Is This You?
You’re super independent and never feel like you need to rely on anyone. You’re pretty good at taking care of everything yourself. In fact, you really only want to take care of yourself and no one else. That’s why relationships aren’t always your thing.
You try dating, but it’s not easy getting close to people. It’s always safer keeping them at a distance. But maybe you managed to date someone longterm, maybe even got married. Congratulations, because that’s not easy to do for you. Yet, whenever problems arise you always think that this isn’t for you. You’re better on your own. Is this really the person you want forever?
If this feels familiar to you, let me tell you about Allie who has an avoidant attachment style. We can discover if you have one too.
Avoidant Attachment Style
Attachment Styles are the ways that we are securely or anxiously attached to the important people in our lives. There are four styles: Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Anxious-Avoidant.
Avoidant
- Your independence and self-sufficiency is highly important to you
- You struggle with intimacy, whether it is physical or emotional
- You desire closeness with others, but it makes you too uncomfortable
- You can shut your emotions down and not care when problems arise
- You are on high alert for signs to escape or leave the relationship
- 20% of adults are avoidant
Allie: Avoidant
I’ve known Allie since the beginning of her relationship with James. Before they started dating, she’d only had one boyfriend in college, and that hardly counted because it lasted about a month. She liked to flirt with guys, but kept herself aloof. James was different.
James had only had serious longterm relationships, so when he started pursuing Allie, that’s what he had in mind. She thought it’d only be a summer fling. Seven years later they are a year into their marriage, so I guess she was wrong about that one.
James said the three special words within six months of dating. It took her almost a year. She struggled with being close emotionally and physically, but it all happened slowly over time.
Allie is and has always been super independent. Even into her early years of dating James, she’d say, “If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to be that rich cool aunt who travels the world.” And she was completely happy with that outcome. She always envisioned herself being fine without him. Until she reached a point where she realized she didn’t want him out of her life.
It took a while (five years) but they got engaged. She greatly struggled with the idea of marrying him. With every problem that came up, she never wanted to deal with it. She’d rather go to the gym and saw no point in talking about her feelings. He always wanted to figure out how to solve their problems. It took time for her to learn how to communicate with him.
“I can leave.”
Throughout their entire relationship, even though she loved him, whenever they had problems, she still thought, “I can leave at any time. I don’t have to deal with this.”
Marriage was super important to her, and she needed to be sure about him before they made that big commitment, and she really felt she was sure. That he was the one. But then after they got married, they’d still get into fights, and now she’d think, “We don’t have kids. I can still leave without this being messy.”
One time she confessed that she hates that she thinks this way, because she really doesn’t want to leave. She loves her husband, but she doesn’t know how to get rid of these thoughts whenever things get really tough.
How to Know if You’re Avoidant
Allie is an example of someone with an avoidant attachment style, but what are the signs of an avoidant attachment style? More importantly, how can you tell if you’re avoidant too?
There are a few things I noticed:
- She has consistently looked for an escape or way out of the relationship whenever it was hard.
- It took her a long time to get romantically close to her partner and say that she loved him.
- She doesn’t want to deal with her emotions.
Looking for an Escape
Let’s start with the biggest one. Avoidant people fear closeness and intimacy. If you relate to this, it doesn’t mean you don’t need intimacy, but your fear compels you to keep love at a distance. To do this, you will constantly have a mental escape route. For Allie, she always told herself she could leave at any time.
Emotional Distance
Because avoidant people fear intimacy, it is not easy to get close to them. It is easy for you to keep people at a distance for a long time until you know you can trust them. And even if someone gets closer to you than most, it doesn’t mean you’ll reveal all of yourself to them. That’s incredibly difficult for you.
Distant From Your Emotions
Avoidant people can get very emotional detached. You have mastered not only keeping others distant, but also your own emotions. Feeling emotional pain can seem unbearable, so you’d rather not feel it all. You’ll stuff it, shove it aside, or make it disappear any way you find. Allie does this whenever she doesn’t want to deal with her feelings, and whenever she envisions a better life without her partner.
There are plenty of other signs to know if you’re avoidant, but these are a few we spot from Allie.
How to Grow as an Avoidant
So, now you’re pretty sure you have an avoidant attachment style, but like Allie, you don’t want to continue keeping people at a distance. How can you heal and from an avoidant attachment style?
Attachment styles are elastic, meaning they can essentially stretch and alter. You can grow from highly Avoidant to a little avoidant, and even to secure. But elastic also means that you can snap back to your avoidant attachment style under certain triggers.
Deactivating Strategies
The first thing to be aware of is that as someone with an avoidant attachment style, you have deactivating strategies. This means you have methods in place to disengage, or distance yourself, from your partner. It is natural to seek closeness with a partner, but when you use deactivating strategies, you suppress your desire for closeness.
We’ll explore a full list of deactivating strategies later, but for now let’s look at Allie’s. When she tells herself she can leave at any time, or goes to the gym instead of facing a problem with her partner, she is suppressing her desire for closeness with him. It’s not even consciously. Her mind communicates to her that she doesn’t need intimacy with him or anyone.
These deactivating strategies are used so that Allie can still feel that her partner will not get in the way of her autonomy. She fears losing herself because of him.
I want to note that having two independent people in a relationship is completely healthy. However, avoidants take it farther by believing they don’t need to rely on anyone, and are also less willing to meet their partner’s needs. They also often believe that they are only responsible for their own needs.
Steps to Grow
The first step is to learn how to identify your deactivating strategies. When are you pushing someone away and how are you doing it? Does this person deserve to be pushed away, or are you simply responding to a fear you have?
Focus on the way your partner supports you. It is easy for an avoidant to feel unsupported and that they do everything on their own, or can do everything alone. But your partner most likely provides support you don’t even think about. Does he/she listen to you daily? Go with to events? Help with chores? Provide emotional support? Make you feel loved, valued, and wanted? These are all easy to take for granted until they are no longer there.
Find a secure partner, or associate with secure couples. One of the easiest ways to become more secure is to witness what that looks like. How does a secure person respond to their partner’s needs? How supportive are they? How reliable are they? And what does this all look like?
Make a list of what you are grateful for about your partner. It’s so easy to focus on how you don’t need them, but chances are that they provide a lot to your life. Practicing gratitude in a relationship is always healthy whether you are avoidant or not.
Overcoming an avoidant attachment style will take time, and you will still slip into common deactivating strategies. But if you are really willing to put in the effort, this is something you can grow from. You can learn how to be more secure in your relationship.
Digging Deeper
Attachment styles were first studied in the baby parent bond. In what is known as the “Strange Situation Test,” mothers were asked to leave their baby alone in a room for a few minutes and then return to see how their babies responded.
Secure babies would be worried when their mother left, unable to play with the toys around them, but then quickly reassured and able to play again when their mother returned. Anxious babies would be very upset when their mother left and could not be easily soothed when she returned. They usually continued to cry for a long time.
Avoidant babies wouldn’t care when their mother left the room or when she returned. They were disengaged with their mothers, making little to no eye contact and showing little interest in her.
The way a person reacts to distance doesn’t change their need. All babies needed closeness with their mothers, but all reacted differently. It’s the same with adults. Having closeness and intimacy with others is an important need, but avoidants turn off that part of themselves.
But what are the causes of an avoidant attachment style? People with this style had to learn from a young age that they can only rely on themselves and that other people are not reliable. They’ve also learned that the people who are supposed to give them love, security, and support are not safe.
This affects the way avoidants approach relationships. They fear that problems mean the relationship will never work, so it’s better to leave before getting more hurt. This is different from the way a secure or even anxious person thinks. Secure people don’t feel threatened by every little problem because they believe the problem will be worked out and everything will go back to normal. The anxious person fears being abandoned so can’t even dream about leaving their partner.
The fears of the avoidant fuel their deactivating strategies, which exist to keep them “safe,” even though it also accomplishes keeping others distant, thus resulting in unsatisfying relationships.
Here are some common deactivating strategies:
- Believing you aren’t ready to commit, even after being with someone for years
- Focusing on your partner’s imperfections
- Fantasizing about some ideal partner, or ex-partner
- Flirting with other people
- Being vague about your feelings for your partner
- Pulling away after feeling especially close
- Being in a relationship with an impossible future
- Keeping secrets to maintain your independence
- Avoiding physical closeness
Fearing closeness was learned, as well as the strategies you developed to protect yourself. It is incredibly difficult to undo the damage that has been done to you, but you can recognize where and why you learned these fears.
The most important lesson I’ve learned from people who have secure attachment styles is not that they don’t fear pain, but that they believe it is temporary. Pain is inevitable, but it doesn’t last forever.
The Human Connection 