Success stories with anxious / avoidant relationships?

[tecbrowidow]

I've been reading a lot about attachment styles, something honestly I wish I'd done before settling down, but alas, no time machine. I've got an anxious style, which means I get very preoccupied with my relationship and bend over backwards to resolve issues, often taking responsibility when really it's not my problem to solve and when I'm out of energy. To my partner the burnout and subsequent requests for help look like me being critical of him or making unreasonable demands. My partner has an avoidant style, which means if he feels criticised or there's an issue his response is to go silent and back right off. Raising a child, managing a home and working full time without enough emotional or practical support from my partner leaves me lonely, miserable, cross and exhausted a lot of the time. I don't want to separate because I think we might be able to move on from stalemate and rebuild a the happy relationship we used to have. I'd like to hear from other people who have been stuck in the anxious / avoidant dynamic and managed to get back to a healthy place?

Yes I agree with you. Unfortunately there are many people, including myself that have been the victim of an extremely avoidant person. The issue is that the op’s husband has refused to go to therapy so it seems he is just hurrying his head in the sand and the relationship won’t go anywhere.

I actually have a fearful avoidant attachment style myself so I have both anxious and avoidant traits. What I will say is I feel the pain that anxiously attached people go through, relationships can be pure torture for an anxious person if they aren’t getting their needs met and I have a lot of empathy for them. I don’t feel they are anywhere near as toxic as avoidant people and I do have very little sympathy for avoidant people. I’m not saying they intend to be bad people, they don’t. But when they refuse to acknowledge that they are causing destruction in every relationship they have and refuse to acknowledge or seek therapy for it and shut people down then it leave me having way more sympathy for an anxious person who is desperately, like the op trying to sort her relationship out.

Therapy for him and understanding he had an issue and actively working to fix it, not for me but because he didn’t want to pass it on to his kids. 100 x better now!

I can't contribute much OP because my experience hasn't been a successful one. Only to say take care of yourself - it's very lonely and stressful being in a relationship with an avoidant person.