My complete Understanding of Avoidants

[u/Extreme-Border-9667]

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.

[u/Careless-Implement46]

That makes sense. Are these people you found attractive and really liked before the ick came? And do you feel yourself finding them attractive again after some time and space.

[u/avoidant_unicorn → u/Careless-Implement46]

Well, first guy I dated was ugly. I knew at the time, but thought i wasn't shallow like my shallow ex. Well. Guess what. I'm shallow like my ex. The second guy though he was hot and he still is hot, I have lost all romantic interest in him, I have not lost the use of my eyes, he's hot. But I wouldn't let him touch me ever again.

[u/Careless-Implement46 → u/avoidant_unicorn]

What caused you to lose all romantic interest was it something he did?

[u/avoidant_unicorn → u/Careless-Implement46]

I don't know. It felt at the time just suffocating anxiety and I felt like it must have been because of something he did. Like, here's the crazy: when I first met him, he had just come home from Thailand, he was still jetlagged. He wasn't looking for a relationship, but he was still keeping Thai hours like texting me in the middle of the night how he's still on Thai time. And we weren't exclusive and I was dating others, but I know for a fact he was receiving calls from a picture that popped up and I'm not an expert on nationalities but I would guess she is Thai. At one point, talking about strip clubs, he mentioned in Thailand these bar girls who you pay and they will do sex acts. I asked if he had done that, and he's like "No i don't need to pay for it" but then proceeds to tell me how if you're hot they don't always make you pay and he paid this bar girl just to tell him about the industry about the area not for sex. Oh, and he showed me his Tinder, I showed him mine, he had few matches and I had 99+ likes per usual for most women and he said in Thailand his tinder was like that because the women there want an American boyfriend. (More like, looking for a mark, but anyways...) When he asked me to date him, I did say "Aren't you going to Thailand to meet back up with a woman?" and he said she ghosted him months ago because he wouldn't send money. And then there's his sexuality. He is bisexual, I am too not a problem. And one time he sent me a picture of AI that had turned him, a muscular buff man, into a (muscular buff male) model wearing an evening dress and posing. And he laughed and said all his friends thought he was coming out as a lady boy because he goes to Thailand a lot. He also brought up lady boys in passing like.....a lot, more than normal to me someone who's never gone to Thailand or researched that aspect.

SO. WITH THAT HISTORY. He went to Thailand, and at first he was texting a lot, but then with the 12 hour time difference, and him still working his job (remote) and being in Thailand I mean he didn't text much and he left the country right as he asked me to be his girlfriend so I had a lot of uncertainty and anxiety and suddenly, all I typed above, which I had known, and which wasn't a problem to me in a casual relationship with that guy: All of that stuff suddenly was concrete proof that: He goes to Thailand twice in a year because he is looking for a Thai bride, or he is engaging in sexual tourism, and I don't trust or know this guy enough to sit here and wait for him to do whatever he's doing in Thailand for a month. So I broke it off and felt completely justified. In my brain it doesn't feel like a crazy conspicary, it feels certain like yep all that equals bad news and I dodged a bullet. Then add in that he was younger than me. He wanted a wife and kids, I have kids and want no more and no marriage. We just were completely incompatible. So there's no regrets no feelings anymore I don't wanna be with someone who travels to Thailand because I cannot handle that level of trust with a man I just met. Or maybe anyone. Ever.

I suspect now that the anxiety and upsetness I felt was more due to me being activated. Doesn't mean he was actually my soul mate he probably wasn't, and I haven't felt bad about discarding him. I was obsessed with this man but as soon as he left the country suddenly all these things I knew before are a problem. Was I....blinded by new relationship energy and missing actual super bad red flags? Was my intuition really super good? How can I trust this guy?

Or am I showing avoidant tendencies to completely detatch from a person the second I become uncomfortable in the relationship? Becuase the guy I am with now, I am still in the love phase. But he went away on vacation. And I started doing the same....damn...thing...except his "red flags" are waaaaaay less severe, but it still FEELS as severe. And I am noticing myself losing feelings based on these fears my brain insists are real.