What it Feels Like to Have an Avoidant Attachment Style
- Averil
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
If you're wondering if you might have an avoidant attachment style, or trying to understand the thinking of a partner who does, this article begins to explain how an avoidantly attached person might think about and experience relationships.
Important Note: Always remember that attachment style labels are broad categories, and every person is an individual. You or your partner may or may not relate to some or all of the ideas below.
How an avoidantly attached person might think about relationships
Do any of these thoughts and experiences sound familiar? (People with disorganised attachment might relate to some of these too).
“Why are people always so needy?”
“It’s easier to just be alone.”
“My partner always asks how I'm feeling, but I don't really know." or:
"The feelings I am most aware of tend to be pressure and frustration."
“If I get close to a partner, I’ll have to sacrifice too much of myself.”
“I enjoy chasing a potential partner, but lose feelings quickly once we get together.”
“I often think about ‘the one who got away’, even when I’m seeing someone else.”
“Relationships shouldn’t be hard.”
“I have found past partners to be too emotional.”
“I would describe myself as a free spirit.”
“I just want my relationship to be how it was when we very first got together.”
“If my partner and I have conflict, it means we aren’t a good match.”
“I find myself focusing on my partner’s flaws and reasons not to be together, especially during more difficult times.”
“I daydream about being a hermit.”
“I find it off-putting when someone is really into me.”
“I find it attractive when someone is hard-to-get.”
“When conflict arises, I feel a strong desire to run away.”
“When I look back, it seems like my relationships always turn out the same way (except that one ex that broke up with me).”
“I just haven’t met someone who really understands me.”
“I seem to get bored of people quickly.”
“I have ended relationships in the past suddenly.”
"Maybe I'm just not cut out for relationships."
“I feel like I’m always the rational one in relationships.”
“I’ve let people in more in the past, but then drifted away from them.”
“My romantic partners always seem great at first, but then they turn clingy.”
“When I have conflict with a partner, they tend to hound me when I just want to be left alone.”
“The idea of being tied to one person makes me nervous.”
“I’m probably the asshole in most of my ex’s stories.”
“My previous partners have complained that I’m a great friend to other people but I don’t show up for them in the same way.”
“When I meet the right person, I know I’ll be a great partner. I just haven’t given my all because my past partners haven’t made me want to.”
“Partners should love and accept each other just as they are. If either of us wants the other person to change something, that’s a sign we shouldn’t be together.”
“I’ll probably settle down with someone when I’m 50.”
"I think I might be too independent for a relationship."
The experience and desires of avoidantly attached people
People with an avoidant attachment style can find relationships stressful, confusing, and frustrating. They might both simultaneously wish for the life of a free spirit with no attachments, and still hold hope that eventually they will meet the right partner — one who is easygoing and understands them, to finally escape the cycle of their own quickly cooling feelings and constantly dissatisfied or needy partners.
If you have an avoidant attachment style, your experience of relationships might also feel quite matter-of-fact. You just haven’t met the right person yet. Other people just get too emotional, or expect too much from you, and you don’t operate that way. One day you’ll meet someone better suited to you. You feel like your expectations are realistic, and it’s been your partners that have had fairytale romantic ideals that were impossible to meet.
Some people with avoidant attachment don’t find the idea of relationships to be that compelling. Maybe you have a rich and fulfilling life, and feel unwilling to compromise that for another person. You might enjoy some aspects of connection — good times, companionship, sex — but not the messier parts of serious, long-term partnerships. Perhaps your relationship history to date has largely involved situationships and friends-with-benefits. Maybe you're getting tired of that, but the idea of something more settled feels like a pressure you're not sure you can rise to.
Commonly though, people with an avoidant attachment style still want to love and be loved. You might have strong beliefs about romance and relationships and how they should be — you might believe that good relationships should be easy, that conflict means you aren’t suited, and the excitement of a new relationship shouldn’t wane if you really are a good match.
Understanding avoidantly attached people
People with avoidant attachment are often demonised. They can be heartbreakers, and some of the advice you will see for dealing with an avoidantly attached person is just "stay away from them." Their tendency to push partners away, refuse to get close, or insistence on independence often comes across cold and unfeeling to others — particularly to the anxiously attached partners they often attract. Being described this way though is isolating, and just pushes an avoidantly attached person further into themselves.
Avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, and disorganised attachment all have their roots in unmet needs and painful experiences. The behaviours of an avoidantly attached person are a protective mechanism against further harm. It prevents them from the intensely vulnerable risk that is entwining your life with another person and knowingly giving them the opportunity to hurt you. Whether the source of the avoidant attachment was prior abandonment, abuse, neglect, betrayal, or intrusion, avoidance is the mind’s unconscious effort to keep the heart safe when it recognises a familiar danger.
A person with avoidant attachment deserves compassion from others as well as themselves. Compassion does not just mean accepting unkind avoidant behaviour and excusing it because of understanding of its painful origins. True compassion consists of empathy plus support to make changes.
While avoidant behaviours do cause hurt and harm to other people, beginning from a place of understanding calls the avoidant person in towards love, rather than driving them further away with rejection and shame. It creates a space for the avoidant person to start the work of recognising and untangling their actions in relationships from the wounded places they are trying to protect. With compassion, avoidantly attached people can learn to ease these defences and genuinely connect with others to give and receive love in healthy, secure relationships.
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