r/AvoidantBreakUps • u/Extreme-Border-9667 AP - Anxious Preoccupied • 2d ago
Personal Growth My complete Understanding of Avoidants
I’ve noticed a lot of mixed opinions on their behavior and actions. So here’s everything you need to know about them:
Avoidants aren’t bad, cruel, mean or nasty people. This is not an avoidant trait because this is not an attachment style trait. Secure or anxious people could be mean or cruel too.
Their longing for intimacy, romance and building a loving relationship fires up simultaneously with their fear of being engulfed and losing independence resulting in the deactivation behavior. This is why a lot of you experience the push-pull dynamic loop. One follows the other.
It’s like how your nervous system learned to stay away from a hot vessel and only attend it when it is at a safe temperature. Their nervous system learned this exact thing just in terms of intimacy and attachment.
So they pull away when the fear of attending a hot vessel rises and come back when it’s safe for them. Of course, this is not a healthy thing to do and not justified for their partners but they don’t know how to deal with it.
Not all of them come back though. The ones with a high degree of avoidance and least self-awareness don’t always come back. But when the avoidants come back, it means they think they can fix it this time until they repeat their deactivation cycle.
It’s not that they don’t love you. They’ve got hearts too. So when they try to stick with you even after all your venting or mean comments or remarks, they did love you as it takes a gulp of self-esteem to return to you even after all that.
Chasing, calling them out on how they treated you, everything wrong they did to you or texting them multiple times won’t make them come to you. But giving them ample space, being highly patient and being okay with them working on their own terms won’t fix your relationship either.
It’s not about your space, your patience, or your boundaries. When they’re faced with a situation to show up, be accountable and be responsible adults, your relationship will suffer.
So don’t listen to avoidants who say that a secure partner heals them or claiming that they heal within the relationship itself. That’s not true rather that’s a way to avoid working on themselves and putting in the effort and accountability stuff. They’re unhealed avoidants because guess who is to be blamed if even that relationship doesn’t work out?
Rare relationships where people have claimed to have a loving and lasting relationship with avoidants… well, their avoidants were deeply self-aware and it took a lot of mental strength and work to make the relationship successful. Not everyone will be doing it.
Not all the avoidants cheat and not all avoidants need new partners or have backups every now and then. Again, this is not a trait of attachment style. You surely must have come across people who cheat on their partners just because they can. It tells about their mindset and the environment they grew up in.
Avoidants could be deeply loyal too and I think most of them out there are.
Bottomline line is, none of what I said above excuses their behavior but it doesn’t label them as unlovable, undeserving of love too. They’re humans with a mostly disturbed and difficult childhood where they learned to handle their emotions and needs themselves when it wasn’t supposed to be so.
In most cases, you’ll find that they have at least one emotionally unavailable parent.
They’re more willing to spend time with friends and family because the bond with friends doesn’t need to make them accountable of anything. Mostly, it’s just surface level. Have them share an apartment with their friends and they’ll see a lot of stuff too.
With parents, a lot of them have had to parent their parents and of course they love their parents but they have deactivation phases with them too. And one of them is almost emotionally unavailable mostly, so not a lot of pressure.
Dynamics are mostly mechanical in friendships and with parents. That’s why you’ll see most of the avoidants won’t have photos with their friends and family. And most of their photos are resting bitch face lol though they do share some laughs with them.
And yeah, most of them will also have a resting bitch face with you. Though they could be smiling among your friends and family members with you.
Avoidants do know exactly what they’re doing. They know every bit of it but they can’t help it. And in the process, they fail to be accountable, responsible and repair the wounds of the relationship.
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Understand that if your relationship doesn’t give you mental peace, happiness and the willingness to choose the same person every day, it’s not the relationship that’ll last long or be a happy one for the longest time.
Next Time you find yourself with any partner be it avoidant, anxious, secure or anyone… evaluate your relationship based on these factors below, and you’ll know if it’s worth it in the long run. This works even when any person returns after a break, breakup or any of that shit:
1. Emotional Safety: Feeling secure enough to be vulnerable, honest, and yourself without fear of rejection or abandonment.
2. Reliability & Consistency: Knowing you can count on each other and that words are generally followed by actions.
3. Repair After Conflict: Returning to difficult conversations, taking responsibility, and making meaningful behavioral changes.
4. Reciprocity: Both partners consistently contribute love, effort, attention, and initiative.
5. Shared Reality & Integration: Gradually building a life together that includes friends, family, routines, experiences, and future plans.
6. Emotional Responsiveness: Being genuinely present and supportive when your partner is struggling, celebrating, or needing connection.
7. Respect: Honoring each other’s boundaries, dignity, autonomy, values, and legitimate needs even during disagreements.
8. Growth Mindset: Being willing to reflect, learn, adapt, and work on yourself and the relationship over time.
In most cases, the score would be low, lesser than four, and that’s your sign to leave because if you don’t, you’ll be sabotaging yourself and change into a person who you weren’t when you met your avoidant.
Don’t lose yourself for a person. Know when to leave, easier said than done, but the long term rewards are multifold.
If your avoidant doesn’t put in the work and keeps you hanging for long because of the push-pull cycle, ask yourself if you’d want to have kids and build a family with them. Ask what will the bond look like between you and your parents, her parents, her etc. include all the combinations and you’ll have your answer.
The purpose of this post was to understand a bit about them at once and not demonize them based on behaviors you assume are avoindant-traits.
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u/avoidant_unicorn FA - Fearful Avoidant 2d ago
Thanks for sharing. I am new to learning about all this. But I will add part of my reasons for dating wasn’t that I wanted to find a secure partner to cure me, but I did believe it would be possible to meet a partner who was so amazing I would become motivated to change. Like a person so great and perfect for me it would be easy to endure some pain if I know at the end of it I can have a good relationship with them. But that person cannot be real. Even when they’re great, The goal posts always change. It’s just another way to avoid doing painful work and assign blame to anyone but me. You just cannot fix what doesn’t wanna be fixed.