Understanding Avoidant Attachment: A Guide to Your Avoidant Partner
If you’re reading this, you likely have an avoidant attachment style or you love (or have loved) someone with his attachment style—only to find out that giving them love is the very thing that usually pushes them away.
Avoidant Attachment Style often gets a bad rap because of how they avoid or withdraw from intimacy. However, when you begin to understand this insecure attachment style more, you build more compassion and understanding of their patterns and behaviors.
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Avoidant Attachment Style Patterns
Avoidant attachment is an insecure attachment style characterized by a pattern of withdrawing from emotional closeness and intimacy. Individuals with avoidant attachment often have a negative view of themselves and others, believing they are unworthy of love and support (sometimes, this is unconscious). They may push people away or create distance in relationships to protect themselves from perceived rejection or abandonment.
They can often, without conscious awareness, sabotage the most beautiful relationships. To them, the reality that someone actually loves them is something they don’t believe deep down due to their upbringing and how their primary caregivers interacted with them and handled their needs.
The Childhood of Someone with Avoidant Attachment
The roots of avoidant attachment can be traced back to early childhood experiences. Children who have inconsistent or neglectful caregivers may learn to suppress their needs for closeness and affection to cope with the emotional pain of being repeatedly let down. As a result, they develop a belief that it is safer to keep others at a distance and end up forming core wounds that they are unworthy of being supported.
Everyone has at least one core wound, and more often than not, we are completely unaware of them. They are typically running in the background as subconscious beliefs and fears that spend energy trying to protect us from feeling those wounds again. Click here to learn more about core wounds.
Also, parents who use more of their left hemisphere (the more logical side) tend to focus on getting their child’s needs met by focusing more on achievements and tasks rather than emotional connection. These parents tend to struggle with being emotionally present with their children because they are more left-brain thinkers. They might miss emotional cues and not understand a child’s need for emotional connection. They likely show up more in “productive” or achievement-based ways, like helping their child with a task or accomplishing a goal.
When this happens, children miss the opportunity to understand their emotional world and tend to grow up focusing more on being achievers, which, unfortunately, is something our society really encourages. These children often build core wounds that sound like, “I’m only loved when I’m perfect” or “If I fail, I’ll be left.” There is too much focus on being independent and successful when really, deep down, we all desire and need emotional closeness. For people with an avoidant attachment style, the need for emotional intimacy exists but is more foreign and feels scary when it shows up in a relationship—usually causing them to pull away.
Avoidant Attachment in Adulthood
In adulthood, individuals with an avoidant attachment may find it difficult to form and maintain close relationships. They might avoid emotional intimacy, fearing that it will lead to vulnerability and pain. They may also have difficulty trusting others because their earliest relationships taught them that people couldn’t be trusted. They might even be quick to dismiss or downplay their own feelings. After all, they believe that if they are vulnerable with someone, those feelings will just be met with rejection, so why even try. These beliefs and behaviors make perfect sense since they were never held in their emotional experiences when they were small, so they never experienced how emotional connection, conflict, repair, and vulnerability can actually deepen a relationship.
Avoidant attachment can have a significant impact on an individual's overall well-being. It can lead to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and low self-esteem. Individuals with avoidant attachment may also struggle with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Often, they deeply desire closeness and connection but can’t seem to get too close.
Signs of a Partner with Avoidant Attachment
Sometimes, it’s rather clear whether your partner has an avoidant attachment style. Either way, here are some typical signs that your partner may have this type of attachment:
They become uncomfortable in emotionally intense conversations
They tend to pull you in and then push you away
They avoid long-term commitments
They value personal space
They spend a lot of time alone
They have a past of short-term relationships
They are typically more introverted
They keep personal details and emotions to themselves
They don’t trust easily
They tend to keep things shallow
They aren't good at giving emotional support
They are super independent and can appear confident
It’s important, though, to understand that each of these patterns or behaviors is directly from something they experienced in their childhood. They might fear emotional intimacy because they were often left to cry alone. They are more independent since they had to figure out how to do things on their own because no one else was going to do it for them.
While this doesn’t make behaviors permissible or okay, it does help to understand why someone reacts a certain way. They aren’t always choosing it. It’s more likely a response or learned behavior they unconsciously do.
The Anxious-Avoidant Dance
If you’re dating someone (or are someone) with an anxious attachment style, you are likely more attracted to one another. You’ve probably heard it before, but opposites really do attract. In this anxious-avoidant relationship, you’re two sides of the same coin. While you’re both on the insecure side, your patterns are very opposing.
While a person with an anxious attachment style reacts emotionally and tends to need more reassurance, a person with an avoidant attachment pulls back and needs more space. Do you see the push and pull there? This is what we call the anxious-avoidant dance.
One partner seeks closeness to feel safe (anxious partner), and the other needs space (avoidant partner) at that same time. No one is at fault here. We just have two people whose needs are competing simultaneously for the very things the other person can not easily give them. An anxious person will try to close the emotional gap and run toward the avoidant person, but the avoidant person will feel overwhelmed and try to pull away and regroup.
The cycle continues. We can break these patterns with couples work, a conscious understanding of how our nervous system and attachment patterns adapt to survive, and learning new communication tools in the relationship. I deep-dive into this in my book, Anxiously Attached. Grab your copy here.
Healing Avoidant Attachment Style
As I mentioned before, people with avoidant attachment styles get a bad rap, but they are suffering inside. Just because they can walk away and pull the plug (which can be so painful), it’s important to know they are doing this because they are trapped in fear. Running away from a relationship for them only gives them temporary relief until they can heal. So remember, all insecure attachment patterns have their own way of suffering around their insecurities and core wounds, all of which can be healed. Overcoming avoidant attachment is possible with time, effort, and support.
Therapy can provide a safe and nurturing environment for individuals to explore the roots of their attachment style, uncover their core wounds, and develop healthier coping mechanisms. People with an avoidant attachment need to learn how to be emotionally vulnerable, and sometimes that is best done in safe relationships (like with a therapist, close friend, or coach). It takes time, but if you're struggling with this pattern, finding safe people to share emotionally with is the start of learning how to depend on the right people.
As you learn about your needs and build understanding around your emotional experience, you’ll build your self-esteem, begin to trust others, and form secure and fulfilling relationships.
Are you interested in doing the work of uncovering and understanding your core wounds? I have an online mini-course that can help you! Click here to learn more about Understanding Your Core Wounds and begin your healing journey.
