The avoidant personality -male or female - is an expert at being peaceful and looking very calm and together. If their partner is not sensitive to the lack of personal sharing in the relationship, then it is quite possible for an avoidant person to end up married and with children.
And of course, some of you may be reading this and thinking, “I like being alone and being able to sleep with whoever I want. I wouldn't change a thing.” And it's true—many people lead happy, successful lives as avoidant or anxious types. Some even have successful long-term relationships as an anxious or avoidant.
Even though the love avoidant personality traits are hard to decipher, they can become beautiful partners with some adjustments. These people also have feelings. Hence, they are also capable of love. For such people, particularly men or women, falling in love is like a roller coaster ride.
Avoidant partners tend to create distance and have trouble with communication in romantic relationships. This can make their partners feel frustrated, hurt, confused, or abandoned. Relationships of any kind take work and compromise — and having an avoidant partner can bring a specific set of challenges.
They need room to make their own decisions without pressure from others. Think about it for a minute. If you want your avoidant partner to commit to you, you need to give them space and let them know that they are free to choose. Once they're ready to take things further, they will let you know.
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.
Despite popular opinion, it's entirely possible to have a satisfying, fulfilling relationship with someone with an avoidant attachment style. Although we stated earlier that attachment styles are stable, they are not a life sentence. Your avoidant partner can become more secure in their actions.
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.
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.
When we look at some of the areas that people with an avoidant attachment style struggle in, it's easy to focus on extremes or exaggerate the way they interact with you. But your spouse can be avoidantly attached to you and still be a faithful, committed, reliable person in the marriage.
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.
Challenges with self-confidence and feelings of low self-worth are at the core of this particular attachment style. This negative view of themselves, that they are unworthy of love, produces a fear of being rejected by another.
Avoidantly attached people are prone to “shutting down, numbing, rigid compartmentalizing, and pushing away,” Mary Chen, LFMT, tells SELF. And these suppression techniques can feel “exactly like rejection” to their partners, making it hard to approach—and therefore understand—avoidants!
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.
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.
Avoidant attachers are thus more susceptible to social loneliness and isolation. Even when avoidant attachers do engage in dating and relationships, those relationships are usually casual and short-lived. Avoidant attachers tend to feel threatened by emotional intimacy and use various defense mechanisms.
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, ...
Adults with the dismissive / avoidant attachment style seem to be pretty happy about who they are and where they are. They might be very social, easy-going, and fun to be around. In addition, these individuals might have a lot of friends and/or sexual partners.
The avoidant person is excited by the openness and directness of the anxious person, having not yet met their threshold for emotional exposure, and so appear open and available. The avoidant attacher also feels free to be who they are as control is not yet present from the side of the anxious attacher.
People who are avoidant may feel uncomfortable with the vulnerability and intimacy required in close friendships. They may also struggle with asking for or giving emotional support. As a result, they may have few, if any, long-lasting friendships because friends feel like the relationship is one-sided.
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.
Dismissive Avoidant
In friendships, this attachment type may be reserved and may have many acquaintances, but few close friendships.
Make them feel secure by being trustworthy.
Since avoidants worry about rejection, they want to know they can trust you before they'll give you their heart. To build trust, always be there for your avoidant partner when they need someone to talk to, and make sure you follow through on what you say.
Being with someone who has an avoidant attachment style can be quite difficult because while you're trying to get emotionally close to them and build connection, they keep pulling back- and they may make their significant other begin to feel like they are the “crazy one.” As mentioned above, it is even more difficult ...
Avoidant people prefer (whether consciously or not) to be non-committal, and often a partner never feels like they're totally in the relationship. This doesn't mean they don't want to stay in a long term relationship and often they may, as long as it can be with no noticeable signs of real commitment.