While love addicts require constant emotional reassurance and attention as proof of a loving relationship, the love avoidant person often feels that their love is proven simply by supporting their partner on an economic and physical level. For the emotionally avoidant person, love becomes an obligation.
Why are Love Avoidants Attracted to Love Addicts? Love Avoidants recognize and are attracted to the Love Addict's strong fear of being left because Love Avoidants know that all they have to do to trigger their partner's fear is threaten to leave.
Love Addiction often results from an Adult Attachment Style that was created by adopting survival patterns in order to tolerate feelings of abandonment or neglect. Often love addicts will resonate with the term attachment disorder when they start to look at the abandonment and neglect they experienced in childhood.
The Traits of Avoidant Attachment In Adulthood
Essentially, they choose the flight mode of the fight or flight response. However, this isn't to suggest that someone with an avoidant attachment style doesn't crave love – they do. They've just been taught from an early age that the people they love will disappoint them.
Intense attention is among the primary avoidant attachment signs. As time passes, they suddenly become uncomfortable with all the attention and romance. The feeling becomes cringy and suffocating for them. On top of that, the love avoidant individuals also tend to overthink relationship matters.
They're generally not loyal to stay through the tough times and are likely to leave when you need them most (until they develop enjoyment in the sense of value and purpose that caregiving can provide, avoidants are more likely to leave when there are new children or when their partner has a serious illness, for example ...
Initiate the breakup & suppress negative emotions
To begin with, avoidant attachers are more likely to instigate a breakup, as they typically prefer to keep relationships on a surface level and avoid confrontations with their partners.
Avoidants tend to not want to give anything or anybody their time or their energy. If it doesn't serve them any purpose, they won't do it. So if they are with you and they are giving you their time, that is a really good indication that they care about you and they are putting you as a priority.
Individuals with this disorder also find it difficult to trust or express their deepest feelings for fear of abandonment, rejection, or loss. Avoidant personalities often draw near to people they love or care about, and later pull away out of fear.
After intimacy deepens, the avoidant partner loses interest in being sexual, in hugging, kissing, and perhaps even holding hands. Some avoidant partners will seem to actively limit physical proximity, such as sitting closely together on a couch where contact may be possible.
Most attachment specialists believe that the disorganized attachment style is the most difficult of the three insecure attachment styles to treat because it incorporates both the anxious and the avoidant styles.
Avoidants tend NOT to choose a relationship partner who is genuinely secure (with healthy self-worth and boundaries), but those who are insecure with core relational boundary and self-esteem issues-- it goes both ways. Both are insecurely attached, individuals.
As with the addict finding relationship with the co-dependent, the love addict is invariably attracted to the love avoidant, who unconsciously fears true intimacy. Those who suffer from the latter have usually childhoods rooted in emotional pain from being neglected or abandoned.
This means they love you because those with avoidant attachments have a tendency to be hypersexual. If they leave you alone in their home or apartment, that's a big sign they care.
According to psychologists, people with avoidant attachment styles are individuals uncomfortable with intimacy and are therefore more likely to multiply sexual encounters and cheat.
You're never required to stay in relationships that don't feel good for you, and attachment differences can be particularly challenging. But if you're looking for ideas on how to have a healthier relationship with your avoidant partner, I have great news: It's possible.
Because people with an avoidant attachment style fear not being lovable or good enough, feeling criticized or judged by loved ones can be particularly painful. Especially when it comes to things that they are not so comfortable with, such as their emotions and feelings.
Therefore, dismissive and fearful avoidants tend to settle down with anxious attachment types. This results in codependent relationships where the avoidant partner does not want to be intimate whilst the other partner is needy and fearful of being alone. These relationships are very common but emotionally unhealthy.
Fearful-Avoidant, aka Disorganized Attachment
The fearful-avoidant attachment style is the rarest, and "develops when the child's caregivers — the only source of safety — become a source of fear," according to the Attachment Project, an attachment style education site.
If you feel that your avoidant partner isn't recognizing your love or reciprocating your efforts, it's time to leave. While you might feel emotions like sadness, anger, fear, or grief, this is all part of the healing process. Allow yourself to feel the painful feelings of your breakup.
According to Schumann and Orehek, avoidant individuals were less likely to offer a comprehensive apology. Instead, they were defensive, prone to justify their behavior, blame the other person and make excuses.
The fearful-avoidant attachment style is characterized by a negative view of self and a negative view of others. Those who fall into this category view themselves as unworthy and undeserving of love.
Love Avoidants often are attracted to Love Addicts — people who are fixated with love. One characteristic of both attachment styles is the fear of authenticity and vulnerability within a relationship.
An avoidant person, with no one else to blame, may resort to narcissism (a falsely elevated sense of self), introversion (unaccountable to others), or perfectionism (rigidly accountable to self). The narcissist elevates self at the expense of others, believing self to be superior.
Some studies showed that differences in attachment styles seem to influence both the frequency and the patterns of jealousy expression: individuals with the preoccupied or fearful-avoidant attachment styles more often become jealous and consider rivals as more threatening than those with the secure attachment style [9, ...