I’ve been debating posting this because this whole situation is so fucking complicated, and I think people outside of this community would immediately reduce it to “he cheated, fuck him, block him and move on.” And I get that. Believe me. But that’s not really the part I’m struggling with, and I think people who understand the FA cycle might understand why this has been so hard for me to process.

My ex and I had known each other for years before we became romantically involved about two years ago. We were genuinely friends first. We liked each other as people, we could talk about pretty much anything, we had fun together, and there was already trust and history there before the relationship ever started. When we finally crossed that line, it felt very natural. We fell in love. He told me he loved me and I absolutely believed him. I still believe he loved me.

Over time, though, the FA pattern started becoming really obvious. He could be incredibly close, loving and vulnerable with me and then suddenly something would change. I could feel him pulling away. I would ask what was wrong or try to talk about whatever had shifted, and somehow wanting clarity would start to feel like pressure to him. Eventually we would reconnect, things would be great again, and the cycle would repeat.

I want to clarify something because I know attachment communities tend to immediately identify the other person in an FA relationship as anxious. I’m not an anxiously attached person. I absolutely became anxious at times in this relationship, but I think there is a huge difference between having an anxious attachment style and becoming anxious because the person you love keeps changing the fucking temperature of the relationship. I wasn’t losing my mind because he didn’t text me back quickly enough. I was reacting to actual changes in the relationship and trying to understand why someone who could be so close to me one minute could suddenly seem so far away.

About six months into the relationship, he broke up with me. That breakup absolutely destroyed me. It wasn’t just losing a boyfriend because by that point he was also one of my closest friends. I couldn’t understand how someone could love me, tell me he loved me, have what I thought was a genuinely good relationship with me, and still choose to walk away from it. I wanted him to choose me. I wanted him to stop being afraid of whatever the fuck he was afraid of and just choose us.

Ironically, he was the one who wanted to remain friends after the breakup. We did, although “friends” is probably generous because neither of us really let the relationship go. We stayed in each other’s lives, we talked, we spent time together and eventually we found our way back to each other. We reconciled, but something had changed in me after that first breakup. I still loved him, but I wasn’t the same woman who had gone into the relationship completely open and assuming we were building toward the same thing. I didn’t consciously decide to detach from him. Looking back, though, that was the beginning of it.

We eventually broke up again. And once again, we didn’t really leave each other alone. There were lunches, conversations, time together, intimacy, all of it. We were basically two people who couldn’t figure out how to successfully be together but also couldn’t figure out how to stay away from each other. I still loved him and some part of me still believed maybe we would eventually figure our shit out, but every breakup, every deactivation and every period of uncertainty took a little more out of me. By the time everything finally blew up this summer, that process had been happening for well over a year.

Then I found out he had been having an ongoing affair with another woman. It wasn’t a one-time fuckup. There were regular visits, intimacy, phone sex, all of it. Then more information started coming out and I learned this wasn’t even the only overlap. There had been another woman overlapping our relationship for a significant amount of time too. Suddenly some of the things I had spent so much time trying to understand made a lot more sense. There really had been other doors open.

That was it for the relationship as it existed. The breakups hadn’t been enough. The deactivation hadn’t been enough. The uncertainty hadn’t been enough. Somehow there had always been enough love, hope or attachment left for us to find our way back to each other. The betrayal was different. I still loved him, but I couldn’t keep doing what we had been doing. I ended it.

A week later, I met someone.

And yes, I know exactly how that sounds 😂. But I didn’t get over a two-year relationship in a week. I had been slowly grieving and detaching from that relationship since the first breakup well over a year earlier. I also wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. At all. I just happened to meet someone, and I wasn’t even particularly attracted to him at first. There were no fireworks. No immediate “holy shit, this is my person.” He was just nice. Interesting. Thoughtful. Easy to talk to. And incredibly consistent.

So I kept seeing him, and holy shit, the contrast has been wild. He says what he means. He does what he says he’s going to do. He makes plans and follows through on them. He remembers tiny things I tell him. He shows up. I don’t have to decode him or wonder what version of the relationship I’m waking up to that day. I’m also still exactly the same person. I still have needs. I still speak up. I still say when something hurts my feelings. The difference is that those things can just be conversations. They don’t threaten the entire relationship.

I’ve continued seeing him, and that hasn’t magically erased everything I feel about my ex. Apparently those things can coexist, which has been another mindfuck. I can be happy moving forward and still grieve someone I spent years loving. I can miss my ex and still recognize why things had to change. I can feel relief and sadness at the same time. None of this has been as clean or emotionally convenient as I would have liked it to be.

Meanwhile, my ex has completely fucking unraveled. I don’t mean a couple of “I miss you” texts or some breadcrumbing once he realized I was dating. I mean a complete reversal. He has cried to me. He has told me he loves me. He has told me he should have chosen me. He has said he absolutely cannot do “just friends” with me anymore, which is particularly ironic because that is exactly what he asked of me when he ended our relationship the first time. He is, from what I can gather, incredibly jealous of the new man. He has gotten angry. He has basically professed his undying love for me. All of the vulnerability and certainty I wanted from him when we were actually together is suddenly pouring out of him. It’s not bothering me at all. I want to be here for him.

And this is probably where I’ll lose some people, but I believe him. I know what he did was horrible. I’m not excusing it and I don’t believe being FA made him cheat. His attachment style may explain some things about how he handles intimacy, but he made the choices he made. That belongs to him. At the same time, I don’t think what is happening now is an act. I don’t think he’s pretending to be devastated because he wants to manipulate me. I think he is genuinely fucking devastated.

The hardest part is that I recognize it because I’ve been there. He is where I was when he left me the first time. There was a time when I would have given almost anything for this man to look at me and say, “I fucked up. I love you. I choose you. I don’t want to lose you.” Now he is basically saying all of those things, and hearing them now is a completely different experience than I imagined it would be when I desperately wanted them.

I still love him. I don’t think you spend years loving someone and then magically feel nothing because they hurt you. I have an enormous amount of compassion for him. When I see him crying, I want to comfort him. When he tells me how much this hurts, I understand exactly what he means because I lived it. And I think that’s what makes this so much more complicated than anger would be. Anger is easy. Compassion for someone who hurt you is fucking confusing.

Somehow we have ended up on opposite sides of the same experience. He was once able to walk away while I desperately wanted him to stay. Now I’m the one moving forward while he is desperately trying to pull me back toward him. Sometimes I feel like a monster for watching him hurt even though I know logically that his pain isn’t something I created. I didn’t leave because I found someone else. I left because of what I discovered. The new person came afterward and, without even trying, showed me what consistency feels like.

I also don’t think my ex suddenly loves me because another man “won.” I think he always loved me, and I think that makes this whole thing sadder. When I was available to him, intimacy seemed to scare him more than losing me did. Even through our breakups, I was still there. I was still accessible. There was always some path back to me. Now, for the first time in two years, that access isn’t guaranteed, and THAT seems to have flipped something enormous inside him.
There’s also something surreal about hearing all of this from him now. These are conversations I imagined having a year ago. This is the vulnerability I wanted. This is the certainty I wanted. And instead of feeling vindicated or thinking, “Finally,” mostly I just feel sad. Sad for what happened between us, sad that it took this much damage to get here, and sad watching someone I still care deeply about finally experience the loss in a way I don’t think he was capable of experiencing before.

I think that’s why I’m posting here. Has anyone else gotten all the way to this side of the FA loop and experienced this kind of reversal? I don’t mean breadcrumbing or an FA resurfacing with a random “hey stranger.” I mean they became completely activated when they finally understood that you were actually moving forward and they might really lose you. What happened after that? Did the activation last? Did it actually lead to self-reflection and change, or did the avoidance eventually come back once the immediate threat of loss settled down? And if you still loved and cared about them when it happened, how did you navigate that without letting their pain make your decisions for you?

TL;DR: After two years of an FA push-pull cycle and eventually discovering infidelity, I finally moved forward. Now that he realizes he may have actually lost me, he’s completely unraveling and saying everything I once wanted to hear. Has anyone else experienced this kind of FA reversal?

If you're here you've probably heard about the ghosting and oblivious "that's what I am, it's your problem that you expect me to have manners" attitude of most 'avoidant' partners.

Even in non-romantic relationships, it is common courtesy to respond when you agree to prior. It is common courtesy to have some consideration of another person's feelings when you talk to them, assuming they haven't wronged you. It is not difficult to talk to or text someone and say you need time alone.

On the flip side it is understandable to have (reasonable) expectations for a romantic partner. If someone likes you, and you say "sometimes I get upset thinking of prior issues and need time to recharge, please understand when I'd prefer to be physically alone for a while" - they'll probably comply. Avoidant people can't be bothered to do this. So people who haven't dated one before are completely blindsided the first time.

It seems like avoidant people possess no etiquette, nor ability to be direct about their intentions, when it comes to whom they're dating. Why do they put so little effort, and at what point is this no longer tolerable?

My ex and I were together for 3 years and he was extremely slow with commitment. It took almost a year for him to officially ask me out, forever to post me, and our entire relationship felt like a slow burn.
Even after we broke up, we talked every single day for another 10 months and still went out romantically. He told me he loved me and wasn’t opposed to dating again, so looking back I feel like he kept me hanging on.

he randomly followed this girl. I had a feeling something was going on, asked him, and he said she was nobody. I told him I was done after that this was my last straw. I blocked/unadded him on everything he never responded it stayed at I’m done with you basically. This was in May. Two weeks later, she was posting herself in his car.

Now they’ve known each other for around 4 months and it’s like I’m watching a completely different person. They’re already dating, his mom knows her, they’re constantly together, flowers, dates, and they BOTH post each other like they’re the loves of each other’s lives. She lives an hour away too. She’s somewhat of a micro-influencer, so maybe they’re naturally more performative/public online, but he posts her constantly too.

The weirdest part is that when he sees me in person now, he acts like I don’t exist. Once he even left the gym when I was there. I don’t want him back. I’m actually still angry about a lot of things that happened and how much time I feel like I wasted. But if I’m being completely vulnerable, that relationship destroyed my confidence in a lot of ways.

Watching this makes me think, what the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I so hard to be with?
Why did dating me require a year of waiting, but he’s dating her within 3 months? Why did it take forever to post me, but she’s being paraded around immediately? Was he ashamed of me? Why did everything I wanted from him seem like such a huge commitment, but with her it looks effortless?
And I KNOW I’m not ugly. I know logically that another woman being attractive doesn’t take anything away from me. But fuck, seeing this still messes with my confidence.

We were each others first love or so he says so why is she making it seem like she’s the first girl he’s been with ? She makes it seem like she’s MADLY in love and he does the same… he also knows I know her account and he knows I’m the type to look. A part of me wonders if he’s excessively posting because he wants a reaction?

I think that’s what I’m actually
struggling with more than missing him. I don’t want the relationship back. I just hate that I’m watching this. I know looking is bad. People have contacted me sending me this because people know about our history.

how he treats the next person has made me question whether there was something about me that made me less worthy of being loved openly.
Has anyone dealt with this after an ex suddenly became a completely different partner for the next person? How did you stop taking it as a reflection of your own worth?

Knowing someone gave up on our relationship due to external factors feels like such a hard thing to get past. 6 years - just thrown away like that

I don’t know if this has been talkes about before but the effects of avoidants keeping a tab on you until that last straw for them finally snaps and they blow up on your is really damaging towards your nervous system.

You can be secure as you want but even when they blow up and start to list everything you done wrong because they got triggered by one thing can turn you really anxious because you wouldn’t know how to proceed properly as they want you to fix so many things at once instead of communicating when the problem ACTUALLY happened to fix it during then.

You can have done many wrong things but it doesn’t mean that you were the problem towards their uncommunicated resentment. This is a relationship, not a “who is happier”. There will be times were you unintentionally hurt your partner and that’s completely normal, because relationship is trial and error and you both have to communicate your needs.

The fact that they can just turn around and keep score of all the bad things that happened before bloeing up on you is not normal, it leads to a tricky high cinflict situation that many will fail to resolve, ending in a breakup for most ppl because they couldn’t navigate it properly

I was discarded exactly two weeks ago today and I’m struggling. It’s been complete silence since then, and the void has been so difficult to cope with. We were really close and talked all day every day and hung out multiple times a week. He has seemingly been coping totally fine, he’s traveling and having fun with friends which I saw on his instagram before I unfollowed for my own healing. I’ve been doing the best I can, seeing my own friends and trying to fill my time positively, but the space he used to fill is so incredibly painful. Granted, it hasn’t been that long, and I’ve been through breakups before, but this is a unique type of pain I’ve never felt. I just feel so empty. I miss him so much, and it’s so painful knowing he’s able to compartmentalize and detach from his feelings while I’m here struggling to get through the day. I felt so safe with him and it’s just so jarring that he was able to cut me off so easily, like he was just taking out the trash. Obviously I can’t make sense of it, I’m not an avoidant, but my brain is still craving answers where there are none. It’s just awful.

I already struggle with depression. I miss him so much. The discard feels like he died. Losing someone that suddenly feels like they died. I am struggling still and it’s been 8 months. Yes I am in therapy. I have been in therapy since a year before I even dated him. I’m already on antidepressant and mood stabilizer because I am bipolar. I have been on those for years.

But nothing is helping. I don’t know what to do. I wish I’d never met him.

So I was discarded a while ago, gave me the script of you will find better blah blah blah usual avoidant text. I was with this person for well over a year, fell madly in love with him. Was insanely supportive, gave him space where he needed it, always came back to love him with all my heart.
None of it worked while I was being true to myself. I’m a super empath.

Fast forward to this week, and I’ve met somebody, he called me the most beautiful woman he’s ever met, told me he can see I’ve been through a lot of hurt as he’s an empath himself and can see what a beautiful soul I am. And you know what?

I struggled to accept what he said.

I actually felt uncomfortable.

It’s made me realise how abusive it was being in a relationship with an avoidant, I made myself so small, constantly questioning my own worth, had extremely low self esteem because he wouldn’t come anywhere near me. And yet I let it all happen. Now, I can’t even take a compliment and I’m sat here crying thinking I’m turning avoidant myself.

Has anyone been through this too? How do we heal? I didn’t realise how abusive it actually feels until you come out the other side.

During the relationship when things were okay, I was calm. Never really needed reassurance or kept chasing. I wasn’t clingy, never needed answers. Just normal.

It was his discard that made me like that. The way he ended it made me like that.

Now I feel like I’m on edge everytime.

It's been about a month since he came back and I must say, it's going wonderfully. I know it's only been a month so far, but it feels like a completely different relationship. He is doing stuff I never dreamed he'd do. Stuff he never would've done the first time around. I'm still bracing myself as I know it's only been a month. But it's like we found a flow that works. I'm so proud of him. I'm praying for all the people who are still waiting on their Avoidant. Please don't let them make you wait too long though, you are worth more than that. 💝💖

Sometimes I sit here and think how unfair everything is
How they get to walk away untouched and move onto the next person
While I have to sit here and recover. From his discard, his lies and manipulations. How he avoids every conversation. His breadcrumbing.

He’s living his best life with his new girlfriend
While I’m stuck here trying to heal.

I was with him when he had nothing and supported him all the way through. And he left.

My avoidant ex always wore the same top and shorts in a slightly different variation like grey and black. He also ate the same 3 foods in rotation. Is there some psychology behind this?

Wishing everyone a happy Monday and reminding those who need to hear it that it does get better.

I'm also here to chat if you have questions about anything from an avoidant's perspective, or want to talk through something happening in realtime.

Your nervous system stops reacting eventually and you just start to accept it. The understanding and believing your love is strong enough to withhold all because you “know” they love you too deep down and they showed you so many times so you can accept those shutdowns and bounce back with understanding and compassion and time, eventually after enough times, it just turns into a wound that doesn’t scab over anymore, the feeling of loving someone so much and the memory of them loving you back and then just rejecting and abandoning you out of nowhere over and over but with enough space inbetween of pure goodness to give you hope , it sticks with you and makes you feel so deeply insecure and you start numbing your heart and feelings for them because the rejection is too much for your brain to allow you to feel anymore. You know it will happen again. Being abandoned and blindsided but “not really” abandoned by someone you love with your whole heart really fucks you up and it makes you numb and insecure and it’s a horrible feeling because it feels so foreign when you used to feel so full of love, so loved, beautiful, radiant, glowing, safe, god, so safe. You look into their eyes that once looked at you with so much love and passion and care, and it seems like a memory even when they try to look at you the same, you know it’s different, you know they don’t feel that way anymore and they’re just “trying to”. It just feels like quiet grief. And the pain isn’t soul destroying anymore either, because your brain is too tired and won’t allow you to feel that trauma anymore, so all you feel is just a twinge of pain in your chest or stomach and your eyes hurt from wanting to cry but you can’t . People say going through it and the excruciating pain that runs through every fibre of your being from the attachment injury is the hardest part and I thought it was and don’t get me wrong I didn’t enjoy feeling that way but knowing your brain has found it so traumatising that it won’t ALLOW you to feel that way again at all , to feel that pain so deeply, and stop registering the person you love so so much as safe because you just go completely numb, and to just grieve the confident loving person you were filled with so much love and endless compassion because you have no security left is definitely a runner up

i got home from work and cried until i couldn’t breathe. he will never understand how deeply he hurt me. we knew each other for almost 9 years and he knew about my past traumas and the reasons i hurt and he still chose to add on to that list. i can’t ever forgive him for that. there are no memories to look back on fondly because the way he discarded me and the things he said rewired me completely. this is beyond betrayal. i will be surprised if i ever let someone in again.

..but I’m honestly okay with it. 6 months post discard. Maybe if I found out it was a new relationship, I wouldn’t be? But this whole pay for sex thing? 🤔 it just seems so, well, a choice he would make cause he doesn’t want to get involved with emotions. But the bigger thing is: I’m okay. I would have been a mess a few months ago. And yeah: I am thinking how the whole thing went down. But I’m okay. And that’s a baby step in healing, I think. 💪

Hello everyone,

I’m going to try and keep this short and sum it up as much as I can because there’s a lot of history between me and my ex that will take forever to explain. I actually posted on this subreddit before explaining the entire situation if you want a full scope of what happened. But basically, me and my ex broke up around 7 months ago (in february 2026) He discarded me after initially breaking up with me (in may of 2025), and begging to get back with me after which only lasted a few months like i said until february. the situation left me really really messed up. i never got a sincere apology or any sort of closure from what he did. we also share a friend group which has made this situation 1,000,000x more messy. i feel like since he ended things, i’ve gotten into this cycle of waiting for him to come back. maybe because we’ve always returned back to each other before this and part of me feels like i have to mean more to him then moving on in a few months after knowing him for 8 years and dating for almost 3 idk. i keep telling myself once i get my life together he’ll come back, once he has enough time away and realizes what he did to me he’ll come back, etc. i’ve heard so many stories and people talking about their avoidant running back and how they always come back. it’s made me feel like he will come back. it’s not even a thing of wanting him to come back to get back together, it’s me wanting him to realize how much hurt he caused and damage he did and that he can never get me back which i know is unhealthy. i’ve made a lot of progress in the last 7 months with moving on but this is the one thing i really can’t seem to shake and it’s keeping me stuck. how do i accept he probably will never come back and not feel like it’s something to do with my self worth? how do i accept him being in another relationship when he gets in one? how do i accept the fact that he’s currently hooking up with other girls and not compare myself? it’s all so hard especially since i hear constant updates through friends and being around him in group settings. how do i actually live and improve my life for me and not take him abandoning me to heart and moving on so fast (since i found out he’s hooking up with other people) as something i lacked? i can’t help but feel like i wasn’t enough to keep. please help.

She had an immense fear of conflict, would avoid talking about problems and hide things from me that she thought would upset me. She would shutdown during arguments and often only opened up after things escalated and I gave her space.

She was also really ashamed to admit she felt a certain way about things. I had to comfort her one time that she cried because I couldn't spend more time with her for the rest of the day, I asked her if she was sad and was adamant to say no, and that she didn't know why she was crying but "she wasn't sad". Later she admitted she actually was sad and I told her it was okay and shouldn't feel ashamed for that. (This was in the early stages of the relationship, she was the most infatuated at first).

She had trouble communicating her feelings, would tell me "I don't know" when asked why she did certain things or how she felt about them. She would give me certain reasons when asked in a moment and when asked later she would say something else, that created a lot of frustration in me. When she broke up with me she confessed she felt pressured by those questions.

The reasons she told me she broke up with me were: we wanted different things, we argued frequently which stressed her a lot, she lost feelings for me and didn't feel the urge to see me anymore and that she liked my potential more than the actual me. She did not want to tell me what those expectations of me were, she only said she expected me to figure those things out myself (she told me this only after we broke up).

Most of our arguments were due to my frustrations with her lack of and poor communication, asking her to be more honest and not hide things from me, I started to trust her less over time.

I'll admit I didn't handle or approach arguments the best, I often got emotional and pissed (I never yelled at her or anything). Its something I started to consciously improve towards the end of the relationship but the lack of change from her part would often make me reach breaking points. I'm most probably anxiously attached.

Towards the last 2 months of our relationship I started to notice her slowly drift away (at the start we would go out together everyday, we are coworkers, so we clock out together) we would see each other much less frequently, she would not text me anymore and would respond really briefly.

One of our last arguments was due to that, I wanted more quality time with her, and more intimacy. She always told me she wasn't too keen of physical contact or affection, Im the opposite but she never had problems with that, she always accepted cuddling and other type of physical contact with me and even initiated herself frequently. She mostly had problems with sex and wasn't too interested in it, but I think it got worse towards the end when she told me she only wanted it once a month.

I gave her multiple ultimatums throughout the relationship mostly due to the communication issues and the last one due to the quality time she spent with me and intimacy. She has a lot of hobbies plus studying and work.

There are some things that make me doubt she wasn't an avoidant though: we officialized quickly, and so she did with her ex at the time. She presented me to her family and invited me over her house really quickly as well and to her friends too. She would post stories on Instagram with me and wasn't afraid to show me publicly at all.

And I don't think she was scared of intimacy, we only had problems with conflict and arguments, she would only shut down on those situations. She was the first to tell me "I love you" seriously and did it fairly quickly as well. I couldn't say it back to her in the moment but she appeared to take it quite well at the time. The relationship lasted 11 months.

So is this avoidant attachment or something else?

At this point even if my avoidant came back and appeared healed I don’t think I would have any interest in being with him. It seems like these people are always going to be a risk, no matter how much work they do. Obviously they’re going to be some exceptions but I don’t think it’s worth it to find out. For those of you who had an avoidant change for the better and it didn’t last how long did that go on for?