Avoidant Attachment

[cookiesandoats]

Hi

My boyfriend of 2 years has an avoidant attachment. He fits every criteria. He often needs space and I'm an anxious attacher so I know we both need to work on ourselves.

I am trying to understand avoidants more. I have read up online so much stuff but it's so hard to comprehend because I am the complete opposite.

We've had an argument and I think this really is over, which I'm devastated about. But I would like to understand more, because I am really struggling. I am trying to move on, but feel like I need answers. Are there any avoidants reading this who can offer any insight please?

We were talking about our future, this ended in an argument, and he then told me that he was not in love with me anymore. This was despite telling me the day before he was. I asked which was the truth, was he in love with me and had fallen out over night, or just hadn't for a while. He said it was over night. He said we don't work. He's probably right given our attachment styles but I'm gutted as everything else was perfect, we just struggle to communicate.

I've sent him a few messages which I know I shouldn't, so I've stopped. He reads them but doesn't respond. Does he just need space and then he'll come round and talk, even if it's just to discuss what went wrong, because I've read they can come back?

Regardless, I know it's probably the end anyway as our attachments don't match, but I would like to work on it, especially for myself in future relationships.

Any advice from an avoidant as to what he might be feeling/advice from a partner of an avoidant would be gratefully received.

Maybe try and see people as unique individuals rather than examples of a theory?

What did you fall out over? You mention talking about the future, do you mean living together, marriage, children?

or he just isn’t particularly in to you?

nothing to “understand”

simply a person not very interested in another person

end it and find someone who feels the same way as you do about them

I'm gutted as everything else was perfect

huh? he told you he didn’t love you. clearly it was far from perfect for him

Of course, if you buy into the whole attachment styles theory, then it is not surprising, as a person with an anxious attachment style that you would be drawn to someone avoidant. The difficulty is breaking the pattern set in childhood and trying to find someone who actually meets your needs. It can be tough, OP, and I'm sorry you are having a sad time.

Just because someone has a certain attachment style doesn't mean they follow a script. Everyone's different! We're not mind readers so we can't tell you what's going on in his head.

The best thing you can do is keep communicating, tell him how you're feeling, listen to what he says, pay attention.

Leave him alone. Don't try to 'understand' him. Even I feel smothered/anxious just reading your post.

I consider myself an avoidant most of the time, and that's exactly what I would do when I was younger: panic, backtrack, say anything to hurt the other person and escape.

I get seriously overwhelmed when things move forward. HOWEVER, there's nothing you can do about it, OP.

No one can help me, and if they try I'll get even angrier. This is a process that has to be led by me. Other people may help, but I have to ask for help (and it takes a lot for me to be ready to ask!).

This is just an insight from one person amor how I function, but I really think you should let this one go, work on yourself, find out what kept you in this situation, and avoid avoidants in the future.

Unless an avoidant is really willing to communicate and be open FROM THE START, stay away.

Hi cookiesandoats

For what it's worth, I don't think you should be putting in effort to understand avoidants better. I think you should be focusing on what you deserve.

You deserve someone who can communicate clearly with you, in good times and bad. And you deserve someone who is consistent with you, so that you can trust and feel secure in their love. And you need to focus on you, moving yourself from an anxious to a more secure attachment style so your future relationships are healthier.

It's all a learning curve. Hope you are taking good care of yourself as you go through this.

lol at why you're trying to work this out in an anxious attachment style way, even though you can see your attachment style. If you want him to amend his, you amend yours first.

You'll see how hard it is.

The trick with attachment styles is to realise that nobody needs to change: we all just need to find a compatible partner. You (like me!) need a partner who likes to talk things through, and is happy to reassure you if you feel wobbly. He needs a partner who doesn't need him to do that.

hmmm I used to think I was an anxious attacher and that my exH was avoidant and if I could just get him to open up emotionally, stop breadcrumbing me, stop saying mean things deliberately to hurt me at the first sign of conflict, etc etc, then we would be ok.

eventually (after 21 years 🫠) I ended the marriage and am now with my wonderful, emotionally open, non defensive, loving, considerate partner and you know what? Our relationship is easy. I don’t spent any time diagnosing his attachment styles or potential issues (does he have intermittent explosive disorder? is he on the spectrum? should be be on setraline??). My ex was just a mean withholding cunt and turns out ditching him cured me of my “anxious attachment”.

She's been with him for 2 years, not 2 weeks fgs! I hate this attitude that it's now ok to throw someone away and not expect some kind of closure.

Nobody owes anyone a relationship but in this instance it's fair enough to want closure.

There are loads of videos from Psychologists on TikTok and YouTube on attachment theory.

If you think you've got an anxious attachment style, the best thing you can do, is focus on yourself and try to get yourself to a place of secure attachment. Then seek out a partner with a secure attachment. An avoidant attachment and anxious attachment is not a great combination, so probably for the best that it's over.

Every relationship that ends can still bring us value. Learn from what you've learnt in this relationship and grow from it.

Thanks for everyones responses.

A mixed bag and some a little firmer than I anticipated but thank you for the feedback.

I was trying to understand how one person can tell you they love you and want to be with you and then the next day tell you they have shut down, don't see a future and fell out of love with you over night. I understand there is no changing him, but I wanted to try and understand his behaviour to try and help bring closure.

Perhaps as one poster said, he isn't that into me, but given the day before he was professing his love, I just found that a bit unlikely, but I'll take your comments on board.

Perhaps it wasn't 'perfect' for him, but he did a pretty good job of pretending it was for 2 years until he suddenly flipped over night. More fool me.

Thanks for all the replies but I don't think I'm going to get any answers so I'll just leave it there.

@cookiesandoats Maybe he didn’t flop overnight - maybe he’s just using withdrawal as a tactic to shut you down when you try to talk about the future. In which case, do you really want to be with someone like that? It’s bloody soul destroying

OP I get it. I was with someone for four years (the last two years long distance). And one day he suddenly stopped communicating. We had just spent hours on the phone a week or two before he went silent. (Before mobile phones). Never heard from him again so I didn’t get any closure and it drove me mad. Even to this day I wonder about what happened as there were no signs that he was losing interest.

the only thing you can do is get on with your life. Most likely you will never get closure.

I’m also an avoidant and I agree with this. I live alone and will likely stay alone because I self sabotage any relationships I get into. Nothing any partner I have been with has done has changed the outcome when my brain tells me to push them away. If I wanted to do better I could get therapy but a good 90% of my thinking is that I’m safer as I am and so any help is just damaging to me, so I probably wont.

Unless he wants to put effort into work on himself, don't waste your effort pursuing him

I’m 56 and have an avoidant attachment style. Emotional independence is of paramount importance to me. It’s never going to change and it won’t for your ex. He can’t ever give you the emotional depth you want.
I’ve been with my husband for almost 30 years and not changed.

I know it's probably the end anyway as our attachments don't match, but I would like to work on it, especially for myself in future relationships.
If you want to work on it, then it's the anxious attachment style you need to be working on. Firstly as you should not be planning on getting together with another avoidant type anyway, and secondly as you should not be changing yourself to fit in better with someone else's issues. Change yourself to make yourself happier, sure, but don't change yourself so that someone else doesn't have to change.

I lean in the avoidant direction. I'll feel very loving towards my partner one day, then the next day I come over all Greta Garbo and think of leaving him. But I don't leave as I have enough self-awareness to realise that I have no particular reason to go, and that I will probably feel all loving again the next day.
Either your ex-partner did not have that self-awareness, or they got to the point where they realised there were more uncertain days than certain ones.

but I wanted to try and understand his behaviour to try and help bring closure

The thing is, anxious attachment brings the feeling that if you do something differently, everything will feel better. There's no recognition of the fact that, sometimes, things just 'go wrong', it doesn't make sense, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. There's no recognition in what you're saying that you understand this. Your current thinking is that if you can understand, it will make things better. But he's told you he loves you one day, and then that he doesn't the next. Your understanding of this needs to be 'He has done something really hurtful that wouldn't make much sense to anybody, and even if it did, it would still hurt like hell, and rule him out of a chance of being my future partner, because I can't be with someone who might do that to me again.'

I know it's probably the end anyway as our attachments don't match, but I would like to work on it, especially for myself in future relationships

Resolving anxious attachment is easier than you think, because it's not something that needs resolving. It just needs accepting. Stop trying to change yourself to meet others' relational needs: You need, in a partner, plenty of attention, consistency, trustworthiness, a willingness to discuss problems, and some reassurance sometimes. Do you think that makes you 'faulty', or that you need to 'fix' yourself?

Find someone who meets your needs. But first, be someone who meets your needs. Right now, you feel you need to change to be able to have a healthy relationship. Which means you find yourself unacceptable as you are. That's all you need to do to fix an anxious attachment style: stop finding yourself unacceptable. You have needs, and if the other person can't or won't meet them, they render themselves incompatible with you. Nobody has done anything wrong or bad, in this style of analysis, and nobody needs to change. Nobody needs to 'work on themselves'.

lol at why you're trying to work this out

I didn't mean to write this upthread, I've just spotted it, and I'm horrified! Not 'lol', but 'Look at'.

I'm not 'lolling' at your situation, it sounds hard, and as a person with an anxious attachment style, I get it. Sorry for the autocorrect.

Sorry if I'm being inconvenient, but you ARE safer being alone. Framing relationships as safe will probably never work for you.

I'm working on learning how to be in a relationship because it's good, fun, may be fulfilling, etc. Relationships enrich my life. But are definitely NOT safe. A relationship will always feel less safe for me than being alone.

have you ever met anyone you really love and very very much wanted to be with? if so, would you have described yourself as an avoidant in that relationship?