The ULTIMATE Guide to the Avoidant Attachment Style: What it is, WHY it is & What to do

Table of Contents

• What is the Avoidant Attachment Strategy?
• The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
• What Does the Avoidant Attachment Strategy Look Like in Action?
• Why do People Develop the Avoidant Attachment Strategy?
• The Most Surprising Part About Avoidantly Organized People
• What are the Avoidantly Organized Individual’s Greatest Fears?
• Do Avoidants Want Relationship?
• So Then Why All this Avoidance?
• If I’m Avoidantly Attached, What Can I Do?
• If I’m with an Avoidant, What Should I Do?
• The Avoidant Strategy When It’s Healed
• How Can I Identify if Somebody Has an Avoidant Style Early On?
• 4 Things to Say to Avoidantly Organized People Early On
• Conclusion
• TLDR

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Attachment styles—better called strategies—describe the patterns by which we engage in emotionally significant relationships in order to take care of ourselves and soothe our various fears and anxieties.

These strategies are formed in early childhood based on interactions with primary caregivers. They now serve as the blueprint for how we show up in present-day intimate relationships.

There are four primary attachment styles, or strategies:

• Secure Attachment: A healthy balance of independence and interdependence
• Avoidant Attachment: Prioritize independence, fear loss of self and shame
• Anxious Attachment: Preoccupied with relationships, fear abandonment
• Disorganized Attachment: Mix of avoidant and anxious tendencies, usually with history of trauma

Today, we will examine the avoidant attachment strategy in detail.

What is the Avoidant Attachment Strategy?

The avoidant strategy is marked by the compulsion to avoid others and create distance when intimate relationship reaches a certain degree of depth.

The intensity of the intimacy provokes difficult feelings in the avoidant person. As we’ll see in more detail later, these vulnerabilities include feelings of engulfment, overwhelm, abandonment, and unworthiness.

In an unconscious effort to get away from those feelings, the avoidantly attached person puts the person triggering those feelings at a tolerable degree of distance.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It’s common—and tempting—to write off avoidant attachment as cold, selfish, and toxic. It’s often seen as a problem that causes pain for others and leaves the avoidant person isolated and alone.

Although this is often the case, there are positive elements to it.

For instance, because avoidant individuals learned early on that nobody was going to be there for them in a reliable, emotionally resonant, and consistent way, they had to develop the capacity to effectively care for themselves.

They learned to be independent and self-sufficient; qualities that are useful when it comes to building a life. They learned to set aside their emotions in pursuit of their goals. They are usually quite logical and rational. Some avoidants develop rich fantasy worlds which serve as the bedrock of their creative capacity.

But the same independence that serves them in life often costs them in love.

Avoidantly attached individuals tend to believe that relationships are about meeting the needs of others—not having their own needs met. As a result, they deny their dependency and convince themselves they don’t need anyone at all.

As a result, they end up treating other people poorly. Avoidants can be cold, withdrawn, detached, mean, unavailable, disparaging, judgmental, and critical. That, if you couldn’t tell, is the “ugly”.

What Does the Avoidant Attachment Style Look Like in Action?

Individuals who learned to apply an avoidant strategy as a means of establishing the experience of safety compulsively keep others at a distance.

These distance-generating behaviors include:

• Charming the other person (this pulls the other into pseudo-connection with the charmer’s false self)
• Doubting the relationship
• Pulling away when relationships reach a certain degree of depth
• Shutting down during emotionally-intense discussions
• Retreating behind walls where they’re emotionally inaccessible
• Avoiding vulnerability
• Refusing to seek help or admit dependency
• Difficulty expressing thoughts and feelings
• Preference for logic and rationale over emotions and feelings
• Obsession with fairness
• Sensitivity to criticism and accusation
• Interpreting gestures of love as transactional, demanding, or a trap
• Avoiding conflict
• Criticizing and complaining about their partner
• Remaining in an expansive fantasy world in their heads
• Rejecting and shying away from commitment
• Agree overtly but then withhold relationship covertly

Although the above behaviors may be easy to condemn and criticize, they should be understood with a modicum of compassion. The behaviors themselves are employed by the avoidant individual in an effort to keep their nervous system in a tolerable, non-overwhelming state.

Too much closeness, and they panic.

But too much distance is equally upsetting.

This can come as a surprise to people. But it’s not as though avoidant individuals have no interest in intimacy. They want intimacy—just not so much that it feels like self-erasure.

They want enough relationship that they don’t feel overwhelmed and suffocated, but not so little that they are left in cold space.

Why do People Develop the Avoidant Attachment Strategy?

Us therapists like to say that avoidantly attached people came by their strategy honestly.

And it’s true.

The avoidant strategy was an intelligent adaptation to dysfunctional dynamics in the individual’s family of origin. It was a brilliant development that undoubtedly served that person early on. As the saying goes: adaptive then, maladaptive now.

There are two categories of familial dysfunction that the avoidant strategy is a response to:

1. Intrusive Parents

• Parents who were smothering, controlling, and over-involved
• Parents who made their child responsible for the their own (the parents’) emotional states (this is enmeshment)

Such children would have had repeated experiences teaching them that relationships are fundamentally not about them and their own needs. Instead, relationships are about servicing the other person.

To protect against the one-way demands of relationships—the apparent reality that their own needs and desires are irrelevant and should be buried—the strategy of avoidance evolves.

2. Avoidant Parents

• Parents who were distant and avoidant themselves
• Parents who taught that independence was valued, and punished dependence (subtly or overtly)

Such children, in an effort to earn love and approval, would have learned to reject their own emotional needs—their own dependency—and to emphasize self-reliance and independence, as that was more likely to get them connection. (Seems like a bit of a paradox, right?)

Here, avoidance is the strategy that leads to at least a smidge of belonging. On the other hand, we can hypothesize that expressions of dependency would have been classified as neediness and the child would have been shunned, punished, ignored, or worse when (s)he displayed them.

There is a third generator of avoidance, too; namely, cultural norms.

More often than not, boys are encouraged to suppress their emotional neediness, deny their vulnerability, and adopt a “can do” attitude of self-reliance—all expressions of the avoidance strategy.

The Most Surprising Part About Avoidantly Organized People

Beneath their distancing behaviors, avoidantly organized individuals carry a deep, often unconscious fear of abandonment.

This should sound familiar to anxiously attached individuals—but the strategy is different. Where the anxious partner clings and pursues, the avoidant distances. Both are attempting to manage the same core conviction: that they will be left.

For avoidants, this fear is buried. They don’t consciously identify with it, and often present as indifferent to connection. But their early experiences taught them that their needs—and therefore they themselves— were not acceptable or wanted.

They were conditioned to be there for others and to suppress their own vulnerability.

This creates a relational template in which abandonment is expected. Not necessarily physical abandonment—but emotional unavailability, misattunement, and neglect.

As a product of this absolute conviction that relationships mean abandonment, they developed their avoidant strategy:

“If no one is going to meet my needs, I won’t have any. If you can’t be there for me, I’ll be there for myself.”

But when someone withdraws or threatens the connection, the avoidant’s long-dormant fear of abandonment is activated. And because so much psychic energy has gone into avoiding that fear, its emergence can feel overwhelming and terrifying.

What are the Avoidantly Organized Individual’s Greatest Fears?

Individuals who employ the avoidant attachment strategy are driven by three core fears.

1. The fear of loss of self

This is the core fear for children who were on the receiving end of intrusion and enmeshment.

They learned that they had to abandon themselves and be there for the other in order for the other to be there at all.

Relationship is contaminated with—relationship means—self-abandonment.

“If I want any connection at all, I have to leave myself at the door.“

2. The fear of loss of relationship

The well known couples therapist Terry Real famously says that underneath every love avoidant is a love dependent.

A love dependent is somebody who is desperate for love/relationship/connection and will do just about anything for it.

Avoidant children grew up in a world where relationship conditional. They had to be a certain way—independent and self-sufficient and available to the demands of the other—in order to earn it.

As adults, in a strange paradox, they fear that by not being independent—by letting their dependency and neediness show—relationship will disappear.

“In order to keep people around at all, I have to prove to them my competence and independence, and I do that by keeping myself at a distance.“

3. The fear of shame and inadequacy

In both instances, deep-seated shame and inadequacy are likely to exist. This is because the child had experience after experience where the implicit message was:

“You’re not good enough for relationship with me. You’re not worthy of love simply for who you happen to be. If you want love, you have to earn it.”

As outlined above, the way this love is “earned” depends on the family dynamics. Either:

1) You have to serve me (enmeshment) to be worthy of my love.

2) You have to submit to my demands (intrusion and control) for me to love you.

3) You have to bury the parts of you that I don’t like—emotional neediness and dependency—and only show the parts that I do like to get my love and approval.

Underneath each demand is the implicit message that “who you are is not good enough“.

That you are unworthy of love for who you happen to be.

That message, repeatedly given, leads to a shame that lives so deep that it becomes who the person feels themselves to be—a shameful, inadequate life-form, fundamentally unworthy of love, who only gets scraps of love when he sacrifices, changes, and hides himself.

Do Avoidants Want Relationship?

Yes.

So Then Why All this Avoidance?

For the reasons we have been talking about.

1. It is a reaction to enmeshment

2. It is learned behavior

3. It is a product of the cultural zeitgeist

4. It is a protection against deep fears (outlined above) being exposed

If I’m Avoidantly Attached, What Can I Do?

1. Own the fact that you deeply, desperately want relationship.

• Underneath your love avoidance is a love addict who wants what (s)he doesn’t believe (s)he can have—an equitable, mutually nourishing, deeply satisfying relationship.
• When you own this fact, you can work with this apparent reality much more skillfully. The desperate longing for relationship won’t run your life from the shadows.

2. Get really good at recognizing, owning, and naming your needs.

• Learn to negotiate like a pro. Stand up for yourself with love and savvy.
• You have learned that your needs were bad and so you learned to suppress them. Reclaiming and voicing them is an act of vulnerability that will lead you into an authentic experience of self and relationship.

3. Own your dependency. That weak, needy energy you find so repulsive.

• Owning your dependency is a the gateway to owning and naming your needs. You can’t have the latter without the former.
• Further, this is an active recognition that relationship is about you, too. It’s not just about servicing the needs of the other.

4. Reclaim your authenticity and risk rejection.

• You had to hide yourself to earn relationship in your family of origin. Showing up as your true self feels like a relational death sentence. That doesn’t mean it will be.

5. Be Bold. Speak Freely. Stop thinking so much.

• You know how you struggle to find the right words to say during conflict? How you don’t want to say the “wrong” thing? That’s because you’re afraid of criticism, rejection, and your words being used against you.
• The antidote to this is to risk speeking freely, openly, and spontaneously. And error-correcting afterwards.

6. Recognize that mutually satisfying, enriching, nourishing relationship is your inherent birthright.

• You deserve relationship. You always did. When you should have had it, it wasn’t there. Now, you avoid it because you don’t believe it’s available and you don’t believe you’re worthy of it. But you haven’t put those deep-rooted beliefs to the test in an honest and enduring way.

7. Learn to tolerate feelings of shame and inadequacy without making them mean something definitive about your worth.

• Be ready to feel them at the drop of a hat. Don’t tell yourself that you actually are shameful and inadequate and unworthy of love, but be willing to feel of those ways at any moment.
• The effort to deny what is true leads to compulsive defenses towards the people who trigger those feelings in you.

8. Take back your projections.

• Recognize that the “problem” lies within you, not outside of you. It isn’t, fundamentally, the other person. It is, instead, the coming together of your own various hopes and fears.
• Anytime you catch yourself making it about the other, ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now that I’m trying to get away from? And is that feeling actually killing me?”

9. When you make somebody unworthy of your love, recognize that it is a projection of your own conviction of your own unworthiness.

• The conviction that you are unworthy of love is deeply buried and very painful. You don’t want to have a conscious experience of it. But just because you don’t want to feel it doesn’t mean it stops existing.
• So, you project it outward. You put it into other people—namely, your partner. That way you can relate to the feeling from a safe distance. It is your best effort to take care of a core vulnerability, and it is causing damage.

10. Turn off the flashlight of contempt

• There is a decent chance that you are highly critical, either of yourself or your partner. This criticism is a mechanism that both justifies and reinforces distance-taking.
• By overriding the impulse to criticize you partner (by accepting your partner’s humanity and value) you take some of the poison out of the dynamic. There will then be an impulse to turn the critical lens against yourself. Resist the urge. Rest in your own humanity.

11. Call us. We’re here to help.

If I’m with an Avoidant, What Should I Do?

1. Connect with the part of yourself that is also rightfully suspicious about and scared of love and relationship.

• If you didn’t have hesitations of your own about intimacy, you wouldn’t have been drawn to and committed to your avoidant partner.
• Their strategy of managing their intimacy fear is likely the polar opposite of yours, but some of the root fears—such as abandonment—are the same.
• When you reclaim your own suspicions about intimacy, your avoidant partner no longer has to be the location of all of them.

2. Make clear what you will and won’t tolerate.

• Have strong boundaries and be willing to assert yourself. Don’t try to not upset your partner. Stand up for yourself with strength and kindness.

3. Encourage your partner to claim and name their wants and needs.

• Validate when they voice their needs. Don’t shame them for naming them.
• Even if you won’t accommodate the request, validate and encourage the expression.

4. Be willing to hear “no.”

• If you can, celebrate your partner’s willingness to say “no”. When they take good care of themselves, they are taking good care of the relationship.

5. Be honest and lead with integrity and authenticity.

• Don’t try to be what the avoidant wants you to be. Don’t play their game. You won’t win.
• Have your voice and hold your ground. Be willing to risk the relationship in order to create the relationship you desire and deserve.

6. Refuse to be on the receiving end of their projections.

• Don’t allow yourself to be their projection screen.
• When they criticize you, refuse to take it on. “That sounds like your issue, not mine. If you have a request for me, I’m willing to hear it. Otherwise, you can keep that critical voice to yourself.”

7. Don’t participate in dynamics that are hurtful.

• Don’t allow them to turn you into the problem.
• When they say hurtful things, don’t tolerate it. “I’m not interested in this conversation. Let’s try again later.”

8. Whenever you can, lead with validation.

• This proactively counters their propensity to fall into shame.
• You don’t need to stand for or accept their words or behaviors. But when they make an honest effort to express their feelings and needs—no matter how sloppily they do so—try your best to validate them and then respond.
• When you respect their expression of needs, desires, feelings, and vulnerabilities, this soothes their fears of abandonment and shame. You don’t have to accept them if you disagree with them, but leading with validation is a power move.

9. Call us. We’re here to help.

The Avoidant Strategy When It’s Healed

The goal isn’t to “heal” the strategy. Neither is to overcome it or eradicate it. For one, that is impossible. For two, the effort is highly self-aggressive and not likely to end well.

Instead, the goal is to get so familiar with the strategy that we stop employing it unconsciously.

• We become so intimate with our own fears and vulnerabilities (losing ourselves, losing relationship, our own shame and inadequacy) that we no longer need to set up our lives so as to avoid them.

• We become experts at recognizing and naming our own needs.

• We become willing to own and express our own dependency.

• We take back our projections and recognize all of our relational hesitation as an outdated effort to take the best care of ourselves possible.

• Where we used to have silent walls, we have spoken boundaries.

• Where we used to have overt accommodation and covert withdrawal, we have voiced self-assertion.

• Where we used to blame, we invite compassionate curiosity about our own difficult feelings.

• Where we used to avoid our emotions, we name our feelings.

• Where we used to shut down, we show up.

• Where we used to complain, we accept.

• Where we used to avoid our vulnerable feelings, we experience them.

• Where we used to avoid relational conflict, we navigate it skillfully.

• Where we used to escape to experience our freedom, we show up authentically and cultivate the experience of freedom within the relationship itself.

• When we recognize the impulse to shut down and withdraw (or when we catch ourselves in the act) we feel the vulnerability that’s activated, take back our projections, think about what we want or need, and overcome our internal fortress to move back into connection.

How Can I Identify if Somebody Has an Avoidant Style Early On?

If you’re certain that YOU DON’T have an avoidant style, and you’re VERY into them, there’s a good chance they do. Sorry, but it’s often true.

Tell-tale signs of the avoidant strategy include:

• Hot/cold texting
• Texting inconsistencies
• Charm
• Shutting down after intimacy
• Disappearing (duh)
• Constant doubting and questioning
• Ongoing ambivalence
• Saying things like “I just need freedom”
• Saying things like “I’m not ready to settle”
• Sudden changes in behavior
• Leading you on and then dropping you like it’s hot

Does that mean you should run away?

Only if you want to adopt their strategy! Which is an entirely valid move, of course.

But you don’t have to.

Instead, set the stage clearly and early. Name your boundaries (see the above section) and make it abundantly clear what you will and won’t tolerate. And hold to your boundaries. Show that you mean it.

Again, avoidantly attached individuals want intimacy. They’re just terrified of it. When you show up authentically and honestly, they feel that they, too, have the right to show up authentically and honestly. This soothes their fear of self-abandonment.

When you name your boundaries and needs it is showing them that needs/boundaries are ok, and even giving them a rubric for how to do it. This soothes their fear of relational-abandonment.

When you don’t shame them for their behaviors, but simply make clear, kind requests, you avoid activating their shame and inadequacy.

4 Things to Say to Avoidantly Organized People Early On

1. “Hey, I’m into you. This has been great. But it’s not like I’m going to choose you over me. And here’s the thing, I don’t like that I never know when I’m going to hear from you. If you’d be willing to respond to me within an hour or two, that would be awesome. And if not, no worries, but I probably won’t stick around.”

2. “By the way, I totally get that you want your freedom. You’re 100% free to choose this relationship, and 100% free to choose something else. But if you choose to be with me, I don’t want to hear you dragging on about your freedom. Or say that I made you. I’m not stopping you or forcing you. It’s your call if you want to be in this.”

3. “If we decide to be together, it’s really important to me that you let me know what you want and need. I don’t want to have to read your mind, because I can’t do that. So please, share. I’m not promising I’ll give you what you ask for, but I do promise to listen with respect.”

4. “This may come as a shock to you, given how much you know I like you, but I don’t need you. I really don’t. So if you continue to do [x painful behavior], I’m not going to be here much longer. Just thought you might want to know that.”

Conclusion

The aim of this post is to, in the end, take avoidants out of the dog house. I hope I’ve managed to do that.

If you’re an avoidantly organized person, that style likely makes sense give your historical experiences in relationship.

However, it is undoubtedly costing you and the people close to you.

If you want to update the strategy, that’s your choice to make. Nobody can do it for you. And only you can decide if it’s worth the effort.

Remember, healing isn’t about becoming secure overnight or getting rid of avoidance. It’s about building the capacity to stay present—to yourself and others—even when it feels risky.

And if you’re dating or married to an avoidant, the aim of this post is not to excuse harmful behavior, but to stand up to it. Don’t try to be everything to your partner. You’ll never succeed. Be yourself. And stand up for yourself.

9 times out of 10 avoidant individuals respond with respect, even if their initial impulse is to bristle or rail.

Commit to yourself. Hold onto yourself. More often than not, they’ll come around. And if they don’t, well, aren’t you better off for it?

TLDR

Avoidant attachment isn’t a flaw—it’s a strategy. One that helps people manage their fear of intimacy by not getting too close too often. Although there are real-world benefits to this strategy, it often backfires in adult relationships.

Avoidance itself isn’t wrong. But when it costs more than it protects, it’s worth re-evaluating.
That means learning to name your needs, honor your longing for connection, and show up as your full self—maybe for the first time ever—with all the risks that entails.