner to work on the relationship, the more their survival brain detects an
engulfing threat. You simply cannot force a flooded nervous system into
vulnerability using logic, anger, or a new communication framework. But you are
absolutely not powerless just because your partner refuses to engage in the
exact way you want them to right now. Because you are both part of the same
biological system, changing how you reach out creates a profound shift that
naturally draws the other person back in. If you are exhausted by carrying the
entire weight of your marriage and want to know how to stop fighting a defensive
roommate, here is exactly how you can begin shifting this painful dynamic on
your own.

I’ve heard that exact thought from hundreds of clients sitting in my office. And I need to tell you something that might shift everything: the fact that you’re the only one trying does not mean your relationship is doomed. It means you’re the one who woke up to the pattern first. That’s not a curse. It might be the most important thing that’s happened in your relationship in years.

Why It Feels Like You’re the Only One Trying (But You Might Be Wrong)

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Here’s what I’ve learned from working with over 3,000 couples: the partner who looks like they’re “not trying” is almost always trying in ways you can’t see. They’re just trying differently.

When your partner goes quiet after a fight, they might be trying to not make things worse. When they change the subject, they might be trying to protect the relationship from another painful conversation. When they say “everything’s fine,” they might be trying to hold it together because they’re terrified that if they open up, the whole thing falls apart.

None of that looks like effort to the person who shows effort through talking, processing, and pushing for connection. The pursuer sees effort as engagement. The withdrawer sees effort as restraint. Both are trying. Neither can see the other’s version of trying.

This is the Waltz of Pain at work. The negative cycle that makes two people who love each other feel like enemies. One pursues, the other withdraws. One tries louder, the other tries quieter. And both end up convinced they’re alone in this.

Can One Person Fix a Relationship?

Yes, one person can start the repair, and in my office it is almost always one person who starts it. No, one person cannot finish it alone. Those two answers are both true, and holding them together is what keeps you from either giving up too early or burning yourself out.

Here is why one person can start it. Relationships are systems. This is not a metaphor. It is how human bonds actually function. You cannot change your steps in a dance and have your partner keep doing the same choreography. When you stop pursuing with criticism, the withdrawer’s wall loses its purpose. When you stop prosecuting, there is nothing left to defend against.

I have seen this play out hundreds of times. A wife comes to therapy alone because her husband refuses. She spends weeks learning her own patterns, understanding why she pursues so hard, recognizing the fear underneath her anger. She goes home different. Not performing different. Actually different. And her husband, who swore he would never set foot in a therapist’s office, starts asking questions: “What are you learning in there?” Not long after, he is sitting in my office. Not because she dragged him. Because something shifted and he wanted to understand what changed.

Here is why one person cannot finish it. Repair happens between two people. At some point your partner has to take the risk of reaching back. Your job is to make that reach feel safe enough to try. It is not your job to do the reaching for both of you. And if the pain in your relationship comes from something you did, the work looks different again; I walk through that in my guide to fixing a relationship you ruined.

Is It the Waltz, or Is It Really One-Sided?

Before you decide what to do, you need to know which situation you are in. Most relationships that feel one-sided are not. They are two people drowning in different oceans, each convinced the other is standing on dry land. What looks like apathy in one partner is often a nervous system in collapse. What looks like neediness in the other is often a nervous system in overdrive.

Signs your partner is overwhelmed, not gone

• They still react to your pain. Even shutting down is a reaction. Shutting down is not indifference. It is overwhelm.
• They have tried to change, even if they couldn’t sustain it. Inconsistent effort is frustrating, but it is not the same as zero effort. It usually means they want to show up but do not have the tools or the nervous system capacity to keep it going.
• They still get irritated with you. Irritation means their attachment system is still running. The love is still in the building.
• They show care in ways you might be discounting. Some withdrawers show love by fixing things, handling logistics, or simply staying, not through the talking and processing a pursuer is looking for.
• There is still longing under your anger. If you are furious but also heartbroken, that is attachment. Anger in relationships is almost always a protest against disconnection.

Signs it really is one-sided

• Active dismissal of the problem. Not just avoiding therapy, but insisting there is no problem at all.
• Zero emotional response to your pain. Not shutting down, which is a response, but the shrug, the eye-roll, the “I don’t know what you want from me” delivered with no distress underneath it.
• Broken promises with no visible remorse.
• Effort only when their comfort is threatened. They show up when you threaten to leave, then revert the moment the threat passes.
• Contempt or danger. Sustained contempt, abuse, or coercive control. If there is physical violence or abuse, saving the relationship is not the priority. Your safety is. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

If what you are seeing is the first list, you are almost certainly in the Waltz of Pain, and the Waltz is workable. If it is the second list, the question changes from “how do I fix this” to “what am I willing to accept, and for how long?” I come back to that question further down.

The Trap of Over-Functioning

If you’re the one doing all the relationship work, I need to ask you something uncomfortable: is it possible that your “trying” is actually part of the problem?

I don’t say that to blame you. I say it because I see a specific pattern repeatedly. The partner who over-functions in the relationship, who reads all the books, sends all the articles, initiates all the conversations, inadvertently creates a dynamic where the other partner doesn’t need to do any of that work. And can’t, because all the space is already taken.

It’s like two people on a seesaw. The harder you push down on your side, the more your partner goes up on theirs. You try more, they try less. Not because they don’t care, but because the system is balanced in a way that assigns those roles.

In the Empathi Method, we call the forces keeping you stuck in these roles “Protector Parts.” Your over-functioning is a Protector Part trying to manage the anxiety of disconnection. Your partner’s under-functioning might be a Protector Part trying to avoid the shame of getting it wrong.

When you understand this, you stop trying to fix your partner and start examining your own Protector Parts. And that shift, paradoxically, is often what creates room for your partner to step in.

How to Stop Over-Functioning Without Giving Up

I am not writing this from above the problem. Teale and I used to fight every night about who does the dishes. Every night. I would come home from work and she would be standing there with our daughter in her arms, and I would say, I am so tired, would you do the dishes tonight? She would look at me like I had lost my mind: I have been with her all day and you think I am the one to do the dishes? Do you not value me at all? And I would come straight back with: are you kidding me, I did seven sessions in a row.

So I did what over-functioners do. I solved it. In the story I tell on myself, I spent two weeks working out how to build a time machine, jumped thirty minutes into the future, found us laughing at the sink, and ran back with the answer. You wash, make extra bubbles, throw them at me. I clean the countertops and flick you with a tea towel. We put on music and dance. I presented it to her like a finished product.

Teale said something to me I will not print here. She was right. I had treated her like a logistics problem rather than a person who needed me to slow down and meet her first. The answer was in the part I skipped. When we finally got there, it sounded like this. Me: “I feel so bad when I don’t feel appreciated, and I felt like you don’t see what I do.” Teale: “I get it. I can feel like you think the work I do is less important, and it really hurts my feelings.” After that, every solution worked. Me doing the dishes worked. Her doing them worked. Nobody doing them worked. Because we were connected.

That is what stopping over-functioning means. Not doing less out of spite. Doing less fixing and more meeting. Whoever has the most awareness has the most responsibility, and if you are the one reading this, that is probably you. Three honest questions help:

• Have I said the soft thing, or only the grievance? “You never help” is a verdict. “I feel alone in this house” is a reach. Your partner’s body responds to each one very differently.
• Did I ask, or did I expect them to know? We expect our partners to be mind readers, and then we resent them for failing at telepathy.
• Am I doing more than my share and keeping score? Anticipating needs nobody voiced and then running a tab. Martyrdom and resentment are a package deal.

None of this makes you responsible for your partner’s behavior. It just hands you the one part of the pattern you can move: your own.

What Actually Shifts a Relationship When You’re Doing It Alone

Stop Leading with the Fix

Every time you come to your partner with a new technique, a new book recommendation, or “I learned something we should try,” you’re subtly communicating: “Something is wrong with us and I’m the one who knows how to fix it.” No matter how gently you say it, your partner hears: “You’re the problem and I’m the solution.”

Instead, start applying what you learn without announcing it. When the cycle kicks in, try responding differently. Don’t explain why. Just do it. When your partner notices the change, and they will notice, let them come to you with curiosity. That’s far more powerful than any article you could send them.

Learn Your Side of the Cycle

Before you change anything, get to know your own moves. Map your specific position in the cycle, your triggers, your Protector Parts, your attachment fears. Naming them gives you language for what’s been happening on autopilot.

When you can say “I pursue because silence feels like abandonment to my nervous system” instead of “you never talk to me,” the entire conversation changes. You’re no longer accusing. You’re revealing. And revelation invites connection in a way that accusation never can.

Regulate Your Nervous System First

You cannot fix a relationship from a dysregulated nervous system. When you’re flooded with anxiety about whether your partner cares, you can’t show up with the calm, grounded presence that actually invites them in.

The Empathi Method Masterclass includes specific nervous system regulation tools, not generic “take a deep breath” advice, but practiced responses to activation that become automatic over time. When you can stay regulated during conflict, your partner’s system co-regulates with yours. That’s not a metaphor. It’s neuroscience. Our nervous systems are designed to sync with each other, and calm is as contagious as panic.

Say What Is True for You, Without a Question Attached

If your partner has shut down, stop leading with the “us” conversation. “We need to talk about our relationship” is pursuit. “Why won’t you open up to me?” is pursuit. “I can’t keep living like this” is pursuit. Every one of those sentences, no matter how valid, lands on a withdrawer’s nervous system as confirmation that they have already failed you.

What works is revelation. Try something like: “I felt really alone tonight, and I just wanted you to know that.” No question attached. No demand for a response. Just a truth, offered without blame. Other versions that work the same way:

• “I miss you. I’m not asking you to fix anything. I just miss you.”
• “I think I’ve been coming at you with a lot of pressure, and I’m sorry. I get scared when we’re distant.”
• “I don’t need you to have the words right now. I just want you to know I’m on your side.”

Your partner’s protector parts were built to resist pursuit. They were not built to resist someone who is simply being honest about their own pain. It may not work the first time or the fifth time. But it disrupts the Waltz in a way nothing else does.

Change Your Part of the Dance

Relationships are systems. In a system, when one element changes, the entire system must recalibrate. You don’t need your partner to change for the relationship to change. You need to change your moves in the dance, and the dance itself will shift.

This is the core principle of the Empathi Method, and it’s backed by the attachment research. When a pursuer learns to share vulnerability instead of criticism, the withdrawer’s defensive wall loses its purpose. When a withdrawer learns to stay present instead of shutting down, the pursuer’s panic loses its trigger.

One person changing their part of the cycle doesn’t guarantee the other person will follow. But it creates the conditions for change in a way that begging, convincing, and over-functioning never will.

How to Get an Unwilling Partner to Try Couples Therapy

Your partner is not refusing therapy because they do not love you. They are refusing because they are fairly certain that therapy means sitting in a room while a professional confirms every fear they already have about themselves: that they are not enough, that the problem is them. Their refusal is protection, not apathy.

So the approach matters more than the argument. Four shifts lower a reluctant partner’s defenses:

• Move from persuasion to invitation. “I think we need therapy” sounds like a verdict. “I would really love some help understanding us better” does not.
• Reframe what therapy is for. “It’s not about who is right. It’s about seeing the patterns we both get stuck in, together.”
• Give them control. “I’m going to go work on this. I would love for you to come with me, but I’m going either way.” Said as commitment, not as a threat.
• Make the ask smaller. Not therapy as a concept. One session. One hour. Then stop talking.

And never bring it up in the middle of a fight. Every time therapy gets raised during conflict, your partner’s nervous system learns that therapy is a weapon. If they still say no, go yourself. When they see you coming home calmer, less reactive and more open, that is the most persuasive argument for therapy that exists. I go much deeper into this in what to do when your partner won’t go to therapy.

Protecting Yourself From Resentment and Burnout

If you have been the only one trying for a long time, you are probably carrying resentment, and you might feel guilty about it. Don’t. Resentment is not a character flaw. It is a secondary emotion, built from layers of hurt, disappointment, sadness and fear that never got tended. If anger is a fire, resentment is charcoal: cooler to the touch, but far more toxic to breathe.

The trap is that resentment leaks out as exactly the kind of pursuit that keeps your partner hiding. So protecting yourself is not selfish. It is part of the repair:

• Lead the first shift, but don’t carry the whole relationship. Changing your steps is not the same as doing your partner’s steps for them.
• Stop doing the invisible work you resent and haven’t asked for help with. Ask clearly, once, softly, instead of over-giving and keeping a tab.
• Get your own support. A friend, a therapist, a place where your loneliness is held so it doesn’t come out sideways at home.
• Name the hurt under the resentment. “I’m resentful” is charcoal. “I’ve felt so alone and unimportant” is the fire it came from, and that is the sentence your partner can actually respond to.

If resentment has already hardened, my step by step guide to fixing resentment in a relationship walks you through letting it go for good.

How Long Should You Keep Trying Alone?

There is no magic number, and anyone who gives you one does not understand the complexity of your life. What I look for is direction, not speed. Trust is not rebuilt through promises. It is rebuilt through consistency of behavior, what I call Proof of Work: love as energy spent crossing the bridge into your partner’s reality, day after day.

So give your changes enough time to be believed. A withdrawer has learned to expect pursuit, and one calm week will look like the calm before the next storm. After a real stretch of consistent change, look for softening: a little more eye contact, a question back, a moment of warmth before the wall goes up, a willingness to talk about the cycle. Small is fine. Small is how it starts.

If there is no softening at all, and your partner’s response looks like the “really one-sided” list above, that is information too.

When to Stop Trying and Walk Away

I want to be honest with you, because it would be irresponsible to only present the hopeful case. Some partners have checked out. Some are dealing with untreated addiction or deeply entrenched patterns they have no interest in examining. Some are simply staying because leaving is harder than staying, and they are content to let you carry the relationship indefinitely.

Staying in a genuinely one-sided relationship is not noble. It is not proof of your love or your commitment. It is the slow erosion of your sense of self, and you deserve better than being the sole architect of a life your partner refuses to help build.

You don’t have to decide tonight. But if you have changed your steps, held the change long enough to be believed, invited your partner in without pressure, and you are met with indifference rather than fear, it is time to ask yourself what you are willing to accept, and for how long. An individual therapist can help you answer that with clear eyes.

When Trying Alone Isn’t Enough

I want to be honest about the limits. If your partner is actively abusive, if there’s ongoing untreated addiction, if there’s a refusal to take any responsibility paired with contempt for your pain, doing your own work alone may not be sufficient. In those cases, individual therapy for yourself is the right first step, not to save the relationship, but to protect yourself and make clear-eyed decisions about your future.

If any of this is landing close to home, you can talk it through right now with Figlet, Figs’ AI relationship coach, and get an answer about your own situation in seconds. Ask Figlet about carrying all the effort.

But if your partner is avoidant, scared, overwhelmed, or simply wired to process things internally rather than externally? You have more power to shift things than you think. The research supports this. The clinical evidence supports this. And after 3,000 couples, my own experience supports this emphatically.

What to Do Tonight If You’re the Only One Trying

1. Don’t send the article, the podcast, or the book. Not tonight. Let the change come from you, not from a link.
2. Notice your body before you speak. When the urge to pursue hits, ask yourself where you feel it: tight chest, heavy stomach, hot face. That sensation is your own fear talking, not a verdict on your partner.
3. Offer one sentence of revelation, with no question attached. “I felt alone today, and I just wanted you to know.” Then let it sit.
4. Thank them for one small thing they already do. The withdrawer’s effort is often invisible. Seeing it out loud lowers their shame.
5. Do one thing for yourself that doesn’t depend on them. Call a friend, go for a walk, go to bed early. You are a person, not just the relationship’s project manager.
6. Write down what you’ll keep doing this week. One move you are changing, for seven days, whether or not they notice.

Common Questions About Fixing a Relationship Alone

Can one person save a relationship?

One person can start the change, and often that is all it takes for the other to come back in, because a relationship is a system that has to respond when one part moves. But repair eventually needs both people. If your partner never reaches back, even after you have changed your steps for a real stretch of time, one person cannot hold it together alone.

Should I stop trying to see if my partner notices?

Stop pursuing, not caring. Going cold as a test usually reads as punishment and confirms the withdrawer’s fear that they have already lost you. Instead, stop pushing the “us” conversation, stay warm, and let the absence of pressure give your partner room to reach toward you.

What do I say to a partner who won’t work on the relationship?

Say what is true for you without a demand attached: “I miss you, and I’m not asking you to fix anything right now.” Avoid “we need to talk,” “why won’t you try,” and anything that sounds like a verdict. Your partner can resist pursuit; it is much harder to resist honest, blame-free vulnerability.

What if my partner refuses couples therapy?

Go yourself. Invite once, softly (“I’m going either way, and I’d love you to come”), ask for one session rather than a commitment, then stop asking. Many reluctant partners come in later because they saw the person they love come home calmer and different.

Is it normal to resent being the only one trying?

Yes. Resentment builds from hurt that never got tended, and carrying a relationship alone creates a lot of it. Treat it as a signal to get support and to name the hurt underneath, not as proof that you are a bad partner or that the relationship is doomed.

How do I know when to stop trying?

When you have changed your own part consistently, invited your partner in without pressure, and you are met with indifference, contempt, or danger rather than fear and overwhelm. Shutting down is not the same as not caring. Zero emotional response, broken promises without remorse, and effort only when you threaten to leave are the signs that it really is one-sided.

Your Next Step

Stop trying to get your partner to change. Start understanding your own role in the cycle. If you’re ready for the full framework, the Empathi Method Masterclass gives you 16 modules of EFT-based tools designed to work even when you’re doing it alone. Buy one, your partner gets free access, and the 28-day guarantee means you risk nothing.

If you want a therapist in the room, book a free consult.

You are not stuck. You are not alone. And the work you do on yourself is never wasted, whether your partner joins you or not.

Figs O’Sullivan is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, creator of the Empathi Method, and co-host of the Come Here to Me podcast. He has worked with over 3,000 couples using Emotionally Focused Therapy. For the full overview, read the Empathi Method cornerstone article.

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