#182: What to Do When Your Partner Doesn't Want to Work on Themselves (or the Relationship)
One of the hardest things to face in a relationship is feeling like you're growing and evolving, while your partner seems simply unwilling to meet you there. Maybe you’ve suggested therapy, brought up recurring issues, or shared books and podcasts you love, only to be met with silence, shutdown, or defensiveness.
In this episode, we’re exploring what to do when your partner doesn’t seem interested in personal growth or improving the relationship. We’ll talk about why this happens, what it means (and doesn’t mean), and how to navigate it in a way that honours your own needs without defaulting to blame or control.
Whether you're in a long-term partnership or navigating something newer, this conversation will help you feel more grounded and clear in how you show up when things feel one-sided.
In this episode, I cover:
Why some people resist self-work or relationship growth
How attachment styles shape our responses to discomfort and change
The difference between inviting vs. demanding growth
Why your healing doesn’t depend on your partner's participation
What to do when you’ve tried everything and still feel stuck
Highlighted Resources
Download the FREE Anxious Attachment Starter Kit here
It’s a deeply frustrating experience — doing the work on yourself, feeling hopeful about what’s possible, and then bumping up against a partner who seems unwilling to meet you there. Whether they outright refuse to engage, subtly resist every attempt at deeper connection, or simply seem disinterested in personal growth or relationship work, it can leave you feeling helpless and heartbroken.
If you’re in this position, know that you’re not alone. This dynamic is incredibly common, particularly for those with more anxiously leaning attachment styles, who are often the initiators of growth and connection in their relationships. So let’s explore how to make sense of it—and what to do when you’re stuck in a one-sided dynamic of growth.
The Hurt of Feeling Alone in the Effort
It’s natural to feel hurt when your partner doesn’t show the same level of willingness to work on things. You might start questioning how much they care about you, or the relationship. It can feel personal—like their resistance is proof that you’re not important enough, or that they don’t take the relationship seriously.
From an anxious attachment lens, this is especially triggering. If your sense of safety in relationships is tied to togetherness, connection, and shared growth, your partner’s resistance might feel like rejection or abandonment. That pain is real—and it deserves compassion.
But as difficult as it is, it's also important to recognise that your partner’s resistance may not be about you.
Understanding Where the Resistance Comes From
Many people—especially those with more avoidant attachment patterns—find the idea of relationship work confronting. Not because they don’t care, but because it can stir up deep feelings of inadequacy, shame, or failure.
For someone with an avoidant tendency, constant efforts to improve the relationship may register not as love or care, but as criticism: “You’re never happy with me.” “It’s never enough.” This can be profoundly demoralising and lead them to shut down or pull away.
At the same time, anxious partners often bring a sense of urgency to fixing problems. They tend to operate from a mindset of “more”—more communication, more closeness, more work. This can feel overwhelming for someone who values peace, autonomy, or harmony over constant introspection.
Understanding these differing lenses is not about excusing harmful behaviour, but about softening our judgments. When we assume there’s a good reason behind someone’s resistance—even if we don’t understand it fully—it opens the door to more compassionate, collaborative communication.
Focus on What’s Within Your Control
When we feel helpless in a relationship, our instinct is often to try harder to get our partner on board. But the most empowering move you can make is to bring your focus back to yourself.
You can’t force someone to change, but you can continue to grow and heal on your own path. And crucially, you can decide what you need in order to feel safe, supported, and fulfilled in a relationship.
By turning inward, you’ll not only cultivate greater self-worth and clarity—you may also shift the relational dynamic. When you stop over-functioning or overextending to compensate for your partner’s resistance, it can create space for them to step up. And if they don’t, you’ll be in a much more grounded place to make decisions about the future of the relationship.
Be Open to Growth Looking Different
It's also worth remembering that not everyone will engage in personal growth in the same way. Just because your partner isn’t reading books or listening to podcasts doesn’t mean they’re not reflecting or evolving. Some people process things more internally, or engage with change in quieter, less visible ways.
Try to stay open to the possibility that growth may look different for them—and that your way isn’t the only valid way.
That said, if you’ve been doing your own work, growing, and showing up differently, and your partner continues to resist or shut you down, it’s okay to acknowledge that misalignment. You’re allowed to outgrow a relationship that no longer reflects your values or vision.
Invite, Don’t Instruct
When you do bring up issues with your partner, try to invite collaboration rather than instructing or lecturing. Instead of saying “You need to change,” consider saying, “I’m feeling stuck here and I don’t want us to keep going in circles. I’d love for us to find a new way through this—do you have any ideas?”
This approach recognises that you’re a team. It respects their autonomy while making space for your needs. It’s more likely to be received openly than a dynamic where you’re the teacher and they’re the reluctant student.
You Can’t Lose by Doing Your Work
Ultimately, choosing to do your own inner work is never wasted effort. Whether your partner joins you or not, you will benefit. You’ll gain clarity, confidence, and the ability to make decisions from a place of self-trust rather than fear.
And if you do reach the point where you realise the relationship can’t meet your needs, you’ll be better equipped to navigate that choice with courage and self-respect.
The road to secure love often begins with self-leadership. And no matter where your partner stands, you always have the power to lead yourself.
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:28]:
In today's episode, we're talking about what to do when your partner doesn't want to work on themselves or the relationship. So this is such a common one. I know for so many people who I work with, in fact in the last couple of weeks, I feel like I've fielded variations on this from a number of people in my Healing Anxious Attachment course and community space. I feel like a lot of people are struggling with this, and as is always the case, if a small sample that I'm interacting with is struggling with it, I'm sure that more people in my broader community are struggling with it as well. And it can be so frustrating and defeating. It's certainly a situation that I've personally been in, and as I said, comes up a lot amongst the people that I work with.
[00:01:17]:
So I want to share some thoughts today on what do you do if you find yourself in this situation where you are really wanting to work on the relationship, and maybe you're really doing a lot of work on yourself, and you really want your partner to be on board with that. Maybe you're really excited about all of the things you're learning, and you can really see the benefits, but your partner is disinterested, not willing to engage, and maybe really actively pushes back against any attempts that you might make to bring them along for the ride or welcome them into the work or suggesting resources, suggesting things you think they might find interesting. If there is a real friction there, and you're feeling a little disheartened by their unwillingness. How do we navigate that? How long do you persist in those sorts of dynamics? Do you just make your peace with the fact that they are not interested in that? What do you do if there are things that you feel really do need to shift or change in order for the relationship to be viable? How long do you wait? All of these questions that spring from this sort of fundamental conflict point around when one person is doing the work and wanting to do the work, and the other isn't. So that's what I'm going to be sharing some thoughts on today. As I said, I know that this is a very very common one, and so hopefully it's one that a lot of people will get a lot out of. Before I dive into that, a couple of quick announcements. The first being just a reminder about my free resource, the Anxious Attachment Starter Kit.
[00:02:46]:
If you haven't downloaded it, definitely do, particularly if what I'm talking about today resonates with you because it really is a great starting resource for folks with anxious attachment patterns. Maybe you're not quite ready to dive into one of my courses or invest at that level yet, but the free starter kit is still really comprehensive. You get a I think it's about a forty minute video where I'm sharing about my own journey with anxious attachment and how I got from where I was to where I am. There's a guided meditation of affirmations for anxious attachment, as well as a workbook that gives you some journal prompts and some other reflection questions to build some more self awareness around your relationship patterns, and get really clear around what drives you and what you need in order to thrive in a relationship. Those are all exclusive resources that you won't find anywhere else, and they are completely free in the Anxious Attachment Starter Kit. So the link to that is in the show notes. Definitely check it out. As I said, it's a really helpful resource if you are just starting out on your journey.
[00:03:46]:
The second quick announcement is a really exciting one. I'm going to be in London in September year, and I'm planning to hold an event. If that sounds a little vague, it's because I haven't firmed up the details yet, but I am taking expressions of interest, building a waitlist for people who are interested in that, which will help me to decide what it looks like. So not sure yet whether it will be sort of an intimate workshop akin to what I ran in Sydney late last year, or whether it will be more of a bigger talk or an event like that. But irrespective, if you are in London or around London or willing to travel to London in September, please jump on the waitlist. And if you want to reach out to me on Instagram or send an email letting me know that you'd be keen, all of that is really helpful for me in planning and finalising the details to make sure that it suits the needs of people who are willing to come. So please do jump on the waitlist. Again, link is in the show notes.
[00:04:39]:
Or come in and find me on Instagram and send me a message there. That would be super helpful and I am already so excited. I shared about it this morning on my Instagram stories and I've already had a bunch of people jump on the waitlist in less than an hour. So that bodes really well for what will hopefully be an exciting event in London later in the year. Okay. So let's dive into this conversation around what to do when your partner doesn't want to work on themselves or the relationship. So I just want to start out by validating how hard this feels. And as I said, I've been there.
[00:05:11]:
It is a familiar experience for me that I remember well. There have been times in in multiple relationships that I've been in where I've felt like I'm up against resistance in wanting to work through something in the relationship, and that sense of having tried everything. Maybe you've tried directly suggesting things, maybe you've shared resources, maybe you've tried a more hands off approach, and tried leaving them to their own devices, and not wanting to be controlling or pushy or whatever, and it feels like none of the things that you're trying, even though they're across a spectrum of directness or intervention, none of it is getting much traction. None of it is inspiring willingness or growth in your partner, and so you can feel a bit stumped in terms of, well, what do I do now? Nothing is working. Right? So I just want to validate how frustrating and disheartening that can feel, because when we really want the relationship to work, we really want to solve whatever the thing is that feels like it, particularly if it's a make or break thing. The stakes feel so high, and so of course there is a sense of urgency and gravity about it. And when you're met with unwillingness, oftentimes you will perceive that as 'if you cared about the relationship, if you loved me, you would want to work on this', So the fact that you are resistant must mean that you're not that invested. Right? That's a really common interpretation of someone's unwillingness, particularly if you are coming from a more anxious attachment place.
[00:06:47]:
And that can really hurt and it can really sting. And it can be really confusing as well. Like, how could you love me but not want to solve this thing? So reconciling all of that. And of course, as we learn more about this, we start to understand that there's a lot of projection in that. We're assuming that someone sees the world, sees relationships in the same way that we do, and is operating on the same kind of framework and blueprint that we have, which is why it's so helpful to learn more about different attachment patterns and how wildly different our view of things can be, while being grounded in a very real and valid experience on both sides. So I do just want to start out by saying I get it. I get the frustration, I get the exasperation, I get the confusion and the doubt and the hurt and the worry and the anxiety that comes with feeling like you're up against a brick wall on something that feels so so important, and particularly if it's a non negotiable or a deal breaker for the relationship. With that being said, I think we do have to walk around to the other side, as always.
[00:07:46]:
It's like, how can I approach this with curiosity and an assumption of validity? So in the same way that the experience you're having is real and valid, so too is the experience that they're having. And if we can step outside of our agenda for a moment and be genuinely curious, not curious in the sense of, oh I'll try and understand what your resistance is so that I can reverse engineer a way to dissolve that resistance, so that I can further my own agenda of trying to get you to change, right? I I say that having definitely had that, whether conscious or or subconscious, that motive before. Like genuinely curious of like, why does this feel threatening to you? What is it about me wanting to work on the relationship? Or the whole idea of personal development, self inquiry, why does that feel threatening to you? Why is that something that you push away so insistently? And I think we have to assume that there's good reason for that. Rather than judging it, or blaming, shaming, attacking, criticizing, assuming that it's wrong, let's assume that there's a really good reason for it, and then get curious as to what that might be. So in the case of avoidant attachment, oftentimes, I've talked about this before, there is a core wound around defectiveness or inadequacy, and the flip side of that, in much the same way as anxious attaches have a core wound around unworthiness and tend to deal with that wound or manage that wound by over functioning, over giving, striving, trying to prove worth, for more avoidant people who have this wound around inadequacy, failure, they tend to protect that wound by trying to be successful. Right? And it's so important for people with avoidant patterns to feel successful in their relationships and in their lives. And what successful often looks and sounds and feels like is that I'm doing a good job. And so this is why a lot of avoidant people react poorly to the constant efforts on the anxious partner's side to always be improving things, the sense that their anxious partner is always upset about something, that there's always more that we could be doing to improve the relationship.
[00:10:06]:
It comes across to many avoidant people as like, it's never enough. Nothing I do is ever enough. You're never happy with me. You're never satisfied, and that makes me feel like a failure and a disappointment, and that is really demoralising. So, understanding that you're coming at this issue of, like, self improvement or relationship improvement from totally different places. There's this proactive part on the anxious attached side that's like, why wouldn't we want to plug every little teeny tiny hole in the boat ahead of time so that nothing bad ever happens, nothing ever gets in the way of our connection and our relationship, and we could always be more connected, and going deeper and deeper. There's just this sense of more, more, more on the side of the anxious attacher. And as I said, that's not all bad, that's not something we need to pathologize or make wrong, but noticing the underbelly side of that, that there is a safety that comes from ever more connection, right? The bottomless pit of I just always want more from you, And I think that can come from a place of really struggling to feel safe, to just rest in a relationship that feels like enough because we've always got this edge of hyper vigilance, this sense that the other shoe is going to drop, the sense that trouble is always just around the corner, and so we feel like we always have to be doing, doing, doing to get ahead of any problems.
[00:11:34]:
From the avoidance side, there's a really high value placed on relational harmony. And just to preempt anyone who's going to say, what, so I just have to swallow all of my problems and never say anything?' and no, that's not what I'm saying, that's never what I'm saying. But recognizing that there might be a middle ground here in terms of how we approach things so that it doesn't feel like this relentless, almost like tidal wave of things we need to work on before we can just enjoy each other. Right? And anxious attaches, I've talked about before, tend to come in with 15 things that I want to work on. And even if your partner is actually making progress and doing a good job on a few of them, your focus is always going to be on the things that are imperfect or not yet as you want them to be, and you may overlook all of the progress that has been made. You may miss the big picture and that can, again, feel really uninspiring, really demoralising for someone who is genuinely putting in effort and genuinely wants to make you happy. If they don't feel encouraged, they don't feel seen or appreciated for the effort that they are putting in, all of that can contribute to an overall environment where their instinct is to be resistant to your efforts or attempts at getting more from them, when they already feel like they're trying and they're giving, and it's never enough. So with that being said, let's shift now to talking about what you can do.
[00:13:05]:
Having contextualised, like, why this happens and what it looks and feels like on both sides. What can you do? What is actually a productive, constructive step that you can take if you find yourself in this situation? So I think the thing to emphasize here, and I've spoken about this so many times before, it really is a fundamental tenet underpinning so much of my work, is that focusing on your own growth, you can never lose. Right? Either you focus on your own growth and you experience the benefits of that, which for an anxiously attached person are many. Really, that is the heart of your work, is to bring it back to you. And we know that that relational hyperfocus, that excessive emphasis on what are they doing and what are they not doing, and I have to control them in order to feel safe inside myself, that is really a key expression of your anxious attachment patterns, and so shifting the spotlight back to you, shifting the center of your focus back within, and going, what's within my control? How can I create safety for myself? How can I attend to my own needs, how can I attune to my own experience? That is powerful and important work for you no matter what's happening over there with them. And so I really, really believe that you cannot lose, you can only win by bringing that emphasis back onto yourself. Now, what will often happen is that in doing that, you will create a ripple effect in your relationship. We talk about what is the overall relational environment looking like? And one person, while you can't single handedly save a relationship or transform a relationship, you can absolutely shift the balance there by working on cleaning up your side of the street and changing the way that you do things because, you know, you are one input to that system.
[00:14:55]:
And so when you change one of the inputs, oftentimes you will get a different output, you will get a different result. And so doing all of your work on yourself and the way you show up, and your own boundaries, your own maybe not so healthy behaviors around over functioning or controlling or criticizing, blaming, the way you communicate in conflict, all of that stuff can absolutely really shift things on the other side. Not only in an immediate sense, but also in terms of softening their resistance and their unwillingness that they might otherwise have that is a function of all the patterns I was describing earlier. So oftentimes that will naturally take care of itself when more emotional safety and trust is built through you working on your stuff. Now the other possibility is that you do all of your work, and still there is unwillingness or resistance in them. And that is a possibility, right? Not everyone is going to come on the journey, and not everyone is interested in doing this kind of work. And I should say here that another really important thing to be mindful of is that people will engage in their journey, their growth, in different ways. It's not going to look the same for everyone, so just because your partner is not signing up to online courses or listening to relationship podcasts doesn't mean that they don't care.
[00:16:15]:
They might just be looking to engage in it in a way that feels good to them, in a way that really resonates. So just be mindful and try and be a little flexible and open minded. They don't have to find talk therapy really helpful, if that's what you find really helpful. They might have a different inroad to working on themselves and getting to know themselves. So trying to release the grip a little on it needing to look the same way as your work looks, because oftentimes it won't. But nevertheless, if you do find yourself in a situation where you've really been taking responsibility for your part, you've really cleaned up your side of the street, and you're feeling like maybe you're outgrowing your partner, they're just not coming along for the ride, and you don't know what to do with that. And maybe you're even wondering, like, how much longer do I wait? Of course that's a bit of an open question, and it's not one that I can say, oh wait three months and then make a decision. It's going to depend on a million and one variables.
[00:17:15]:
But I guess the maybe the annoying answer to that, but the honest one is the more you do your own work, and a big part of that is building up your sense of self worth and your sense of self trust, your discernment, and your clarity and confidence around what do I need in order to thrive in a relationship? How long am I willing to stick around in the face of someone's resistance? Is there resistance about really core, fundamental parts of the relationship? Or is it peripheral, things that I can live with? All of those questions are ones that you can approach with a level of maturity and discernment and deep self knowing and self awareness that is only going to benefit from you having done your work. Again, all roads lead back to you cannot lose by focusing on your stuff. So that is, again, I recognize that's maybe not the advice you want to hear, you want some sort of hack that gets them to the table against their willingness. But the core of my advice, as always, is focus on you and you can't lose. With that being said, I will wrap up by sharing a couple of things that you might try in terms of the way you approach the communication with your partner that can help to elicit more willingness and openness in them than what you might have been trying, which might have been coming from a more guarded place that can have a bit of judgement or accusation or disapproval wrapped up in it, which is almost always going to elicit resistance in them. So I think a really good guiding principle is to make it a collaborative proposition rather than a, like, me coaching you, or me teaching you, or me telling you what you should do because I know more than you. That's almost always going to be met with pushback and someone saying like, don't tell me what to do, right, just instinctively. I think again with people with more avoidant patterns, they really want to feel respected, and part of feeling respected is like, you see me as a competent adult, right? And you're not babying me, you're not over functioning, you're not mothering me, you're not coaching me.
[00:19:19]:
I don't want that from you, even though you think you're doing it from a loving place. I feel controlled and I feel patronized and condescended to, even where that's not the intention. So shifting to a more collaborative approach, so maybe if there's a repeated conflict that you keep having, saying something like, I'm really at my wits end and I don't know where we go from here.' I would love for us to find a way to approach this issue that doesn't leave us going around in circles again and again and again, because I know it's tiring for both of us, and neither of us are enjoying this. Do you have any ideas? Right? Open up the conversation in a way that acknowledges, like, we both hate this, this sucks for both of us. I'm not the one with all the answers, I'm not the one trying to tell you what to do, or say that you're the problem and you need to change. Like clearly, there's a problem here that we need to find another way of approaching or another solution to. I've got some ideas, do you have any ideas? I think that that is much more likely to get someone's buy in and opt in than something that's like you telling them, like, you need to go to therapy or why don't you ever want to do blah blah blah blah blah. I'm the one who's doing all the work.
[00:20:30]:
You're not doing any of the work. Like, all of that establishes a a dynamic where you are speaking down to someone even if you don't mean to be. And again, avoiding people in particular are gonna have a big pushback response to that because it's gonna touch into all of those core wounds that we talked about. Not only the wanting to feel successful, and not wanting to feel inadequate, or broken, or bad, but also all of their stuff around independence, and autonomy, and not wanting to feel controlled by a partner. So being really mindful of that, and trying to loop them into a solution, being genuinely flexible and open minded as to what they may think and what they may have to say about a path forward, that's so much more likely to stick and to feel good for both of you than a solution that you're dictating, and they're either flatly refusing to engage with, or maybe they're agreeing in the moment to kind of wrap up the conversation, but they don't actually follow through on because their heart wasn't in it. They didn't believe in it. They didn't agree with it. Okay.
[00:21:31]:
I'm gonna leave it there. I hope that that's been helpful. As I said, definitely check out the anxious attachment starter kit if all of the things I've been speaking about today resonate. It's a it's a nice next step into my work if you know that this is some stuff that you need to work on but you don't really know where to go with it. But otherwise, I really hope you enjoyed it. Let me know. Leave me a review or a comment on Spotify or YouTube if you're watching there. Let me know if this landed for you. If you have any questions or future episode requests, I'm always happy to receive them. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:22:06]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
On Attachment, attachment, insecurity, thriving relationships, relationship work, Healing Anxious Attachment course, partner disinterest, personal development, self-inquiry, communication, avoidant attachment, emotional safety, trust, boundaries, over-functioning, controlling behaviour, relationship patterns, self-awareness, relational harmony, conflict resolution, relational environment, relational dynamics, relationship podcasts, relational growth, self-worth, self-trust, London event, attachment journey, Anxious Attachment Starter Kit, guided meditation.