Learning how to date a person with an avoidant attachment style, can feel like navigating through a labyrinth of emotions. In this enlightening blog post, we’ll delve deep into the essence of what avoidant attachment truly is and its unmistakable signs. We’ll decode the surprising traits avoidant partners find attractive in a relationship, and examine the signs that an avoidant partner loves you. We’ll also explore why dating and avoidant attachment can seem so arduous and dissect the nuanced expressions of avoidant attachment in women, and avoidant attachment in men.
Finally, we will address the question: Can someone with an avoidant attachment style have a successful relationship? And examine the important aspects of the healing process for avoidant attachment, paving the way toward emotional growth and healthier connections.
So let’s dive in!
What is Avoidant Attachment Style?
Avoidant Attachment is a behavioral style where individuals maintain emotional distance to preserve their independence. At its core, this pattern is a coping mechanism born out of a fundamental fear of emotional dependency or manipulation, and a high value placed on self-reliance. Psychologically speaking, people with Avoidant Attachment style often equate closeness with a loss of autonomy, steering clear of situations that could trigger their deeply ingrained fears.
Signs of Avoidant Attachment Style
Typical signs of Avoidant Attachment include emotional distance, hesitancy in committing to future plans, or keeping conversations surface-level. It’s not that they’re unemotional or uncaring; they’re just careful about letting anyone too close to their emotional core. Other signs might include dodging conflict or minimizing emotional conversations, as both situations could disrupt their carefully balanced sense of self, which is typically held together by rigid, but fragile boundaries. They are usually particularly sensitive and take on other people’s emotional energy, without realizing it, which is why they ask for space from emotionally intense people and situations.
To learn more about the strengths of avoidant attachment, be sure to check out my YouTube video: 4 Strengths of the Rolling Stone [Avoidant Attachment]
What are avoidant partners attracted to?
In the intricate dance of relationships, avoidant partners move to a rhythm that prizes self-reliance and poise. They aren’t typically swayed by grand romantic gestures or the fiery drama often showcased in love stories. Instead, they find a quiet allure in traits that resonate with their core values. For those captivated by the enigma of an avoidant partner, understanding what draws them in can be like deciphering an ancient love language. Here are five traits that avoidant partners are irresistibly attracted to:
Independence
They gravitate towards those who have their own lives and passions, reflecting a partnership of two wholes, not halves. “I love our time together, but I also love my solo weekend retreats to recharge.”
Confidence
Partners who carry themselves with assurance are appealing because they don’t look for someone to complete them. “I’m happy with who I am and don’t need someone else to validate my feelings or needs.”
Self-sufficiency
A partner who can manage their own affairs is key, as it relieves the pressure to be each other’s caretakers. “I take pride in managing my finances and well-being, which allows me to enter a relationship as an equal contributor, not a dependent.”
Direct Communication
They prefer someone who communicates needs and desires plainly, avoiding the dance of ambiguity or expectation (even though, they can sometimes shy away from being direct themselves, because of a fear of confrontation). “When something’s on my mind, I believe in discussing it openly and respectfully, rather than leaving things unsaid.”
Emotional Strength
Those who navigate life’s roller coasters with composure suggest a relationship free from emotional turbulence. “I face life’s challenges head-on, knowing that I can handle emotional waves with grace and strength.”
Each of these qualities signals the potential for harmony in a relationship that respects their inherent need for space and self-determination. Embracing these traits doesn’t just capture their attention; it speaks to the very heart of their love language.
To learn more about this topic, check out my video: 6 Signs An Avoidant Partner Loves You.
How do avoidants act when they are in love?
Falling in love can sometimes be like listening to a symphony in a foreign language for an avoidant partner – the melody is understood, but the lyrics are interpreted in their own way. If you’re involved with an avoidant partner, their expressions of love might not be the grand gestures you see in movies. Instead, they may be more understated, yet equally meaningful. Here are five signs to look for that reveal an avoidant partner is truly in love, despite their unconventional way of showing it:
Here’s a list of signs an avoidant partner might exhibit when they are in love, paired with illustrative examples:
They Initiate Contact
Though valuing independence, they’ll start reaching out more often, showing they’re thinking of you. “I saw this and thought of you, so I couldn’t wait to share it with you.”
Consistent Time Together
Avoidants typically guard their time, but if they’re setting aside regular time for you, it’s a big sign. “How about we make Thursday nights our regular dinner date?”
Opening Up
They might share personal stories or vulnerabilities, which is a significant step out of their comfort zone. “I don’t usually talk about this, but I feel safe sharing my thoughts with you.”
Inclusion in Their World
Inviting you into previously solo spaces, like their home or introducing you to close friends, is a sign of deep trust. “I’d love for you to meet my friends this weekend. They’ve been wanting to meet you.”
Thoughtful Gestures
They may go out of their way to do something for you, which is their non-verbal way of showing care. “I remembered you like your coffee a certain way, so I made it just for you.”
To learn more catch my video: How To Make An Avoidant Partner Love You.
3 Surprising Signs an Avoidant Partner Loves You
While those signs are subtle yet sure indicators of an avoidant’s affection, there are also less straightforward, even surprising ways they might express their love. These can often go unnoticed or be misinterpreted because they fall outside of what we consider typical romantic behaviors. These unusual signs of love are like a secret language—once you learn it, a whole new understanding of the avoidant partner’s affection unfolds.
Here are three unconventional ways an avoidant partner may express love:
Respecting Boundaries
Instead of constant check-ins, they show love by respecting your autonomy, perhaps mistakenly equating love with non-intrusion. “I didn’t want to bombard you with messages. I thought you needed some time for yourself today.”
Practical Help Over Emotional Support
They may offer practical solutions to your problems or help you fix something, as their way of showing they care, instead of providing emotional comfort. “I noticed you were stressed about your broken laptop, so I fixed it for you.”
Creating Distance After Intimacy
After a period of closeness, they might seemingly withdraw. This isn’t a step back in affection, but rather their way of processing the intimacy they’ve allowed themselves to experience. “I’ve been a bit quiet because I needed to recharge, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking of you.”
These behaviors can be confusing and might feel counterintuitive as expressions of love. However, for an avoidant partner, these actions are significant efforts to connect within their comfort zone. Understanding and recognizing these signs can be the key to deepening the relationship.
Why Are Avoidants So Hard To Date?
Dating an avoidant attachment style can be difficult if your emotional needs and desires are for more closeness, intimacy, and spending lots of time together. Avoidant partners often find it difficult to meet these expectations and wind up pulling away to avoid the anxiety the fear of failure and disappointment creates. Here are a few themes you might find popping up in dating an avoidant attachment style.
The Emotional Disconnect
Picture this: You’re ready for a cozy night in, maybe hoping to share thoughts about your day or your dreams for the future. But your avoidant partner is in their own world, maybe buried in a book or insisting on discussing practical household tasks instead of connecting on a deeper level. This isn’t just a one-off; it’s a pattern where emotionally charged topics are replaced with surface-level conversations.
The Island of Unresolved Conflicts
For someone who thrives on close, heartfelt dialogue, this can feel like living on an emotional island, despite being in a committed relationship. Imagine wanting to tackle issues head-on—like discussing plans for the holidays or how to manage finances together—but finding that your avoidant partner deflects with humor or changes the topic, leaving conflicts unresolved and feelings unacknowledged.
The Unmet Expectations
Now, let’s say you expect your partner to celebrate your work promotion with enthusiasm, mirroring your excitement, but they respond with a mere “that’s great” without looking up from their laptop. This reaction might not mean they don’t care, but it can sting if you’re unaware of their avoidant tendencies and how these shape their responses to emotional cues.
For those with an anxious attachment style, dating an avoidant can often feel like trying to mingle at a party where everyone speaks a different language. You’re reaching out for connection, but your signals seem to get lost in translation, leading to frustration and a sense of isolation.
Finding Autonomy in Togetherness
The silver lining? It’s an invitation to reassess how you communicate your needs. It’s realizing that while your partner might not respond to your excitement about a promotion with a cake or confetti, their willingness to listen to your day’s details over dinner is their way of showing they care. It’s about finding fulfillment in self-sufficiency, discovering that you can celebrate your achievements with friends who share your zeal, without viewing your partner’s different display of affection as a deficit.
Dating an avoidant reminds us that while we can invite our partners into our emotional space, we can’t expect them to fill it—that’s a job for ourselves, through our hobbies, friendships, and personal achievements. It’s a lesson in expressing our needs directly, without accusation, and in learning the art of self-soothing when alone time is on the menu more often than we’d like.
To learn more, check out my video: Why Do Avoidant Partners Pull Away?
Does gender impact attachment styles?
Does gender influence how people show their avoidant attachment?
Definitely.
The main ideas of avoidant attachment—like valuing independence, keeping emotions under wraps, and steering clear of deep connection—are common to everyone, regardless of gender. But the way these traits show up can look pretty different for men and women. This isn’t about biology as much as it’s about the roles and expectations society lays out for us.
Understanding these differences is super helpful when you’re trying to get a handle on why your avoidant partner acts the way they do. Cultural norms play a big role here, setting up different rules for how men and women “should” express their emotions.
Also, we’ve all got our own biases, right? Sometimes what we expect from men and women can cloud how we see their behavior, especially when it comes to something as personal as attachment.
And let’s not forget that gender roles are always in flux, always being rewritten. And the intersecting layers of prejudice and oppression that exist for transgender individuals or gender fluid individuals can also impact how we experience our attachments and connections to others, which can make us feel safe or unsafe in relationship.
So keeping up with how these changes influence attachment can give us a better, more nuanced picture of how avoidance shows up in relationships.
For this post, we are going to dig a bit deeper and see how these general points play out in the day-to-day for cisgender men and women.
Avoidant Attachment in Men:
Navigating the silent waters of a man with an avoidant attachment style can sometimes feel like steering through a fog—movements are cautious, visibility is low, and understanding the course takes patience. In men, particularly, this attachment style may manifest in distinct behaviors that reflect a deep-rooted impulse to maintain control and self-sufficiency.
These behaviors are often influenced by cultural expectations of masculinity and can be subtle indicators of their inner struggle with closeness and affection. Here’s a closer look at how avoidant attachment can specifically unfold in men:
- Fear of Vulnerability: Men may often equate emotional openness with weakness, leading to a reluctance to be vulnerable.
- Physical Distancing: Pulling away physically, such as avoiding hugs or kisses, can be more pronounced.
- Competitive Focus: A heightened focus on achievements and career success as a distraction from emotional intimacy.
- Direct Communication: They may be more straightforward about their need for space, mirroring societal expectations for men to be assertive.
- Avoidance of Emotional Conversations: May change the subject or use humor to divert emotionally charged topics.
In understanding these patterns, it’s crucial to recognize the societal backdrop against which many men form their emotional responses. The conclusion isn’t that they’re incapable of deep connections or inherently distant, but that their expressions of love and need for space are filtered through a lens of self-reliance and emotional autonomy.
Patience and a gentle, understanding approach can sometimes illuminate the path forward, transforming the fog of avoidant attachment into a clearer horizon of mutual understanding and respect.
Avoidant Attachment in Women:
Avoidant behaviors in women often present themselves as a complex choreography—full of grace yet guarded, moving between closeness and independence. For women, especially, avoidant attachment might be shrouded in layers of social expectations and personal coping mechanisms. They can be the masters of the subtle art of emotional evasion, creating a dance that can often leave their partners guessing.
Understanding the unique ways in which women with avoidant attachment navigate their relationships can shed light on this nuanced dynamic.
- Emotional Ambiguity: While avoiding emotional intimacy, women may still engage in deep conversations without real emotional investment.
- Mixed Signals: May send affectionate messages but avoid real-life commitment, creating a confusing dynamic.
- Subtle Distancing: Using passive-aggressive behavior or subtle cues to indicate the need for space rather than stating it directly.
- Societal Pressure: Women with avoidant tendencies may feel internal conflict due to societal expectations to be nurturing and relational.
- Avoidance Through Busyness: May cite a busy schedule or other commitments as reasons to avoid intimacy, but in a less direct manner than men.
The key to understanding avoidant attachment in women lies in acknowledging the cross-pressures of personal inclinations and societal norms. Recognizing these patterns is not about assigning blame or demanding change, but about understanding the rhythms to which some women have learned to move.
Through this lens of compassion and awareness, we can better support and connect with women who find security in avoidance, guiding them gently towards the harmony of balanced intimacy.
Can someone with an avoidant attachment style have a successful relationship?
The short answer is yes. The long answer includes a deep dive into the unique growth challenges they would have to face, in order to make that change.
So what would be the biggest growth challenges for partners with avoidant attachment style?
Their struggle is primarily around a fear of losing themselves in the relationship, or of being invaded upon and having their freedom and autonomy restricted.
These fears stem from not trusting the resilience and integrity of the essential self, to HOLD ON to the self, in the context of a relationship, or to be strong enough to REPEL someone else’s emotional influence.
That means the avoidant’s essential issue and growth challenge revolves around self trust and personal boundaries.
As a result to become rigidly constricted energetically, and formulate rigid but fragile boundaries.
When we do this there is no room for playfulness or flexibility, emotionally speaking.
On the surface this looks like aloofness, dismissiveness, being self involved or self important, and stingy with loving regard. The world is perceived as invasive and love is seen as scarce.
And so, by choosing to become more playful and relaxing those rigid boundaries a bit, we also become more loving, emotionally flexible, and generous in relationships.
To learn more, watch my video: Can Avoidant Partners Change? 3 Major Obstacles for Rolling Stones.
Can avoidant partners change? Signs of healing
For folks that want to know how to date a person with avoidant attachment style, they also usually want to know “Can avoidant partners change?” When avoidant partners are able to meet their growth challenges, they move from avoidant attachment style, towards a more secure attachment style, by way of what I call “Soul-Centered Security™”
This looks like healing the thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with seven triggers.
For example…
- They move from feeling overwhelmed by emotional intensity to embracing it as an opportunity for connection and self expression.
- They evolve from fantasizing about a ‘what-if’ future to actively planning and taking steps toward it.
- They start seeing commitment as a loving choice in which they get to feel more free in love, than they do outside of it.
- They go from stonewalling you to openly discussing their preferences and concerns while establishing healthier boundaries.
- They transition from dreading demanding behavior to understanding that control is often a misguided quest for connection.
- They stop taking criticism personally, learn to discern if it is valuable feedback, or a negative projection of an unhappy person.
- They stop viewing honest emotional expression as manipulative, starting to appreciate it as authentic communication aimed at strengthening intimacy.
To learn more about what triggers avoidant partners in relationship, check out my video on this topic: 7 Triggers for Avoidant Attachment in Anxious-Avoidant Relationships.
How to heal avoidant attachment style?
Here’s where The MacWilliam Method™, —focusing on Soul-Centered Security™—stands out. Most therapies aim at what we call “secure attachment,.” And that’s a really important goal. But what we’re targeting is beyond that. Soul-Centered Security is about aligning with your Higher Self so deeply that no relationship hiccup can knock you off your emotional center.
Avoidant partners are excellent at thinking around their feelings, but now, it’s time to really feel your way through them. Through a blend of playful experiential art exercises,, energy healing and hypnosis, EFT Tapping, and trauma-informed somatic therapy, my method guides insecure partners through these growth challenges. These modalities help avoidant partners access the emotional richness they’ve been holding back, allowing them to bring that childlike creativity and playfulness into their relationships.
The point is, this isn’t just about making someone a better partner. This is about becoming a more spiritually aligned and emotionally resilient human being. It’s not tying you down; it’s setting you free by helping you to access the transcendent aspect of yourself as a resource for your relationship security.
If you are struggling to believe healing is possible for your avoidant partner, here are some uplifting stories from former clients and students that will inspire you!
Irena’s Success Story
In our journey to find and nurture love, we often stumble upon patterns that seem to repeat themselves, like echoes from our past. This was the case for Irena, a vibrant soul who graced my coaching program. For over a decade, she found herself in a dance of avoidance – jumping in and out of relationships, never quite finding the rhythm that would let her stay and revel in the music of a lasting bond.
Irena had been following my videos for about a year and a half, gleaning insights and feeling the stirrings of change. Yet, something was missing. She realized she needed more than just passive observation; she needed an active push. That’s when she decided to take the leap and enroll in my program.
What unfolded next for Irena was both revealing and healing. Being part of our Facebook community, she saw reflections of her struggles in others. This shared experience was eye-opening. She wasn’t alone in her journey. The repeated patterns, the questions that echoed across different lives – it all resonated deeply with her. For the first time, Irena didn’t feel like an outlier with her intimacy issues. She was part of a community, a collective of souls striving for deeper connection and understanding.
The transformation Irena experienced was profound. The program wasn’t just another step; it was a leap into a new realm of self-awareness and healing. She says, “It’s changed my life and I’ve been dealing with these issues for, like I said, over a decade. And within half a year, it’s helped tremendously.”
Her words encapsulate the essence of her journey – from a cycle of avoidance to a path of healing and growth. For anyone out there resonating with Irena’s story, teetering on the edge of change but unsure of the next step, her experience is a beacon of hope. Her journey is a testament to the transformative power of embracing one’s vulnerabilities and stepping into a space of guided growth and community support.
As an attachment styles and relationship coach, Irena’s story is a reminder of why I do what I do. It’s about witnessing the blossoming of souls like hers, who bravely face their patterns, embrace their journey, and emerge transformed.
Jordan’s Success Story
In the journey of love and relationships, sometimes we reach a crossroads where something deep within whispers, “It’s time for a change.” This was precisely the case for Jordan, an incredible client of mine, who found himself entangled in the often confusing and painful push-pull dynamics of his relationship. He knew deep down that to find true harmony and fulfillment, he had to understand the roots of this emotional tug-of-war.
Embarking on this transformative journey through my course, Jordan discovered something profound – the intricate blend of neuroscience and spirituality that underpins our emotional connections. Learning about the neurochemical factors at play in relationships was a revelation for him. It brought a sense of peace, knowing there was real science behind the emotional storms he was experiencing. This knowledge wasn’t just theoretical; it had practical, life-changing implications.
The most transformative part of Jordan’s journey, however, was the practice of guided meditation. Through this, he created space in his mind and heart for new thoughts, thoughts that resonated with who he truly wanted to be. This wasn’t just about changing thought patterns; it was about aligning with his true self, his spirit, and his aspirations.
Now, Jordan stands at a new horizon, filled with hope. Hope not just as a fleeting feeling, but as a steadfast belief in his potential to evolve into the partner he aspires to be. His journey is a testament to the power of understanding, self-awareness, and spiritual growth in healing attachment styles.
In his own words, “Ultimately, the feeling that I have now is that of hope, and hopeful that I can ultimately become the partner that I’ve aspired to become.” This statement captures the essence of Jordan’s transformation – a journey from confusion and struggle to clarity, peace, and hopeful anticipation for the future.
As a relationship coach, witnessing such profound growth and awakening in clients like Jordan is both humbling and inspiring. It reaffirms my commitment to guiding others on their paths to love, connection, and self-discovery.
How Can I Learn More?
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, take the attachment styles quiz, and find out which of my online courses could be the best fit for helping you attract and keep loving and secure relationships, while feeling more confident, reassured, and intimately connected with your own spirit.
And please be sure to leave me a comment, if you liked today’s post! I take all comments into consideration when creating new content like this.
