Closeness is claimed to follow a cycle of withdrawal and return, so distance is a precondition for renewed intimacy.
Gray's image is of a band stretching and springing back. Attachment theory covers the same territory with data and reaches a different account: variation in comfort with closeness is a dispositional difference, avoidant regulation is not a phase that resolves into intimacy, and the prescribed patience may simply be tolerance of a stable pattern.
In practice
- A partner told to wait for the return may be waiting for something dispositional rather than cyclical.
- A theory that instructs one party to do nothing has removed the possibility of testing it.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is a natural cycle of withdrawal and return. Attachment research describes the same behaviour differently, as stable individual differences in comfort with closeness that produce recurring approach and distance between particular pairs.
- In its favour
- The pattern it names is recognisable, and pursuing a withdrawing partner does tend to increase the withdrawal, which is the practical advice the maxim gets right.
- Against it
- It has no evidential base, presents a couple-level cycle where the research finds individual differences, and the gendered version assigns the roles without support.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. No research supports the cycle it describes. Attachment research describes stable individual differences in the regulation of closeness rather than a universal cycle, and predicts distress rather than renewal from pursuit-withdrawal dynamics.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- Proverbs that recur across cultures