"She's just jealous" advice doesn't work, this does when they go cold

Picture the scene, someone you used to care about suddenly goes cold that once used to be warm towards you and you have no absolute reason why. Your closest friends and family pull for the closest advice they can think of, “She’s just jealous.” Please do appreciate her, they care about you and are trying to genuinely help you feel better. The problem is that this advice wears off and it doesn’t last for very long, maybe only even for a day. What ends up happening next is you trying to figure her out but since you can never actually get inside her head, you never get a real answer about what happened. Here’s my 4-step answer to what to do next:

Step 1:

Change the question, stop asking why she stopped being warm. Instead, start asking, “WHAT ROLE WERE YOU PLAYING THAT SHE EXPECTED YOU TO KEEP PLAYING?”

In one sentence: I was the one who ______ and I stopped.”

Freeze outs are rarely random, if you track a timeline, you’ll almost find it landed right after something changed. You got more confident, you stopped over explaining, you said no for once, you were promoted. You outgrew a version of yourself the relationship was quietly built around. And she noticed before you even did. The cold shoulder is the response to you changing.

Step 2:

Start noticing it in real time.

When someone starts pulling back, it never arrives as obvious conflict, instead it arrives as a small tug. That can look like a comment that makes you second guess the thing you just did well. Them withdrawing warmth right when you started succeeding. Or maybe it was a joke that was at your expense but wasn’t really a joke. When they do those things, they’re trying to pull you back down to your old role, to make you shrink back. If you’re able to feel that in the moment, notice that tug, it’s going to help you stop shrinking and personalizing whatever they’re doing to you.

Step 3:

Don’t get small, hold your ground. You don’t want to go back to your old role. This part is hard and if it’s hard for you, you can always book a 1:1 with me and we can practice this part, it’s one of the hardest steps for my clients.

Step 4:

If she comes back warm months later, continue to hold your ground and stay the size you grew to. See if the relationship can hold the new you or if she goes quiet again. Pay attention to how she comes back. Is she meeting the person you’ve become or testing to see if the old you is still available. One is real repair and the other is the same pattern.

Your final takeaway:

When they go cold, it’s often a sign that you stopped playing the part and role they expected you to play. While yes, they might be jealous, instead of using that to tell yourself to feel better, try the above instead. This isn’t a mindset to adopt once, it’s a set of moves you can get better at every time you see the pattern show up and now you know them!

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xo,

Dr. C