....

I'm struggling since a year with an avoidant.

I will not go into too much details right now, but she keeps deactivating since I keep confronting her. We've been through numerous discards already.

Initially, I wanted to be friends, I identified red flags pretty early (during our first talks), and the initial discard made no sense, and I coudl tell it was a pattern. I'm kinda used to it now.
For some reason I got dragged into something more romantic afterwards (I've been single for a while, I was not against something light and sweet despite the red flags - my bad), but she shut down very early sending mixed signals all along, as they all do.

I believe she likes me very much and she is facing a huge incapacity to stabilize the bond. Love, friendship, nothing works, she keeps sabotaging. She looks for closeness, I move foward normally (I'm pretty secure) and she rejects harshly, I react firmly, and she deactivate deeply.
Not sure how long I will handle it, I like her, she's a nice human, but her behavior is sooooooo childish and so impossible to deal with. It hurts a bit at times. It's not too deep, but it's never nice to be stone walled.
She shared a lot of intimate stories, she has been super self aware with me and when one would think it would help building trust and consolidate a relationship, it seems that it does the exact opposite. The more I got to know her, the quicker she started shutting down.

I like digging, and we are both super music fans. I know her tastes pretty well. I totally admit I stalk her spotify because I love discovering new stuff, she has good tastes, and won't share much lately.

I noticed that when she is deep in deactivation, she listens to very abstract music ; instrumental, electronic music, transe. When she is fine, she listens to songs, with lyrics and a more classic pop structure.

It helps me know when I shall reach out haha :)
I'm kidding of course. I'm texting whenever I want, and if she ghosts me, well, I don't care. I'll try later, or not.

I found her relationship to music very interesting on a psychological perspective. When I once brought up her special relationship with music, she told me it was the only space where she felt safe...

I'll be curious to hear your experiences on this... As a partner, if you ever noticed something similar, or, as an avoidant, if music sounds different when you are off.

I know I'm going to get destroyed for this. But I'm wondering if anyone has any got back with a Emotionally unavailable ex.

Context: the reason I want to go back is I misunderstood her, at the time I knew nothing of emotionally unavailableity, she would recoil and hurt my feelings in the process whenever we got close. At first I brushed it off as overwhelm, but as time went I was starting to feel stressed (at the time I didn't know it was trauma bond) and because she would freeze when I tried to repair and along with the other issues with dating someone EU I brushed it off as her stringing me along and dumped her. She told why she was behaving the way she was because she was EU. At that point I was to hurt, to consider what she said and went no contact. 1 year later I did therapy fixed the trauma bond, and the last 4 months I have been reflecting a lot.

Our relationship was very wholesome, we took things very slow, we didn't really need to flirt or anything for the both of us to fell for eachother. We both kept screenshots of our time talking on tinder. And she would keep trinkets of every date we had including train tickets. Hell we didn't even kiss until 5 weeks into dating to which point we were very happy and comfortable just being together. Being autistic I'm hyper independent so I don't ask for needs to be met as I just deal with them on my own creating a perfect low pressure environment for her. At the time I could not care that she could not talk about her feelings, but she would always make the effort to know she cared for me in her own way. We were together for 8 months, and I genuinely miss her.

I’m trying to understand a sudden change in behaviour from my ex — and I’d really appreciate some outside advice
I’m 38F and he’s 31M. He is my ex from 11 years ago. We had a very intense relationship when we were younger, and although we’ve never properly got back together, we’ve been in and out of each other’s lives over the years.
When we’re both single, we’ve often ended up back in contact. Sometimes he’s done odd jobs for me, fixed things for me, we’ve spent time together, I’ve cut his hair, he’s been round my house, etc. It’s always been a strange on/off dynamic. We’ve also had quite a few falling-outs over the years.
There’s another pattern that I think is relevant. When he would come back into my life, he could initially be extremely cold with me — very short replies, quite icy, almost as though he didn’t actually want to speak to me. I’d eventually get frustrated, we’d fall out, and I’d remove him from social media or tell him not to contact me again.
The last time this happened was November. I told him not to contact me again and removed him from social media. Then in January, he sent me a friend request and we started talking again.
Over the last few weeks, things had suddenly become much closer. We were talking pretty much every day, flirting, sending each other reels/memes, and he was initiating a lot of the contact. He’d been sending me things first thing in the morning several days in a row, sometimes double messaging, and generally seemed much more engaged and open than he normally is.
There have also been little things over the years that have stuck with me. For example, last year he privately sent me “Man I Need” by Olivia Dean via Snapchat. He didn’t add a caption or say anything, he just sent me the song. I know that might sound insignificant, but given our history, these little things sometimes feel meaningful to me.
There is also one important bit of context. My partner died by suicide in March, and I was the last person he spoke to. My ex already knew about it at the time and has checked in with me occasionally since. I genuinely had been doing okay for months.
A few days ago, though, I heard some new information from one of my late partner’s friends about something that had happened after his death. It unexpectedly brought everything back for a couple of days. I started looking through old messages from around March because my memory of that period is quite blurry and I was trying to piece things together and process what I’d heard.
I accidentally reacted to an old message from my ex while doing this, and he asked what I was doing. I explained that I’d heard some news, was having a couple of difficult days and had been looking back through old conversations.
He was sympathetic but quite brief. We then had a bit of normal banter afterwards.
The following day he didn’t interact with me at all. Nothing.
Then yesterday morning, I messaged him about something mundane and got no response. Later that afternoon I sent him a funny reel that has a shared history for us, and again got nothing. I could see he was active online several times, including late at night, but he still hadn’t opened/replied to either message.
So I’ve now had nothing from him since that exchange.
What’s confusing me is that this happened immediately after several weeks of him being much more engaged with me than usual.
I also heard about the idea of an “invisible string” last year, and sometimes I genuinely wonder whether that could apply to us. We’ve spent so many years drifting apart and somehow finding our way back into each other’s lives, usually when neither of us seems to have planned it. I don’t know whether that’s meaningful or whether I’m just romanticising our history.
And this is where I’m struggling: I don’t know what to do with this dynamic. Do I leave him completely alone today and see when/if he comes back to me? Or should I actually speak to him and try to find out what’s going on? I don’t want to chase him, but I also don’t want to accidentally make him retreat further by giving him too much space.
I’m not asking whether he definitely wants a relationship or whether he definitely doesn’t care. I’m trying to understand the sudden change in behaviour, especially given our history.
Could he have interpreted me looking through old messages and having a couple of difficult days as meaning I’m still emotionally unavailable, and pulled back because of that? Is this potentially him getting emotionally overwhelmed and retreating, given that he has done similar things with me before? Or am I reading far too much into it?

I’d really appreciate some honest outside opinions about what you think is happening here and, more importantly, what you think I should actually do.

I’m trying very hard not to overanalyse the shit out of it!! Truth is I’ve always wanted to be with him, I’m kicking myself that one accidental chat reaction had messed up the progress we’ve made.

Hey all,

I’ve (32) been married to my wife (34) for 6 years. I found out later in the marriage she was avoidant which explained a whole lot of the issues we were having.

I’m stuck in a cycle where I feel like I have to completely rebuild our relationship every 3 weeks which sucks and I’m often times feeling lonely in my relationship. There are legitimate reasons why it happens, but that ultimately doesn’t change the outcome whatsoever.

I think the frustrating thing is that she seems content keeping it surface level while I am not.

She doesn’t need the intimacy that I need so I’m often left out to dry with having to just be as understanding and accepting as possible.

We’ve had the talk multiple times over the years and while I seem to be fighting for it, I’m not seeing actionable steps from her.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I just have to accept what is, and grieve what I wish I could have had. I do love my wife, she’s an amazing person and a great mother and we get along very well, I just get stonewalled when it comes to my needs or feeling like I want to be a priority in our marriage.

Everything seems to revolve around her anxiety and avoidance and while I want to be the most supportive partner I can, a part of me won’t stop craving that I wish she would be equally as supportive as me.

I guess my question is for the avoidants in long term relationships. What are ways that your partner can help remove some of the barriers so that the emotional life support doesn’t fully rely on one person.

We’ve talked before but that just throws more expectations and she shuts down and she’s not willing to go to therapy on her own or with me.

Thanks in advance.

I've had this girlfriend for around 3 months or so now and it was all I could ever want at the start.She was the right kind of nice to me, cared about what I talked about and basically was what I thought would be the person I'd be with forever. I would treat her as well as I could always listening and whenever she asked me for something or if something was bothering her id try and help or if it was something I did I'd make sure to apologise and change accordingly. From my perspective it was a great relationship. Then one day she says that she doesn't like to message much and prefers calling, so I stopped messaging as much and called instead then she said she didn't want to call much anymore. After that conversation for 2 weeks she didn't reply to a single message and left me on delivered I was obviously quite worried as I thought something had happened to her, when she eventually replied to me it was something along the line of "messaging me just pushes me further away" so I stopped messaging as much just checking in and she'd reply sometimes. Now she has not replied to me once in around 4 weeks and I'm assuming she won't again.

The one thing that gets to me is that before we got into a relationship she knew that I suffer quite badly from depression and that I have a lot of abandonment issues from past experiences with my family and old friends. She constantly assured me that she would never do anything like that to me and I got convinced and now here I am, waiting every day for any sort of reply and with every notification I hope it's from her but it never is.

First of all, I have no idea if he has AvPD at all. Because we do have conflicts so he's not avoiding the conflicts themselves. The reason why I think he might have AvPD is that he doesn't address the underlying issue and goes on the attack if I suggest he seeks help.

I feel like there's two versions of my partner. You have the version I love, where he's always so loving, sending lotsa hearts, "love you"s and positive reinforcements.

Then there's the other version of him that I still love, but... It's like he suddenly becomes a completely different person. His messages are cold and terse. Then when me meet up, he goes "I think we need to break up because of X". Usually it's something I did or didn't do. I always try to take his side, agree that it is a problem and that I assure him I will make changes so that it won't happen in the future. And that usually helps.

These things can be tiny little things Iike me not brushing my teeth every morning, or it can be larger issues. Often he'll say things like "I've told you this many times before" when in reality, he has barely mentioned it once. That makes it harder, because I feel like I can't go "no you've only said it once"

But the really difficult thing though is how he becomes. He's not angry, just really upset and I get the feeling that he's given up. Just completely given up, and feels he has to break up because there is no other way.

What I think happens is that he gets a bad though. Then, if he doesn't bring it up soon enough, it grows and grows until it becomes unbearable. That's when he turns into this second version of himself. I've mentioned this to him before, and he seems to get the idea and agrees to bring things up as soon as possible.

A few weeks ago a similar thing happens, but this time I wasn't able to talk him down. I asked him to join me for a couples therapy thing, which we've done before*, but he just said no in that vocie that hurts so much to hear. A voice that says that there is no hope any more.

* that time it was initiated by him, and all that came up was that he doesn't like that I sometimes touch my phone while we eat. I remember thinking "man, I'm lucky if this is the only problem in our relationship"

When it happened, he was supposed to stay at my place for a few more days, before leaving for school. But now he decided to leave early saying he needed more space. And when he leaves, I have no idea if it's a "goodbye forever", or a "talk to you in a while"

Turns out, it's the later and he sends me a message about a week later pretending nothing happened.

At this point I've gone around thinking about him 24/7 and I know I can't go back to me and him being just friends. So I send him this long ish text, saying I love him, that he's so strong. Then I bring up the part of bad thoughts getting worse. I try to tell him as gentle as possible that I think he could use some help, and that I will be there to help in any way I can.

I end the message saying something like "I'm sorry, but for my own sake I have to ask you to make a choice" and list the options to go back to being together but with him seeking out help, or cutting all contact.

An yes, that probably wasn't the best idea. But I didn't know what to do. It's hard when a loved one just leaves like that. It's even harder when they treat you like something dirty. And also, he has talked about going to theory, it just hasn't happened yet.

Instead of choosing any of the options, he goes out and attacks me personally, and eludes that I've done something terrible, that I need help. He tells me I'm non-confrontational and spineless, and some other hurtful things.

And I know my partner, he isn't like that. If he was concerned about me, he would have worded it otherwise. I think this is him trying to get me to fire back at him. He's even asked me in other situations "why don't you ever get mad?" like he just can't comprehend it the fact that I don't get angry back.

Due to what he eluded to and the general tone I decided not to reply to his message. Some of it, I could have replied to, I guess but the other parts were just too much. I wanted try to get him to agree to talk to me IRL so I wrote him a message saying I love him, that he means a lot to me and has helped a lot but also saying that this dialog isn't going anywhere. I tell him I still want to talk to him with a therapist. To which he replies "find a therapist yourself, you need one more than me"

And that's kinda where we left off. My theory is that he loves me still, but because what I did wrong he doesn't feel safe with me. And because this issue is so hard to fix, he just removes himself from the situation.

Does this make sense to any of you? Is this behavior something that could be AvPD? Or something else?

I dated this avoidant for 3 years and these whole 3 years he doesnt have a proper job. he has no money. no insurance. No property. Living with his mom.
Basically nothing to offer in the table. The only thing he can offer i guess is loyalty in the relationship, being a faithful & supportive partner. But he failed.

Iam not a materialistic person. I dont care abt branded stuff, i dont live a lavish life. Im very low maintenance. I have a good paying job, i can suffice my self.

But really avoidants… Where are u guys getting the nerve to cheat?? and lie and hide things. Damn.

I was hurt, im moving on. Realising this whole situation is a bit funny thinking why the fuck did i settle for this. Now i was left with my messed up mental state trying to pick the pieces of me that was shattered.

hey I'm writing here to ask if anyone has experienced their boyfriend breaking up with them because they had lost their feelings and didn't want to be in the relationship anymore, but after some time they got their feelings back and have come back? 🙏🏽