How to Communicate with an Avoidant Partner

Want to learn how to communicate with an avoidant partner? If your partner has avoidant attachment, you know just how confusing their behavior can feel. One minute they’re hot, the next they’re cold. And you’re not sure how to avoid triggering them or get them to open up. How do you communicate with an avoidant individual? Here’s what you need to know!

What is your attachment style?

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What is avoidant attachment? 

Let’s start from the beginning:

Basics of attachment styles

Attachment styles are based on attachment theory, which explains our relationship patterns. Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby first defined this concept in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Our attachment styles are formed in childhood and they determine how we form different relationships; romantic relationships, friendships, work relationships, and more. 

There are four attachment styles:

• Secure attachment (a healthy way to attach to others; roughly 50% are securely attached) 
• Anxious attachment (anxious-preoccupied attachment style; those with anxious attachment tend to have a negative view of themselves and want a lot of emotional intimacy, but find that their partners don’t want to get as close) 
• Avoidant attachment (dismissive-avoidant attachment style; avoidantly attached people want a lot of independence to the extent that they might be seen to shun attachment altogether) 
• Disorganized attachment (fearful-avoidant attachment style; wants and fears emotional intimacy at the same time) 

Roughly 40% of children are insecurely attached (anxious, avoidant, or disorganized). 

Now, let’s look more closely at avoidant attachment. 

Avoidant attachment style

Those with avoidant attachment want a lot of independence and don’t want to depend on others. To illustrate this, Mary Ainsworth’s “Strange Situations” experiment measured how children reacted to their parent’s temporary absence. 

In the experiment, mothers and their children were put in a room with interesting toys. A stranger would talk to the mother and child and then the mother would temporarily leave the room.

Researchers looked at how the children explored the room and how they reacted when their mothers returned. Those with secure attachment would explore the room and seek comfort from their caregiver when they felt anxious or distressed.

Those with avoidant attachment would not explore much and they didn’t prefer their mothers over strangers. When their mothers returned, they avoided or ignored her. 

Those with avoidant attachment carry these behavioral patterns to adulthood. 

How do you know if someone is avoidantly attached, then? Here are a few telltale signs:

• Avoidant partners tend to enter relationships quickly, but after 3-6 months they start focusing on the flaws
• They are sensitive to even simple requests  
• They have a fear of commitment (a symptom of the fact that they take commitment incredibly seriously)
• They often feel that they get the blame for things that don’t work in the relationship and will try to avoid too much responsibility 
• They feel emotionally distant 
• They might struggle with perfectionism or fears of failure 
• They often have addictions, like work, drugs, alcohol, or gambling 

Unfortunately, avoidant individuals often end up in the “anxious-avoidant trap.” Here’s what this means. 

Avoidant and anxious relationships

Those with insecure attachment styles (avoidant, anxious, and dismissive attachment) tend to pair with people who confirm their pre-existing beliefs.

In other words, those with avoidant attachment and anxious attachment often end up in relationships.

Anxiously attached individuals are eager to get close to their partners and seek high levels of approval and intimacy from them, but this behavior makes avoidants feel smothered and they will typically start to withdraw. Which will make the anxious partner try to get even closer to their avoidant partner. 

This way, both partners reaffirm their pre-existing beliefs about romantic relationships and stay stuck in the “anxious-avoidant trap.”  

So, the question is:

How do you know if an avoidantly attached partner likes you? And how do you communicate with them?

That’s what we’ll look at next. 

How does an avoidant partner show love? 

Avoidantly attached partners often swing from wanting to be with their partner and feeling love to thinking it isn’t enough for them and what they want. Or they might think things like, “I’m bored of this person” or “I don’t know what I liked about them anyway.” 

This is an unconscious defense mechanism. If love has been demonstrated in their life through conflict, they might have a tendency to generate conflict in their relationships, to test if it’s “true” love or to simply recreate what feels familiar. 

An avoidantly attached partner may also mask feelings of unworthiness by telling themselves that they don’t want this relationship, in order to push you away before you can push them away. 

This could manifest in several different ways:

• Maybe your partner initiates enough contact to be polite and sustain the connection, but not enough for you to feel secure in the relationship. 
• Maybe they don’t respond right away to your text messages, but they do eventually respond, and with a perfectly reasonable reply. 
• They make time for you once or twice a week, but you can’t tell if it’s because they are excited to see you, or they just don’t have anything else going on, and they find you companionable enough.

The thing is:

If they DO like you on a level where they themselves are ready to admit to their own feelings, they will show it. For example, an avoidant who likes you might…

• Introduce you to their family
• Make plans to travel with you
• Invite you to the more intimate parts of their life; for instance, they might leave you alone in their apartment, which is a highly private space for them 

I talk about a few more signs here, in this youtube video: 

If they do show some affection (say, they sometimes suggest dates or they show you some physical affection), but at the same time they back off, the truth is that there is a contradiction in their feelings. They’re in conflict over it.

And while you might think that they are just not admitting to the “truth” of their feelings because of their defense mechanisms, you have to realize that the conflict they are experiencing is the WHOLE “truth”; not just the part of the truth that you WISH they would entertain more often.

The best you can do is to meet them with emotional honesty and hope that they do the same. In the next few sections, we’ll look at how to communicate with an avoidant partner so that you can do just that. 

How do you communicate with an avoidant partner? 

The problem with communicating with an avoidant partner is that when you bring up a triggering issue with them, they tend to clam up, joke it off, change the subject, or ignore you.

Knowing that your partner has avoidant attachment can help you avoid specific verbal statements in conversations and turn arguments into much more productive discussions. 

First, let’s look at why avoidant partners miscommunicate. 

Why avoidant partners miscommunicate 

When most people say they struggle with communication, it is usually that they struggle to communicate what it is that they mean. Or they struggle to understand what their partner actually means. 

And this results because we are often communicating from a defensive position or with words that mean one thing to us, but something else to our partners. 

Either way, we don’t want to appear too vulnerable. We also don’t want to appear incompetent or incapable. If we struggle to understand and express feelings accurately, talking about the relationship and how you feel about it is going to feel like an invitation to go stomping around a minefield. 

So we disguise our meaning with these coded messages that we send to one another, and this is largely unconscious. We don’t realize that’s what we’re doing. In fact, defense mechanisms are defined by their unconscious characteristics. 

These defenses also obscure from our own conscious mind, that which it is defending.

Of course, miscommunication isn’t limited to just avoidantly attached folks. But this is the basis for why those with avoidant attachment communicate in a certain way. 

For instance, they will feel triggered by certain phrases. And if you’re aware of those phrases, it’ll become much easier to communicate with your partner. 

Some of the phrases that might feel particularly annoying to those with avoidant attachment are:

• “I know you better than you know yourself.”
• “You wouldn’t say/need/do that, if you really loved me.”
• “Nothing is wrong, I’m fine.”
• “If I have to ask, then it doesn’t count.”
• “Keeping [insert anything] private means you’re lying/cheating on me.”
• “If you can’t figure that out, then you don’t know me at all.”

How do you overcome these communication barriers, though? The best way to accurately assess what someone else means is to be clear yourself. 

This boils down to an ability to decode surface versus deep structure communications. And the deeper structure of communication always points towards a core emotional response. That core emotional response is usually reacting to a need or desire, and our fears around the possibilities of getting those needs and desires met.

Next, we’ll look at how to use surface versus deep structure communications.

The difference between surface structure and deep structure communication 

What’s the difference between surface structure and deep structure communication?

Deep structure communications are the “essence” of what someone is trying to communicate. Surface structure communications would be a literal interpretation of the words. 

It’s essentially expressing feelings versus expressing information. 

For example, Sally, who is anxiously attached, says “I feel like you never listen to me.” First of all, it is not really a feeling statement, but a criticism. Most likely, she does not expect the word ‘never’ to be taken literally, what she is trying to express is the frustration she feels in the moment and the fear that her avoidant partner John is losing interest in her. 

So, a deep structured way of saying this would be, 

“I feel frustrated and hurt, and I am worried you are losing interest in me.” 

Now, this is not bad, but it could be improved. I recommend pre-framing your statement, and including a repair option with your deep structure communications, so your partner has somewhere to go. So, we might add to this statement, 

“I don’t want to make assumptions, but I love you so much, and I am feeling frustrated and hurt, because I am worried you are losing interest in me. I am also wondering how you are feeling, and if together we might be able to sort this out.”

By shifting to a deep structured way of communicating, you are enabling much more productive conversations. Your avoidant partner will have an easier time understanding that what you’re saying isn’t a criticism of them but a reaction to your own feelings. 

Want to learn more about deep structured communication? Watch this quick video:

What to do when an avoidant partner pulls away 

But what happens when your avoidant partner starts to pull away? 

Avoidant partners want more space because it helps them preserve their connections. So to avoid triggering them, which will only result in them pulling back even more, use these tips on how to communicate with an avoidant partner to help them reconnect with their authentic self:

• Ask if they can express themselves and their needs more clearly, while staying in a loving mindset
• Find common ground around the issue or situation at hand
• Show respect and acknowledge their behavior 
• Understand that they feel unloved or rejected in some way 
• Follow up with them, but don’t chase them because too many messages can keep them frozen
• Assure them that you understand it can be hard for them to be in a relationship, that the issue isn’t about you, and that they should do what they feel they need to do 
• If they need space, tell them you’re there for them and it’s no big deal; you have your own passions and pursuits as well
• Show them that you’re not trying to control them by pointing out specific things you appreciate about them, instead of criticizing what they could be doing better 
• Try to express your loving feelings in a unique manner that is specific to your relationship, and not a sweeping romantic FANTASY of love in general. In other words: express love without using the “L” word directly (most avoidant partners think you’re just in love with the idea of being in love,  if you pop the “L” word too quickly.)

If you use deep structure communication and you come from a place of trying to communicate in a compassionate way, that’s all you can do. You can’t control how the person responds. 

If they still don’t meet you where you’re at, you need to look at your values and beliefs and decide from a scale of 1-10 how essential it is for you that your partner meets this particular need in order to feel fulfilled in your relationship.

Maybe it’s just one of the things you disagree on in the relationship. But if it’s something that’s preventing you from residing in the fullest circumference of your spirit, you might be faced with an incurable incompatibility issue.

How to get an avoidant partner to chase you?

One question I get a lot is: “Is there a way to make my partner chase me?”

If you’ve been wondering this, it might say more about your situation than you think. Maybe you’re the one always doing the chasing, and deep down, you’re exhausted.

Avoidant partners want the same things we all do—connection, comfort, feeling seen and appreciated. They do enjoy being loved. But many avoidant people believe that the way to get that love is to find someone who will magically fix them, without them having to face their fears or grow.

If you have an anxious attachment style, you probably tune in closely to what your partner wants, and you might start acting like the version of yourself you think they’ll love most. But that creates a kind of illusion—a relationship built on pretending. Eventually, that fantasy can’t hold up. And when it breaks down, both people have to face reality: the anxious partner needs to clarify their own desires, and the avoidant partner needs to release their fantasy of being saved without doing the work.

Here’s the truth: anxious partners are usually more in touch with their emotional needs than avoidant ones. But that can feel painful when your partner seems emotionally unavailable or distant.

So, let’s reframe the question.

• Instead of asking, “How do I get my partner to chase me?”
• Ask yourself: “Why do I want them to?”

Are you looking for proof that you’re lovable? Are you hoping to feel worthy through their attention? Trying to win over someone who doesn’t—or can’t—love you in the way you need will only lead to burnout. You’ll end up doubting your worth, questioning your needs, and losing parts of yourself in the process.

When you ask, “How do I get them to chase me?” what you’re really asking is, “How do I get them to become someone they’re not?”

The answer? You don’t. Instead, you let go of the fantasy. You remind yourself that what you want in love is valid—and possible. But maybe not with this person. Whether they choose you or not doesn’t define your value. Your worth isn’t measured by someone else’s ability to show up.

So the real shift begins when you stop obsessing over what your partner wants and start getting clear about what you want. Because the desire to be chased is often about ego and fear—not about your deepest, most authentic needs. And when you’re ready to choose yourself first, everything begins to change. Know what you want first, and focus on that. And then let them be a part of a co-creative solution to getting both your needs met in equal priority. Don’t figure everything out for them, beforehand. Let it unfold in the moment.

To learn more about this, check out my video below:

Over to you!

There you have it! Now you know how to communicate with an avoidant partner. 

What it comes down to is that you work on your communication style and go from surface level to deep structure communication. Ultimately, you can only do so much to communicate with your partner. If both of you are ready to put an effort into the way you communicate, you are much better positioned to build a healthy, working relationship. 

What’s your #1 question when it comes to communicating with your avoidant partner?

Let me know in the comments below.