Avoidant Attachment

Does your partner experience their relationship with you through a certain detachment?

Do you feel coldness and distance within the relationship that is difficult to explain?

Do you strive to grow your relationship, but have been stuck in the same spot for months or even years?

A partner with an avoidant attachment style of emotion can build walls and create distances in any couple relationship, can show strict communication limits and undermine a romantic relationship. The detached attitude of the avoidant attachment personality can be frustrating for a partner, who will find him or herself experiencing feelings of uselessness and/or neglect, even to the point of feeling completely abandoned.

Those who in a relationship with an avoidant partner can, justifiably, take a few steps back and question the entire relationship.

Similarly, in adult life, people with avoidant attachments fear losing their self-reliance. They come to think that forming a partnership with another person will lead them to lose something of themselves. They approach the relationship in a conflictual way. On the one hand, they seek it because they desire intimacy and closeness, but on the other, living the relationship as a couple forces them to confront the painful memory of primary relationships that were emotionally deficient or sources of suffering.

You may already have started a family with an avoidant person and made huge efforts to try to make it all work, out of love for your partner, family and children (as well as for your own happiness!).

The mechanisms of distancing the avoidant partner have very deep roots. Only knowledge of these 'protection systems' can overcome the distances with the person you love. There is no other way.

I recommend that you read this book if your partner:

Has a shy, detached, elusive personality or seems impervious to love and emotions.

Struggles to think as a couple and to build a sense of 'US'.

Obstructs, or deviates from any attempt to communicate your hurt feelings.

Cannot - or will not - accept help from others.

Shows boundless love for a pet but can be cool and aloof with you.

Regards any request for intimacy from you as pressurising.

Shows difficulties in living the sexual life of a couple in a natural way, sometimes even avoiding intimacy in their relationships.

Is not aware of these dynamics, so can come to question love, to the point of thinking that they are a difficult person.

Not everyone wants or has time to physically sit down with a couple counsellor. They are often not prepared for this type of specific attachment. In such a case, I can quickly advise you to throw the relationship away and try another one, simply saying that they don't love you. (sometimes, however, it's not quite like that!)

Instead, you might feel:

Empty and confused when you are close to your partner.

Like an invader of their privacy and put aside.

That there is something wrong and you feel that somehow, it's your fault.

As if you are playing a constant game of 'hide and seek' in the relationship.

That sometimes, you are insecure and unworthy of love.

If you do not intervene soon, those in a couple relationship with an avoidant person will end up having to settle for a relationship that consists of distances, until the relationship eventually fragments. Everything you have built together will have been in vain.

Understanding the wounds of attachment is the best gift you can give to your relationship, and grow and nurture intimacy.