If you’ve ever been in a relationship where your partner was warm and loving on Tuesday and cold and distant by Thursday, you know what mixed signals feel like. It’s one of the most disorienting experiences in love. You start questioning everything: your instincts, your worth, whether you’re reading the situation correctly, whether you’re the problem.
Here’s what I want you to know right away: mixed signals in relationships are almost never about manipulation. They’re almost never about a partner who’s playing games. What you’re experiencing is usually much more layered, much more human, and much more fixable than you think.
I’ve been a couples therapist for over 16 years. I’ve worked with thousands of couples who walk in with some version of the same complaint: “I don’t understand my partner. One minute they want me close. The next minute they’re gone.” And after all that time, I can tell you that the explanation is rarely what the internet tells you it is. It’s not about narcissism. It’s not about someone “breadcrumbing” you. It’s about nervous systems doing exactly what they were designed to do when love feels threatened.
Let’s get into it.
What Mixed Signals Actually Are (And What They’re Not)
When most people Google “mixed signals,” they’re looking for a decoder ring. They want to know: does my partner like me or not? Are they in or are they out? But that framing misses something essential. It assumes your partner has one consistent internal state that they’re either revealing or concealing.
They don’t. Nobody does.
Attachment research tells us something that most relationship advice ignores completely: attachment styles are fluid, not fixed. Your partner isn’t one thing. They don’t have a single setting. The person who texts you three times in an hour and then goes silent for a day isn’t switching between “interested” and “not interested.” They’re switching between two different survival strategies, both of which are trying to protect the same thing: the relationship.
I call this “who you become when love is on the line.” Because that’s the real question. It’s not who your partner is when things are calm and easy. It’s who they become when they sense disconnection, when they feel criticized, when shame gets triggered, when they start to believe (consciously or not) that they’re about to lose you.
What you’re interpreting as mixed signals is often the rapid, fluid shifting of a nervous system under threat. And the thing about nervous systems is they don’t consult us before they act. They don’t say, “Hey, I’m going to shut down now, cool?” They just do it. And then both of you are left confused.
The Waltz of Pain: How Mixed Signals Get Created
Most mixed signals aren’t created by one person. They’re created by a pattern, a dance between two people. In my clinical work, I call this dance the Waltz of Pain.
Here’s how it works. In roughly 70 to 80 percent of relationships, you have a pursuer and a withdrawer. The pursuer is the one who reaches out when things feel disconnected. They text. They ask questions. They want to talk about the relationship. They protest the distance. In my framework, I call this person the Relentless Lover, because they refuse to give up on connection, even when their methods start to backfire.
The withdrawer is the one who pulls back when conflict rises. They go quiet. They need space. They shut down. I call this person the Reluctant Lover, not because they don’t love, but because their nervous system processes emotional intensity as danger. They love just as deeply, but their body tells them to retreat when things get hot.
Now here’s where the mixed signals start.
When the Relentless Lover reaches out, their intention is connection. But what lands on the Reluctant Lover often feels like criticism. It feels like evidence of their failure. “You never talk to me” translates internally to “You’re not enough.” And that triggers shame.
And what does shame do? It collapses you. It makes you retreat. So the Reluctant Lover withdraws further.
But that withdrawal? The Relentless Lover reads it as abandonment. As proof that their worst fear is true: this person doesn’t want them. So they pursue harder. They text more. They bring it up again. Their voice gets more urgent, more emotional.
And around and around it goes.
I use the term emotional boomerangs to describe what’s happening here. Both partners are doing exactly what makes logical sense to survive their own pain. The pursuer chases because connection is oxygen. The withdrawer retreats because space is safety. But each person’s survival strategy inadvertently guts the other person. Pursuit triggers withdrawal. Withdrawal triggers pursuit. And from the outside (or from inside the relationship), it looks like mixed signals. It looks like someone who pulls you close, then pushes you away.
But it’s not a choice. It’s a loop.
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The Burnt-Out Pursuer: When the Chaser Stops Chasing
Here’s something most relationship content won’t tell you, and it’s one of the most important dynamics I’ve observed in my career.
We collected data from over 40,000 people who took the Empathi relationship quiz. And what the data showed about pursuers surprised us.
The anxious, pursuing partner (the Relentless Lover) does not chase forever. They pursue until they collapse. And once they’re utterly depleted, once they’ve put everything they have into trying to reach their partner and gotten nothing back, their second and third most common behaviors become shutting down and withdrawing.
Read that again. What looks like a withdrawer is sometimes a pursuer who has given up.
This is one of the most confusing stages a relationship can enter. Because now you have two people who are both pulling away. Both partners simultaneously describe the other as the one who isn’t trying. Both feel abandoned. Both feel justified in their distance. And neither one recognizes that the person they fell in love with, the one who used to fight for the relationship, is still in there. They’re just exhausted.
If your partner used to be the one who always reached out, who always wanted to talk, who always tried to fix things, and they’ve suddenly gone cold, this might be what’s happening. They haven’t stopped caring. They’ve stopped believing that caring will make a difference.
This is not mixed signals in the way most people think of it. This is a signal, a very clear one, that the relationship’s emotional bank account is overdrawn. And it requires a fundamentally different response than “give them space.” What it usually requires is for the withdrawing partner to step toward the collapsed pursuer in a way they haven’t had to before. Because the music has changed, and the old dance won’t work anymore.
The Dueling Geminis: Why One Person Can Be Both Hot and Cold
I want to share something personal here, because I think it illustrates a point that clinical language alone can’t capture.
In my own marriage, I usually start conflicts as the pursuer. I’m the one reaching for connection, trying to bridge the gap. That’s my default wiring when love feels threatened.
But here’s where it gets complicated. If my wife is hurt and she withdraws, something shifts in me. Her withdrawal triggers my own shame. And suddenly, without making any conscious decision, I slip into the more avoidant part of myself. I shut down. I go quiet. And now my wife, who was initially withdrawing, has to switch roles and become the pursuer.
I call this phenomenon the Dueling Geminis. Because in any given conflict, you might play both roles. You might start as the one reaching out and end as the one shutting down. Your partner might start cold and end up chasing you.
From the outside, this looks insane. It looks like neither of you knows what you want. It looks like the definition of mixed signals.
But it’s not confusion. It’s the body’s protective strategies shifting in real time, frantically trying to survive the perceived loss of the attachment bond. Your nervous system doesn’t care about consistency. It cares about safety. And it will switch strategies mid-conflict if the first one isn’t working.
This is why the advice to “just communicate” is so hollow. Communication assumes a stable self delivering a stable message. But in activated conflict, you’re not stable. You’re shifting. And so is your partner. The goal isn’t better communication. The goal is understanding the pattern itself, the dance you’re doing together, so you can interrupt it before it pulls you both under.
Five Signs the Mixed Signals Are a Pattern (Not a Person)
How do you know if the hot-and-cold behavior you’re experiencing is a relationship pattern rather than a genuinely disinterested or unavailable partner? Here’s what I look for clinically:
1. The warmth is real, not performative. When your partner is present and connected, it doesn’t feel like they’re going through the motions. It feels genuine. If the warmth is real but inconsistent, you’re likely dealing with a pattern, not a person who doesn’t care.
2. The withdrawal follows a trigger. They don’t randomly go cold. Something precedes it: a conflict, a request for closeness, a vulnerable conversation, an external stressor. The withdrawal has a cause, even if neither of you can immediately name it.
3. There’s a rhythm to the cycle. Fight, distance, slow reconnection, closeness, trigger, fight again. If you can predict the cycle, it’s a pattern. Patterns are treatable. Random cruelty is not.
4. They show remorse or confusion about their own behavior. A partner trapped in a pattern often says things like, “I don’t know why I do that.” That’s not an excuse. It’s actually a sign that their behavior doesn’t match their intentions, which is the definition of being caught in a loop.
5. Both of you feel like the victim. In a toxic dynamic driven by one person’s intentional manipulation, there’s usually a clear aggressor. In a pattern-driven cycle, both people genuinely feel hurt, confused, and like the other person is the one causing the damage. If both of you feel like you’re on the losing end, that’s the Waltz of Pain, not a character flaw.
What To Do When You’re Getting Mixed Signals
If you’ve read this far and you’re recognizing your relationship, here’s what I’d suggest. These aren’t quick fixes. They’re paradigm shifts. But they work.
1. Stop diagnosing your partner and start mapping the pattern
The single biggest mistake I see people make is trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with their partner. They read about attachment styles and decide: “My partner is avoidant.” Or: “My partner is a narcissist.” And then they treat their partner as a fixed problem to be solved or abandoned.
But your partner is not the problem. The pattern is the problem. And you are part of the pattern too. That’s not blame. That’s actually good news. Because if you’re part of the pattern, you have leverage to change it.
Start by tracking the cycle. When does the warmth happen? When does the distance start? What triggers the shift? What do you do when they pull away? What do they do when you pursue? Map it out. Draw it on a napkin if you have to. Once you can see the loop, you’re no longer inside it.
2. Understand that their withdrawal is not about you
I know that sounds counterintuitive. They’re pulling away from you, so how is it not about you? But in most cases, the withdrawal is about their shame, their nervous system, their learned response to emotional intensity. You are the trigger, but you are not the cause. The cause usually pre-dates you by decades.
This doesn’t mean you accept endless withdrawal. It means you stop personalizing it long enough to respond differently. Because when you personalize withdrawal (“they don’t love me”), you pursue harder. And when you pursue harder, they withdraw more. And now you’ve just fed the loop.
3. Learn to differentiate a bid from a complaint
When your partner says, “You never want to spend time with me,” they are making a bid for connection wrapped in the language of complaint. If you respond to the complaint (“That’s not true, we spent all of last weekend together”), you miss the bid entirely. The bid underneath is: “I miss you. I want more of you. Am I still important to you?”
When you can hear the bid underneath the complaint, everything changes. Because now you’re responding to what your partner actually needs, not to what they literally said. And when people feel heard at the level of their need, the urgency drops. The pursuit softens. The withdrawal eases. The mixed signals start to resolve.
4. Create safety, not certainty
People caught in the mixed signals trap are usually chasing certainty. They want to know: is this relationship going to work? Does my partner love me? Will they stay? Those are valid questions, but certainty is a fantasy. No one can guarantee the future of a relationship. Not even healthy ones.
What you can create is safety. Safety means: I know that when we fight, we’ll find our way back. I know that when you pull away, it doesn’t mean you’ve stopped loving me. I know that you’re working on this too.
Safety doesn’t eliminate conflict. It eliminates the terror that conflict means it’s over. And once the terror decreases, the nervous system doesn’t need to activate those extreme strategies anymore. The hot-and-cold behavior naturally settles, because the survival threat is gone.
5. Get professional help (and get the right kind)
I’m biased here, obviously. But I also know what I’ve seen. Couples who try to break these patterns alone often make some progress, then get pulled back into the cycle during the next big stressor. A skilled couples therapist can help you see the pattern in real time, interrupt it during a session, and give you tools to interrupt it at home.
But not all couples therapy is created equal. Look for a therapist who works with patterns and cycles, not one who just teaches communication skills. Communication skills are useful, but they’re like giving someone a better steering wheel for a car that’s driving itself. You need someone who can help you get into the driver’s seat first.
When Mixed Signals Are Actually a Red Flag
I want to be honest about something, because I’d be doing you a disservice if I only talked about patterns without addressing the other possibility.
Sometimes mixed signals aren’t a pattern. Sometimes they’re a warning.
If your partner’s hot-and-cold behavior is paired with control, if the warmth only comes after they’ve hurt you, if you find yourself constantly walking on eggshells, if the “good times” feel like rewards for compliance rather than genuine connection, that’s not a nervous system pattern. That’s a power dynamic. And it requires a very different response.
The difference usually comes down to this: in a pattern, both people are in pain. In a power dynamic, one person is in pain and the other person is managing the relationship through fear. If you’re not sure which one you’re in, that’s a good reason to talk to someone, individually first, before bringing it into couples work.
Mixed Signals in Dating vs. Long-Term Relationships
I should note that mixed signals show up differently depending on the stage of your relationship. In dating, the hot-and-cold pattern often reflects genuine ambivalence, not about you specifically, but about the vulnerability required to let someone in. A new partner who is wildly enthusiastic on a date and then disappears for five days may be dealing with their own attachment history being activated by genuine attraction. The closer they get to caring, the more their nervous system sounds the alarm.
In long-term relationships, mixed signals almost always trace back to the pursuer-withdrawer pattern I described above. The couple has built a life together, they’ve been through enough to know how their partner responds under stress, and yet the pattern keeps repeating. In dating, the question is usually “are they interested?” In a committed relationship, the question shifts to “are they still here with me?” Same fear of loss. Different stage. Both deserve a thoughtful response, not a reactive one.
The Signal Underneath the Mixed Signal
Here’s what I’ve come to believe after 16 years of sitting across from couples in distress.
There’s almost always a signal underneath the mixed signal. And it’s usually the same one: I love you, and I’m terrified that this won’t work.
The pursuing partner who texts too much? That’s their signal. The withdrawing partner who goes silent for days? Same signal, different language. The partner who’s warm at dinner and distant in bed? Same signal again. They all mean the same thing: this relationship matters to me so much that I can’t regulate myself inside of it.
That’s not a character flaw. That’s the human condition. Love is the highest-stakes game we play, and our nervous systems know it. The fight-or-flight response that served us well on the savannah doesn’t retire when we fall in love. It just redirects. Instead of running from predators, we run from (or toward) each other.
If you’re getting mixed signals from someone you love, I’d encourage you to hold two things at once: the frustration of not knowing where you stand, and the compassion of understanding why they can’t stand still. Not because you should tolerate indefinite confusion. But because understanding the “why” is what gives you the power to change the “what.”
Mixed signals aren’t the end of the story. They’re usually the middle. And the middle is where the real work happens.
Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
