But sadly, someone with an avoidant personality disorder, finds it very difficult to develop healthy relationships with boundaries. Individuals with this disorder also find it difficult to trust or express their deepest feelings for fear of abandonment, rejection, or loss.
Instead, avoidant attachers often dissociate and “flee” from their fear of rejection and closeness. They typically develop a fierce sense of independence as they expect that others will let them down. So to avoid becoming a target, they learn to rely only on themselves.
Dismissive avoidants can fall in love easily, but they're afraid of commitment. Commitment seems to go against their core value of freedom. They feel trapped when they have to commit. They also fear losing themselves and their cherished 'space' in the relationship.
Individuals with fearful avoidant attachment are a combination of the preoccupied and dismissive-avoidant styles of insecure attachment. They believe they are unlovable and also don't trust other people to support and accept them. Because they think others will eventually reject them, they withdraw from relationships.
Common behaviors and signs of fearful-avoidant attachment
Fear of intimacy or fear of relationships in general. Avoiding commitment in relationships. Elevated anxiety. Negative view of themselves; feeling undeserving of healthy relationships.
People with avoidant personality disorder have chronic feelings of inadequacy and are highly sensitive to being negatively judged by others. Though they would like to interact with others, they tend to avoid social interaction due to the intense fear of being rejected by others.
On the other hand, people with an avoidant attachment may be attracted to anxious partners because their pursuit and need for closeness reinforce the avoidant person's need for independence and self-reliance. Anxious and avoidant partners may also seek their partner's traits due to wanting those traits in themselves.
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.
Once again, people with a dismissive-avoidant style showed that they did care about relationships. Dismissive avoidant students reported higher self-esteem and positive mood than non-dismissives—but only when told that surgency predicts future interpersonal success.
People with an avoidant attachment style tend to cope with abandonment issues by not allowing people to get close to them, and not opening up and trusting others. They may be characteristically distant, private, or withdrawn.
Because they're inherently uncomfortable with vulnerability, someone with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style may judge other people who are overly demonstrative of their affection and emotions. "Their low opinion of people creates a general distrust of others," Macaluso says.
So avoidants exist in a state of not consciously fearing real loss, only engulfment, and by initiating a breakup they may in fact subconsciously be trying to access that fear of loss - often the only way they can truly appreciate what their partner means them (and just as strategies they use within a relationship to ...
All About Avoidant Personality Disorder. You want to feel accepted by others and be successful, but an underlying fear of rejection holds you back. If you have avoidant personality disorder, you likely experience two conflicting desires.
On the other hand, the avoidant person will be attracted to the anxious person as they provide endless amounts of love, intimacy and warmth, something they perhaps didn't experience growing up.
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.
However, regardless of whether they are the instigator of a breakup or not, avoidant attachers tend to repress or avoid expression of their intense emotions in the aftermath. This response isn't to suggest that avoidant attachers don't feel the pain of a breakup – they do.
Because of this emotional distancing, they tend to be less empathic toward people in need (Joireman, Needham, & Cummings, 2001; Wayment, 2006). Further, avoidant people tend to respond negatively to their partner's emotions because those emotions can signal that they need more attention and intimacy.
But sadly, someone with an avoidant personality disorder, finds it very difficult to develop healthy relationships with boundaries. Individuals with this disorder also find it difficult to trust or express their deepest feelings for fear of abandonment, rejection, or loss.
Avoidants will shut down if they feel like you're rushing them. Let your partner take the lead in the relationship so things progress at their pace. It might feel like you're going nowhere sometimes, but your partner will slowly grow more comfortable in your relationship. They just need to be sure you won't leave.
Triggers of Avoidant Attachment
Avoidant individuals tend to feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable when another person wants to be emotionally vulnerable and physically intimate. This is because they have learned that depending on others, wanting to be close, and looking for support will be met with rejection.
Avoidant individuals may gravitate towards Acts of Service or Quality Time as their primary love languages, as these gestures offer connection without excessive emotional vulnerability.
They go out of their way to spend time with you.
This being said, if your avoidant partner prioritizes you and goes out of their way to spend time with you, they're likely in love. Big, big love. An avoidant in love will try to spend as much time with you as they can.
Sex (and intimacy in general) can make avoidant adults uncomfortable. Considering that sex typically requires physical and psychological proximity, it can evoke discomfort in avoidant individuals. Therefore, adults with this attachment style often don't enjoy their sexual experiences.