Yes, avoidants absolutely experience regret after breakups, but it often surfaces much later (weeks or months) due to their tendency to emotionally deactivate, suppress feelings, and seek relief initially, only for the pain, loneliness, and realization of loss to hit once they've had space and their defenses lower. They may regret leaving due to guilt, missing the comfort, or realizing their own role, but often don't express it due to fear or shame.
When Dismissive Avoidant Breakup Regret Finally Emerges. Here's where things get interesting: dismissive avoidant breakup regret typically surfaces anywhere from six weeks to six months after the breakup. The suppression system can only hold for so long.
Avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) is a mental health condition that involves chronic feelings of inadequacy and extreme sensitivity to criticism. People with AVPD would like to interact with others, but they tend to avoid social interactions due to their intense fear of rejection.
While others might experience and express regret immediately after a breakup, dismissive avoidants often enter a period of emotional deactivation first. Their regret typically surfaces weeks or even months later, after their defensive systems have relaxed enough to allow these feelings to emerge.
With an avoidant whether it's fearful or dismissive. They usually come back because they didn't want to pull away from you in the first place. But their attachment style and learned behaviors is all they know to do. So they will come back when they are not feeling the avoidant side anymore.
At First, They Feel Relief (Yes, Really)
It's a bit of a gut-punch to realize that when an avoidant first senses you're slipping away, their initial feeling is not regret. It's relief. Not because they didn't care about you, but because intimacy and commitment feel suffocating to them.
Signs the spark is gone in a relationship often involve a decline in physical intimacy (less sex, touching, kissing), reduced or negative communication (criticism, stonewalling, no deep talks), emotional distance (feeling detached, irritable), and a lack of shared enjoyment or effort (avoiding time together, no dates, less interest in the future). It's a shift from excitement and vulnerability to routine or resentment, where the desire for deep connection and shared passion fades.
What hurts an avoidant most isn't distance but rather the loss of their perceived self-sufficiency, being forced to confront their own emotional deficits, and the shattering of their self-image when someone they pushed away shows they are genuinely happy and better off without them, revealing their actions had real, painful consequences. Actions that trigger deep insecurity, like consistent, calm detachment or proving you don't need them, dismantle their defenses, forcing them to face their own inability to connect and the pain they caused, which is often worse than direct conflict.
they do, usually they have one they kind of obsess on and they romanticize that relationship (even if it was relatively mediocre). They often use it as a distancing strategy against whoever they're currently with.
Mirroring. Another way to help an avoidant person feel more understood is to mirror them, perhaps using their language or phrasing to help connect with them. If you're going to paraphrase what you think they mean, just be sure not to assume.
Avoidantly attached partners rarely say things like “I'm punishing you.” They don't need to. Their nervous system delivers the message loud and clear through the things they stop doing. They stop replying. They stop initiating.
Avoidant attachers are technically more compatible with certain attachment styles over others. For example, a secure attacher's positive outlook on themselves and others means they are capable of meeting the needs of an avoidant attacher without necessarily compromising their own.
Whoopi Goldberg, Donny Osmond and Kim Basinger have something in common other than fame — it is avoidant personality disorder, or simply, AvPD. This disorder is estimated to affect around two percent of the general adult population.
He's keeping his options open
Some guys want to have their cake and eat it too; the comfort of regular dates (and sex) as well as the freedom of an uncommitted relationship. Ever asked yourself, 'why does he keep coming back but won't commit? ' It's probably because he knows you won't kick him to the curb just yet.
The "3-week rule" (or 21-day rule) in breakups is a popular guideline suggesting a period of no contact with an ex for about three weeks to allow for initial healing, gaining perspective, and breaking unhealthy patterns, often linked to the brain's ability to form new habits after ~21 days. It's a time for self-reflection, self-care, establishing new routines, and allowing emotions to settle, creating space to decide on future contact or moving on, rather than a magical fix, note Ex Back Permanently and Ahead App.
Regret for a dismissive avoidant rarely happens right away. It can take weeks or even months for the reality of your absence to register. By that time, many partners have already begun healing. The goal is not waiting for regret but reclaiming your peace before their timing decides your healing.
Absolutely. As avoidants experience positive, validating relationship experiences, they often become more comfortable with emotional expression and intimacy. A secure, patient partner can help facilitate this growth toward more open expressions of love.
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, ...
If they keep conversations short and tell you very little about what they're getting up to, seem to discourage you from sharing much about what's going on in your life, and generally avoid contact as much as possible, they may be disengaging rather than deactivating.
Avoidant attachment is when someone values their independence highly, often keeping emotional distance in relationships. What avoidants want in relationships, is a balance that allows for emotional connection without feeling overwhelmed, controlled, or losing their sense of self.
What I've learned from talking with avoidants is that they do feel it and they often know they hurt you, sometimes they know it immediately or sense they will hurt you leading up to the discard. Sometimes they don't feel it until later. The point is they will not do anything about it.
Fearful-avoidant
Many people with this style experienced harsh criticism, fear, or even abuse and neglect as children. A fearful attachment style is often categorized by a negative view of self and others, which may mean people with this style doubt the possibility of others helping, loving, and supporting them.
But it does provide some rough guidelines as to how soon may be too soon to make long-term commitments and how long may be too long to stick with a relationship. Each of the three numbers—three, six, and nine—stands for the month that a different common stage of a relationship tends to end.
There's no emotional connection
If you're not sharing what's really on your mind, it might be a sign that you no longer want a deep connection. Similarly, if you've found that the usual fun banter between you is gone, or it's difficult to have engaging conversations, your bond could be getting weaker.
Grey divorce or late-life divorce is the demographic trend of an increasing divorce rate for older ("grey-haired") couples in long-lasting marriages, a term typically used for people over 50. Those who divorce may be called silver splitters. Divorcing late in life can cause financial difficulties.