Everything You Wanted to Know about Your Avoidant Partner
Hi there!
I am so excited to share this post with you today. I have had the opportunity to connect with the creator of the Loving Avoidant Instagram page who has generously and vulnerably shared their experiences with the avoidant attachment adaptation. As you know, I believe this style is deeply misunderstood and has a negative reputation in the attachment world. There is so much healing we can all do by learning more about how people experience this style, what it’s like for them in relationships, and how we can all become more loving, safe, and accepting human beings.
If you are in a relationship with an avoidant partner, please read on. I think you will gain so much insight into what is happening on the other end of your relationship! Thank you so much to The Loving Avoidant for sharing with us—I appreciate you.
Could you please share a bit about how you understand the avoidant attachment style? I would love to hear your perspective.
First, as far as attachment styles in general, I understand them to be patterns not disorders, along a gradient not black and white, and always modulating and changing with different situations or experiences. That feels important. I’ve noticed folks can get too rigid (and condemning) in their thinking around these labels.
As for avoidance specifically, essentially avoidants are folks who had one of two experiences with their caregiver(s) growing up: dismissive avoidants tend to have had childhoods including a lot of neglect, rejection, a certain coldness, and rigidness, or else just high expectations and needing to grow up too fast, becoming independent very early on for one reason or another. A more disorganized-avoidant pattern often came out of a highly enmeshed relationship involving a distinct lack of boundaries and under-resourced, particularly fearsome or fearful caregivers, wherein the avoidant had to do a lot of caretaking and disappearing themselves in order to survive. This taught them that the cost of connection is loss of self, and somewhere along the way they decided that the price is too high to pay.
In either case, these folks learned that connection is essentially unsafe. They learned how to take care of themselves on their own, and to disappear (physically or energetically) as a way of solving problems and maintaining their safety. Removing themselves from danger is their strategy (as opposed to the more anxious strategy of trying to convert the danger into safety.) Their fundamental message was of not being enough, either to warrant warmth and love from their parents or to fill their insatiable, inappropriate needs.
Can you share about what it's like for you in moments of disconnection from your partner? What do you notice in your body? What thoughts are going through your head? I think it's important for people to have a deeper sense of your experience because we usually hear more from people who are anxious-leaning.
There are a lot of ways to think about this. Disconnection is far more broad and has a wider meaning than most folks tend to notice, and since I’ve dated fellow avoidants, disorganized folks, anxious folks, and secure ones too, the experience can differ a lot. Since those delving into attachment styles are most often those in an anxious-avoidant dynamic though, I will focus on my experiences of disconnection as an avoidant with an anxious partner here.
First, even in moments when my anxious partner felt connected, cuddling on the couch, say, I still often felt disconnected because the calm energy feels overly contingent on a very narrow way of interacting. The lack of fluidness and allowance makes me feel like neither of us are really, wholly there, because the minute I say something “wrong,” it disappears. It doesn’t feel reliable or flexible, so it can be hard to trust it and relax.
But in a more general sense, when physically disconnected from my partner in an ordinary way, such as parting ways at the end of time together, I usually initially feel what Diane Poole Heller refers to as “separation-elation.” I know how to enjoy my time alone deeply, whereas connection can feel like a minefield (particularly with an anxious partner), so there’s usually a sigh of relief, and then anxiety around reuniting—even though I most often want to. I used to feel bad about this, but then I realized that it’s a part of my emotional inheritance like the rest of it, and just mirrors the more anxious style of reunion-elation and separation-anxiety. That anxiety doesn’t mean they never want to be alone, and my pattern doesn’t mean I never want to connect.
As for the disconnect that comes through conflict, while that has many different flavors, I most often feel a tightness in my chest, increased circulation in my arms, and a gut-wrench when I’m highly agitated. It kind of takes a lot to get there, though, and most often I experience a lot of numbing and dissociation. I can get quiet and appeasing just to make the conflict go away, and turn off my own liveliness that might assert my own needs and boundaries a little better, especially since those aren’t always so well received.
Additionally, the following thoughts and emotions are often hard for anxious folks to hear, but it’s so important for the avoidant experience to be articulated. It doesn’t mean our perceptions are always an accurate reflection of reality, and it’s not a defense for our unskillful behavior, but expressing what’s going on for us is vital in a world that seems to have zero understanding of it. So here goes.
The overarching frustration is around feeling un-free to make mistakes or be a full, complex human with quirks and dysfunctions that can be tolerated and left alone sometimes. There’s often a feeling like I’m just a need-meeting machine for someone else, and they’re banging on me because I’m not working as intended. Underneath the frustration is always a feeling of not being enough, and like I’m fundamentally unacceptable to the person I love and that I have to change who I am, what I need, and what my limitations are in order to be loved. This leads to not feeling chosen for who I am, but picked because I was there. I often feel manipulated, guilted, pressured, and lashed out at. I feel I am unable to assert differing opinions or have my own boundaries around how I’m willing to have a conversation.
What do you wish people understood about avoidant attachment?
I think folks conflate avoidant attachment with a lot of things that it simply isn’t, especially on social media, where “therap-ish” accounts run wild. Simple nonchalance, emotional unavailability, or disinterest in a relationship (or a specific person) isn’t the same thing as avoidant attachment. Insecure attachment is attached to a lot of fear and loss and is very physical. Remembering that actual avoidant folks are having full-blown attachment anxiety just like anxious folks, just in a different way, is key.
Additionally, I feel a strong need to call out the false correlation between avoidants and narcissists that’s splattered all over social media. I’m sure there are some avoidantly attached narcissists out there, but I’m equally sure that there are anxiously attached narcissists in just as many numbers. One of the tendencies of anxious attachment (for someone who hasn’t done reflection and healing!) is to blame their partner entirely and evade their own accountability within the dynamic, so “narcissist” becomes a good catch-all term to label those who they see as fully responsible for the breakdown of a relationship by not being available, but maybe not knowing how to be honest or break things off either. Emotional unskillfulness isn’t narcissism, and we need to give people a break and stay focused on our half of the equation.
What would you want people with the anxious style to know about you?
That I’m a human capable of loving and being loved, and also capable of being hurt just as much as the next person. Don’t let tough or opaque exteriors fool you into thinking anyone isn’t a soft and vulnerable human inside, even for folks who have to expend enormous energy to learn how to show it.
How can people with the anxious style support you in feeling safer in relationships and more able to be open and vulnerable?
So many ways! Off the top of my head, maintaining empathy, getting curious rather than assuming, and making it safe to say “no” all come to mind as far as interacting goes. Ultimately though, while understanding is of course great, focusing more on healing your anxious attachment than “figuring out” my avoidant stuff will do far more good and work better to shift things. Getting too involved with my work only deepens my sense of invasion and inadequacy. You can only change you!
To go further, my Instagram is a good resource, as well as my Patreon, which is essentially a paid newsletter where I send a monthly deep-dive into some aspect of avoidant attachment, with suggestions for both avoidants and their partners (I’ll be opening up a Q&A/advice column there soon!) You can browse my recommended books, and my friend Rikki who runs Anxious Hearts Guide is also an excellent resource for healing anxious attachment.
What do you like about your attachment style? What wouldn't you want to change about yourself?
I love my no-bullshit way of speaking. I love my fieriness and ambition. I love my independence, and the rich inner world I’ve developed that’s always there for me and can’t be taken away (no matter if it came to be from a certain combination of neglect and enmeshment—I am disorganized-avoidant.) I love the wide bay of allowance I can give to others and my insistence on letting them assert themselves to keep me from falling into rescuing. I love my intensity and discernment. I love my strong will and resiliency. I actually love the pragmatism and realism I can accept around relating, and I don’t want to change to pretend I believe in perfection, idealism, or permanence.
I would love to hear how this interview landed for you! Please feel free to leave a comment or email me to touch base. As always, thank you for reading and being a part of this community. And extra special thanks to the Loving Avoidant for so articulately sharing their experience—what a gift!
Warmly,
Elizabeth