At a glance
Being someone’s favourite person one week and their disappointment the next is disorienting in a particular way, because nothing in you changed between the two. What looks like a judgement about you is usually a feeling your partner could not hold. This article looks at what the flip is doing, why it so often follows closeness, and what you can do while you are on the wrong side of it.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- The drop follows closeness more often than conflict. Clients describe the cold turn arriving after a good evening, not after a row, and that is the part they cannot make sense of.
- The person who flips rarely remembers it the same way. When clients repeat what was said to them, their partner often recalls a mood rather than a verdict.
- Being idealised is not the easy half. Clients who are told they are perfect usually report pressure, not pleasure, because they can feel what is coming.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
What is actually happening when the switch goes?
Two feelings about you that cannot be held at the same time get separated, and whichever one is live takes over the whole picture of you.
From outside it looks like a change of mind. It is closer to a change of state. Your partner is not weighing evidence and reaching a harsh conclusion about you. The warmth has gone somewhere they cannot reach, and in its absence the only version of you available is the disappointing one. That is why reasoning with them rarely lands. You are offering evidence to someone who has temporarily lost access to the feeling that would make the evidence mean anything.
This is one form of what I wrote about in black and white thinking. The difference is that here the whole of a person, you, is what gets sorted into one side or the other.
Why does it so often come right after a good moment?
Closeness is what sets it off, not distance.
This is the detail that confuses people most. You had a good weekend, you were talked to warmly, and by Tuesday you are being handled like a stranger who has done something. Nothing happened in between, and because nothing happened you start looking for what you did without knowing it.
The research I have read is less tidy than the word splitting suggests. In one small study, 51 people rated film characters, and the ratings were not clean divisions into all good and all bad; what stood out instead was that the harshest readings came when a character was caring and the situation was intimate.1 It was a small sample responding to characters on a screen rather than to real partners, so I would not stretch it far, but it fits what I see in the room. For some people, being cared for is the moment of highest risk, and the cold turn is what the risk gets turned into.
Is it something I am doing?
Your behaviour usually sets the timing, not the pattern.
Something real of yours is often in there. You were short on the phone, you forgot something that mattered. What is out of proportion is what that small thing is then taken to mean about you, and that part was waiting before you arrived. People do not learn to split off the good and the bad of a person in a relationship that started two years ago.
That matters in both directions. It frees you from the search for the exact wrong word, which never comes up with an answer. It also stops short of saying none of it is yours. The honest position is that you are responsible for your half and cannot repair the other half from the outside, however carefully you behave.
Why is being idealised so hard to enjoy?
Praise that has nothing to do with the real you is a promise you will eventually fail.
Clients describe a strange discomfort during the good weeks. They are being admired for qualities they do not recognise, and they can feel that the admiration has not met them. Some start performing to keep it. Some withdraw to make the fall smaller. Both are ways of managing a drop you can feel approaching without being able to date it.
- The editing. You find yourself choosing words by how they will be read rather than by what you mean.
- The monitoring. You check their face for the turn before you have even said anything.
- The quiet. You stop bringing them things that matter to you, because they will be graded too.
What can I do while I am on the wrong side of the line?
Stop arguing the verdict and stay recognisably yourself until the state passes.
- Do not take the case to court. Defending yourself point by point in that hour hardens it. The hour is not where the decision is being made.
- Say the one true thing. That you are still here, that you can see they are far away. Short, and not a plea.
- Keep your own version of yourself. Write down what you actually said and did, for you. The flip is most damaging when you start agreeing with it.
- Notice your own body. The bracing in the chest usually arrives before you consciously register the cold turn, and it is worth trusting.
These are ways to hold your ground, not a repair. If the swings are getting wider, if you have begun to believe the bad version, or if the cold periods now carry contempt or anything that frightens you, waiting it out is no longer the right answer. Two people can work on this together, and one person can also work on it alone, which is often where it starts when a partner does not yet see a problem.
Questions people ask
Can therapy help if my partner will not come?
Yes, and that is how a good number of these pieces of work begin. You come to understand what is happening and to stop losing yourself in it, which changes the pattern more than waiting does.
Is couples therapy the right setting for this?
Often yes, if both of you want to look at it rather than establish who is right. I work with couples using Emotion-Focused Therapy, which goes at what each of you is feeling underneath the position you are defending.
Should I tell my partner I think they are splitting?
I would not lead with the word. Naming the pattern as a diagnosis tends to become another thing to argue about, whereas describing the effect on you is harder to dismiss.
What if I am the one who does this?
Then you are in a better position than you think, because you have noticed it. The work goes to what the flip is protecting you from feeling rather than to the judgement itself.
What happens in a first session?
You describe what happens and I ask closely about the moments where it turns. Nothing is decided in the first hour, and booking one commits you to nothing further.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
