‘Let go or be dragged.’ (zen proverb)

‘If he wanted to, he would’

This phrase is really doing its rounds on social media.

I am pleased to say that some of my younger clients have been able to steady themselves by holding this phrase in mind when they’re caught in relationships with terrible odds of longevity.

Not because the phrase is perfectly accurate- it really is not! It completely disregards contextual issues, consistency resulting from attachment issues, and many other factors. But what it does well is enable those who overthink and overinterpret in relationships (those that are clearly not based on mutual interest) to recognise that the other person has a will of their own. And is choosing not to make efforts!

This understanding can, in turn, help interrupt a more damaging pattern of endless over-explaining, ‘fixing’ and self-blame.

Understanding chasing behaviours, their origin and most importantly, the result of them is going to save you untold amounts of pain in relationships and dating. And if you are someone who is caught up in this type of situation, this article will also teach you the basics of letting go and opening up your life and heart for something more stable and satisfying.

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The dopamine system loves intermittent ‘hits’

From a neurobiological perspective, the dopamine system, also referred to as the reward pathway in the brain, evolved to keep us pursuing what is scarce, uncertain, or intermittent. In all those examples, note that unpredictability acts as a powerful driver!

As a Psychologist and expert in the treatment of gambling addiction, the impact that intermittent reinforcement has on our behaviour and thinking really cannot be emphasised enough! I have written plenty about this in previous posts here on Medium.

Repeated exposure to intermittent reinforcement warps our thinking and attention, messes with our sense of control and encourages us to imagine that we have control even in situations where we clearly have none.

When a love interest withdraws, your brain interprets it as a ‘potential reward’ rather than the losing streak you are truly on. So instead of activating your boundaries and pointing you towards a path where you honour yourself and your self-respect, it triggers the urge to chase, check, explain, and control.

Once stuck in this ‘mode’, the dopamine system stays activated, anxious, and keeps prompting you to abandon everything, including yourself, to just keep pursuing.

Dopamine is far more than a pleasure chemical…

A common misconception is the idea that dopamine is simply a ‘pleasure chemical’. Seeing it as such can lead to many misunderstandings. In evolutionary terms, the dopamine system is a ‘seeking system’. It evolved to prioritise survival by motivating repeated pursuit in uncertain environments.

Since dopamine is activated in anticipation and not necessarily through satisfaction, those who think of dopamine only as a pleasure chemical can very easily come to overlook its involvement at the point where pleasure no longer appears to be the driving force of continued chasing.

The moment your effort exists to compensate for someone else’s absence, you are no longer partaking in a healthy dynamic. You are entering a blind pursuit. This experience will be vastly different from being part of a healthy, balanced relationship where safety and stability are built through the process of getting to know each other. In fact, in dynamics where the dopamine system has been hi-jacked people are so single-focused on the pursuit itself that bad traits as well as experiences can easily be turned into obstacles that you can work even harder to overcome.

While this type of chase would have been adaptive in evolutionary terms if it meant continuing the search for food despite the repeated setbacks and unsuitable conditions, in modern relational contexts, this same evolutionary drive will instead keep people locked in cycles of chasing and longing long after the emotional cost outweighs the reward. This same phenomenon is ever-present for those who are addicted gamblers who keep gambling harder instead of less because of their losses in the deluded hope of winning back what’s been lost.

Attention biases fuel the chase further

Dopamine fuels pursuit by sharpening focus on what might reward us, which is why uncertainty and withdrawal can intensify attachment rather than ease it.

It also messes with our attention and a narrowing of focus, where contradictory information is filtered out and instead our attention latches on to the continued chase and interprets it as a sign of meaningfulness. In simple terms, you will no longer be able to see the woods for the trees at this point!

The narrowing effect of dopamine on our behaviour and attention (ref 1) also explains why letting go can feel uncomfortable even when it is the healthier choice. As the chasing intensifies, you will notice that you become more obsessive and fixated, as well as more compulsive and void of normal logical reasoning.

Love can contain anxious anticipation, but not with the emphasis on anxious…

Pursuit often feels urgent and a bit anxious rather than purely enjoyable. Very sadly, many people in new relationships confuse this butterfly sensation with chemistry and ‘love’. This is not to say it could not be part of your experience also in a loving relationship, but it is important to understand that this feeling alone should not be used to assess the healthiness of the relationship! There is a need to look at the bigger picture and ensure that other factors such as respect, reciprocity and mutual investment are also present.

The two types of pain of chasing

If we translate relationship chasing into financial terms, you are basically investing in dead stock or stock that is losing value. Even in investing, a lot of people, of course, think ‘oh well, I’ll just buy some cheap stocks now and watch how much they will inflate later’.

That part is, however, only true in finance. In relationships, investing in cheap stock i.e., those who are not there for you, not making an effort and/or showing zero interest in committing to you will absolutely not be the ones to make you an emotional millionaire. Rather, it will backfire and leave you feeling doubly empty!

To make sure you know the difference between chasing and showing up in a relationship with passion, let us break them down:

Chasing is driven by fear of loss, not desire

increasing effort when there is no reciprocation
involves explaining, persuading, fixing, waiting, accomodating.
monitoring shifts in tone, timing, or availability, re-reading messages, reading into silence and being overly empathetic to disappearances, long periods of absence and blatant excuse making. Even when such hurts you periodically.

Chasing dynamics are notorious for creating anticipatory anxiety. You get hooked on the excitement that waiting for something good will provide you with. But just like a sucker at a losing table in the casino, you will be waiting in vain.

Each emotional win will be followed by more losses, and the very feeling of losing control in the relationship will sadly make you want to chase more.

Passion

Passion, on the other hand,d is driven by our values and choice. It can make us feel alive and expansive, but also grounded. Some examples of how that looks:

showing interest without losing self-respect
expressing needs once clearly and watching what happens
investing where energy flows back and you feel seen and appreciated
remaining connected to your own limits while also feeling excited about giving of yourself to a new partner
The behaviours that we are passionate about are still consistent with your values

If you are struggling with this differentiation in a current relationship, a fairly simple question you can use to set yourself straight is:

‘Will doing more of these behaviours result in feeling better and more aligned with my values, or is the opposite true?

Overextending yourself sends off a vibe of desperation

Back in the days when I had first started taking on private clients as a more junior Psychologist, I remember thinking, ‘these guys are paying me to fix them-how can I ensure I provide enough value for them’.

As a result of my own insecurity as a more junior Psychologist, I would overextend my schedule to accommodate them, follow up if I did not hear back after the assessment and chase a referral with a second email if I did not hear back after the first one.

Much like following up with a job application that you never heard back from, the ‘chasing up’ to see if perhaps they did not get your application, or just to see if you got the job despite not hearing, I quickly learnt that these behaviours would typically be in vain.

If a client had doubts already, the therapist chasing them down to check and see if they perhaps would like to be dragged to therapy would most definitely backfire. If not on the first appointment, then after, as that same person was not motivated enough to actually schedule their initial consultation without your prompt.

If a client drops out, it is pretty futile to chase. I will get in touch to let them know I enjoyed working with them, make sure they are OK and to let them know they are discharged unless I hear back from them. But reaching out to ‘check’ in the event they need more sessions is a great big no-no for me, as I find this type of action shifts too much of the responsibility for the process over to me as a therapist.

And whilst this is not a training session in how to become a therapist, the rules of emotional responsibility and boundaries are pretty universal to all relationships. Not only those between people, but also the relationship between one person and their desires and pursuits.

If one person chases, the other person will run. Push too hard when nothing is shifting, and you will hurt yourself.

Chasing pretty much anything in life simply does not work.

So what do you do instead? You work towards letting go.

The energy of letting go

When we show up with passion, we do so because we are moving towards something that is responding to us. There is something in the equation that feels regenerative and fulfilling.

When we chase, we are moving towards a moving target. We overthink and end up convincing ourselves that ‘just this’ or ‘just that’ will make the chase stop and things will be well.

In reality, the chase itself is a manifestation of the very facts as they already stand: the object we are chasing is moving away from us. Hence, why you are chasing to begin with.

In a nutshell:

Passion moves towards something that responds.
Chasing moves towards something that withdraws.

Many clients have asked how one can tell the difference. To what I always say: check in with how you are feeling. Chasing creates pain and anxiety. The pain is also multi-layered and typically includes both the sense of rejection from the person who is rebuffing your attempts to be with them, and also the consequences of your self-rejection and loss of dignity.

Trying to prove your worth to someone who, in a way has already determined your worth as ‘not worthwhile’ or, optionally, worthwhile but ok to be taken for granted, is a guarantee for prolonged emotional suffering.

Adult responsibility is something that people will either have to pick up if you grant them the honour, or they will decline taking it. Whether they do or don’t is outside of your control.

The energy of letting go

To step into your power and activate your ability to let go, you need to touch base with your passions and values and, even more importantly, identify which actions of yours would gradually allow you to live more in alignment with yourself and what makes you genuinely happy. Beyond this point, you will need to pursue those values relentlessly by ignoring and downplaying any of the false drivers that would arise from the chasing energy discussed in previous paragraphs.

When you start letting go, the act of doing so will gradually become easier and more natural. You let go every time you decide to respond to a situation in a way that honours your self-respect. And just like someone who gradually detoxes from a bad diet and suddenly notices the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods, you will become more astute as to what kind of behaviours you should tolerate and which ones you need to say no to. And once you have a peace of mind worthy of protecting, it will feel more natural to do right by yourself.