When Anxious Meets Avoidant

Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you are listening to the Love, Happiness and Success podcast. What happens when someone with an anxious attachment style and someone with an avoidant attachment style come together in a relationship? Can these pairings work and more importantly, can they be healthy?

That’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. We are listening to Victoria Monet with an iteration of her song “Experience,” which I think is a little bit perfect for today because if you listen to the song it’s all about, I’m hoping that you can change, basically is the punchline. I think that many people who are in a relationship with somebody who has a fundamentally different attachment style than they do, can often spend a lot of time and energy trying to get their partner to change, being more like them.

That can create a lot of friction, a lot of conflict, and a lot of disappointment in a relationship. That’s also a lot of opportunity for all of us to avoid engaging in that dynamic and instead taking a look at our own attachment styles and using that self-awareness, and our skills as we grow in our ability to manage ourselves, regulate our own anxiety, to really create the kind of relationship that we want, no matter what sort of attachment style our partner may have.

That’s what we’re gonna be diving into on today’s show. I really wanted to talk about this because as you may know, if you’ve listened to this show in the past, my background, I am a licensed psychologist. I’m a board certified coach, but I am also a licensed marriage and family therapist. That’s really how I identify professionally, is more of a relationship person. 

That’s a lot of what we do in my practice, Growing Self Counseling and Coaching, and it is not at all uncommon for couples to come in for things like marriage counseling, couples therapy, premarital counseling, and when you dive in into what’s going on deep levels. There’s skirmishes about who’s doing what and money and parenting and all of the normal things, but like when you really get into it on the deepest level many times really the core conflict is a desire for a different level of closeness and connection than it seems like their partner wants. A lot of conflict is really about that. Interestingly, when we can work on relationships at this very deep level and help people feel more connected in a comfortable way.

A lot of the anxiety, a lot of the pain that had been fueling conflict about the day-to-day stuff, it kind of just fades away. When people are feeling comfortably connected, there’s less to fight about, they’re more resilient, they’re better able to solve problems and whether or not the dishwasher is unloaded in a particular way at a particular time. It is much less like symbolically fraught in terms of what it means about the relationship.

You know, that “Do you care about me?” on the one side or “You’re trying to control me” on the other. When we can really work with people at the attachment level it’s just much less dramatic all the way around. I hope that this podcast today gives you some insight into yourself and your partner, and hopefully some actionable ideas to take with you.

I also wanted to do this show in particular because we’ve talked about attachment styles in relationships in the past. I refer you back to a couple of other podcasts I’ve done on the subject over the years. I think there was just attachment styles and relationships with one of them, which you can find if you wanna scroll back through the podcast feed or of course, you can come to my website growingself.com.

Go to the blog and podcast page and then find the love collection where if you tap on that, you’ll find all kinds of different content collections. Different aspects of relational work, and so communication that connects, there’s a lot about attachment also, I think growing together. That content collection has a lot of both articles and past podcasts around attachment styles and really the kind of growth work that we’re going to be talking about today, which is how both people in a relationship really need to work own self-awareness and their own ways of being in relationships in order to have a really satisfying partnership. 

You can find any articles or podcasts that I’ll be referring to over the course of our time together today there, and of course, it’s all free, all for you, so I hope you check it out. But I haven’t yet talked about the not uncommon situation where people with really differing attachment styles come together in a relationship and the kind of unique stress that can cause, particularly if one or both people aren’t really aware of their attachment patterns and the cycle that they’re creating together.

Specifically that would be somebody who trends towards an anxious attachment with somebody who tends towards a more avoidant attachment style. Again, in couples counseling and not uncommonly when I’m doing work with people who are going through a divorce or a bad breakup that often can be part of the story. Because these relationships, these opposite attachment style pairings are often characterized by one partner really wanting more connection, more intimacy, more time together, more commitment. Another partner who is not feeling that way, they want more space, more freedom and they feel kind of drained by anyone who wants more from them, needs them intensely.

They start pulling away from a relationship and that makes the anxious partner feel even more anxious. You can see where this goes. But the reason why this is also quite complex — and this is the part that’s very difficult to wrap your arms around — I think for many people, this is also true that whenever anybody has a pronounced attachment style on either side, either more anxious or more avoidant, it will always create a polarizing dynamic in the other person.

For example, if somebody who’s fairly anxiously attached is in a relationship with a very securely attached person, someone with the secure attachment style. The presence of their anxious behaviors, will pretty reliably push that more secure person to become more avoidant. It makes them pull away because the anxiety stuff is really intense.

It is also true that you can take a person with a very secure attachment style and put them in a relationship with somebody who is quite avoidant — withholding, rejecting, critical — and observe how anxious they will always become in response to that relational dynamic. The way we perceive our partners is different based on our attachment style.

If you tend to have a lot of anxiety in relationships, you will always want more from your partner and you will experience them as avoidant and withholding whether or not they actually, yet. Furthermore, an avoidant person will experience their cat as being unreasonably needy and demanding. Will look wistfully at other cats and imagine that those other cats are better than their cat.

It’s like it’s just kind of the way you’re built. Then to make things even more complex and difficult to get clarity around when two people are in a relationship where there is tension, when there is distress, when there is any kind of conflict. Most of the time, even to perfectly attached people. — not that there is such a thing — but people who don’t have attachment issues will polarize into this pursue-withdraw dynamic because of the conflict itself. That’s just like really normal and expected and not indicative that somebody has court issues around attachment stuff. It’s just what happens.

You need to be really aware of this push-pull thing and if you’re having this experience of feeling like your partner is either very needy and intense, or withholding and distant. It can be very tempting to kind of label them as being anxious or label them as being avoidant. Without really understanding how your own way of being could be creating the responses that you see in the other person.

There’s a lot here and it can honestly be complex and take some time to figure out what is really going on. Is it me? Is it us? Is it them? Is it just conflict? There’s definitely an assessment process, but also I think one that leads to a lot of self-awareness and hopefully compassion and empathy on both sides.

Especially, if you do discover that either an anxious attachment style or an avoidant attachment style or a little bit of both is part of the equation, that can be an even more dramatic kind of push pull dynamics in a relationship. If people come together and both of them are further out on each of the pointy ends of the bell curve, further away from a secure attachment style and trending towards one extreme or the other.

It can really lead to a quite explosive and really unstable relationship unless you figure out what’s going on and take action to resolve it. Because if you don’t, what will happen very predictably is that you’re gonna trigger the heck out of each other and it can be really unsustainable unless there’s a lot of self-awareness and work in taking ownership over the way you show up and quite consciously seeking to change the way that you relate to your partner so that it feels more comfortable for them. It’s based on compassion and understanding of how they feel on the inside and really what they need to have in order to feel emotionally safe in any relationship.

I also wanna say, I do think that anxious avoidant relationships can work and even that they can be healthy when both partners are aware of their patterns and actively working on it. But it isn’t easy. The reason why is that our attachment patterns are very old, very deep. They are driven by unconscious, non-verbal programming that was established oftentimes in our earliest years, and they’re oftentimes non-conscious. They are not thoughts. They just come to us as feelings that then we obey with our actions. And so overriding that programming can feel almost most wrong. It can feel like you are acting in a way that is opposite to your truth, to the way you feel, to how you perceive your needs to be.

That takes a lot of work to gain awareness and be able to say with confidence what of my feelings are healthy and helping me and working for me, versus, which automatic responses and feelings have I carried into adulthood for understandable reasons, but that are really not helping me. They are making my relationships harder and more volatile than they need to be, and that I need to do like a manual override on some of these.

I think also with any relationship with a partner, with a friend, with a parent, with a coworker, with an employer. It is so much easier for all of us to look outside of ourselves and place blame elsewhere, displace responsibility and hyperfixate on what other people are doing or not doing. That really is quite disempowering because when we do that, we miss the opportunity to reflect on how other people are responding to us and why that might be, why might that make sense.

That is not a comfortable conversation to have with yourself, but it’s very valuable because it can just be fundamentally important to our own growth. Furthermore, when we do our own growth work and get a lot of clarity around what is going on with us, how we react in certain situations. It also provides opportunity to get clear about what also feels like non-negotiable needs in relationships for us. What are our values? What are the kinds of relationships that we want to have? What does a healthy relationship mean to you? That also supports empowerment when you are able to make informed, non-reactive decisions about the kind of partner and what they bring to the table that is going to help you be your best self in any relationship.

For example, if through this work you discover for understandable reasons that you really do have a more anxious attachment style and it’s difficult for you to feel emotionally safe in relationships like you need a lot of validation, confirmation time together — people telling you nice things, spending time with you, responding to you in certain ways — it would really serve you well to try and find a partner who has a fundamentally secure attachment style because they will be able to feel comfortable giving you more of that than somebody who has a fundamentally avoidant attachment style.

You’re still going to have to keep your side of the street very clean because if you get into that anxious attachment style, sort of usual way of being that turns into really having expectations that may be unrealistic or in the worst cases needing to control your partner in order to feel okay about yourself. That will always damage a relationship and create the kind of dynamic that won’t feel good for you. People are going to move away from you in response to that.

On the other side, if you know through this exploration that you have a fundamentally avoidant way of being with other people where it’s difficult for you to get close to others, you dislike having a lot of emotional intensity in your relationships, you do not like people to depend on you, it makes you uncomfortable, it will probably be important for you to, again, very deliberately look for a partner who has a fundamentally secure attachment style and isn’t going to get all reactive when you need time and space. When you can’t handle a lot of intensity or togetherness, they’ll be able to tolerate that much better. You will also need to be very deliberately having empathy for your partner, being generous in the relationship, and maybe doing things that feel uncomfortable for you in order to meet the legitimate emotional needs of your partner. Or else anybody who is in a relationship with you is going to turn into an anxious mess.

As long as you’re aware of those things, but again, those are easier pairings. Now, If the topic of this podcast, when anxious and avoidant come together, both people on each side are going to be much more intentional, self-aware, regulating a lot of anxiety in order to manage their tendencies and also behaving in ways of being that are more on the other side of the line than than what you would probably prefer. I just wanted to say all of that out loud.

If you’re listening to this podcast and you are in a newer relationship, or if you are in a dating relationship, now would be the time to really take stock of yourself with a — I use the word dating coach with a lot of trepidation because I’m not talking about dating coaching and like, “Let’s talk about your profile and what you’re wearing on a first date.” What I think of about dating coaching, the kind of dating coaching that we do here at my practice Growing Self is that it’s a very experienced, knowledgeable therapist who focuses on relationships, kind of deep, therapeutic kinds of things but talking about that and helping people make changes on really substantial personal levels that then help them create healthy relationships going forward, like healthy, new relationships.

When I say dating coaching, that is what I mean. But to work on that sort of level around, “Who am I? Who do I need to be? What kind of partner do I need to have?” Maybe to back up from the active dating place until you’ve done some of that personal growth work, and then can go into new relationships with a lot more clarity around what you really need and also who you really need to be in relationships for them to be healthy.

But if you are in an established relationship with somebody that you love and want to be with and are fairly certain that each of you are on the opposite sides of that bell curve. The rest of this podcast is gonna be talking about some of the actionable things that you guys can each do and be real aware of in order to lessen the likelihood of creating a highly negative response in the other person because if you just sort of show up and do your usual thing, that is unfortunately going to be a predictable outcome, but it can be better. I’m going to tell you why and how.

Before we dive into that, let’s just do a super brief review around what attachment styles are, how they show up, where they come from, because knowing this will help you be able to recognize these tendencies in yourself and in your partner, and also have compassion for them.

Again, it can be quite easy and sometimes gratifying to label other people without really understanding why and how it makes sense. The punchline here is that all humans are built to bond. From the moment of our birth, we as infants come out with this very strong desire and need, like biologically based need to develop a strong, powerful attachment bond with at least one primary caregiver who is there for us who meets our needs, who helps regulate us emotionally, who is soothing, who is kind. The strength of that attachment bond — that like, survival of the species kind of stuff — it happens on that deep of a level, right? A mother or parent has to be fully devoted to meeting the needs of their child through love, right?

Doing the right thing for somebody else, making somebody’s needs, rights, feelings more important than their own for a little while in order to literally raise a healthy child. That’s a requirement and that attachment bond is what makes that happen. Children become very attached to their parents, parents become very attached to their children.

In a perfect world, this leads to a secure attachment style where an infant young child has experiences with caregivers that lead to a fundamental truth when it comes to understanding other humans of “I am worthy of love and respect, I can count on other people to meet my needs, I trust that other people are going to be available, are going to be safe, and responsive to me. I am fundamentally good, other people are fundamentally good.” And none of this is conscious.

This is just emotional wiring that when you are with other people, you feel safe and you also have a capacity to be safe to others. It feels safe to be close to other people, to care about other people, to help other people, and there is no such thing as a perfectly secure anybody. If you imagine a bell curve, there’s a kind of top of the bell curve and then equal distribution usually on both sides going out into the pointy end of a bell curve.

Most people are not exactly in the center of that bell curve, but the majority of people are a little bit to one side or the other of that secure attachment style. You can be fundamentally securely attached and perhaps have grown up in a home where maybe there was a little bit more emotional distance or you had sort of more strict authoritarian parents that were harder to get close to emotionally and still be just fine.

You can also grow up in a home where maybe your caregivers weren’t completely reliable or consistent, or they could be kind of mercurial. But fundamentally, responsive, caring, loving. So maybe you need a little bit more validation in some of your relationships, but you still fundamentally have a secure attachment style. It just feels more comfortable for you to have a lot of closeness, right?

There’s lots of ways that secure attachment can look is what I’m trying to say. When you have this attachment style, you feel okay being close to people and you also feel okay being, having some space in your relationships. You don’t need a ton of closeness in order to fundamentally feel okay about yourself or confident that you are loved. There’s like this interdependence.

If we go further down the pointy ends of the bell curve towards one side is a more anxious attachment style. This happens when children, young infants experience inconsistency in their relationships with their caregivers. Maybe they had to work real hard for love and approval, but it was sort of intermittently given. Maybe their parents were not just consistent in the way that they were relating to their child. Maybe they didn’t have as much time with their parents as they would’ve wanted or attention. 

Somebody with an anxious attachment style is going to struggle a little bit more with just fundamental feelings of self-worth, may feel preoccupied in relationships with their partners availability, may be worried about the possibility of abandonment, may have trust issues, and really wants their partner to be reassuring them that they are worthy of love. I’m paying attention to you. I’m texting you, I’m talking to you. I’m showing you actively that I love you and you’re okay. They’re seeking a lot of closeness in relationships and just feel stressed, they feel worried. If they’re with somebody who’s not real demonstrative and available, they can feel threatened.

Also, what tends to happen is that they try really hard to be worthy of love, to get attention. They often feel quite disappointed by people not loving them the way they want to be loved. What this can often turn into in relationships is anger, even controlling behaviors where I need you to do this for me. I want you to be closer. You are not taking care of me. I feel unloved by you. You hurt my feelings like a lot of this.

On the other side, people with fundamentally avoidant attachment style: that comes from oftentimes being in relationships early in life with caregivers who were not emotionally safe. It certainly could neglect situations or abusive situations, but also like a really authoritarian parenting style that was highly strict, kind of cold, not emotionally demonstrative.

Or on the other side you’ll also see people with avoidant attachment styles who had parents who were kind of emotionally consuming, like if they had hypervigilant controlling parents who were very intense or kind of seeking their emotional needs to be met through their children, or if the parents had a lot of anxiety. You’ll also see kind of avoidant tendencies in adults who grew up in those homes because it wasn’t really safe to be that close to people.

It doesn’t have to be abusive or angry. It can also just be very intense emotional parents. Also sometimes caregivers, and that can look actually two different ways. But if a child was in like a parentified kind of role in the family, it can create either avoidant or anxious attachment styles.

There’s another category while we’re on this subject is something called a disorganized or anxious avoidant attachment style, which is more rare and it is associated with more kind of severely problematic experiences in childhood. Either abuse or neglect or parents with more serious mental health issues or substance use disorders, and what happens is that when kids are attached to people that they are also kind of afraid of and it was all over the place. They really have a strong desire for closeness in relationships and can have some of that like physiological escalation and feel threatened and feel controlling in relationships as a way to manage their own anxiety and also, when relationships kind of get to a certain point, will show up as being quite avoidant and then pushing people away.

You have this real push-pull thing that happens. There are other, as I mentioned, podcasts and articles on this subject, on our website, growingself.com, that you’re welcome to look at if you wanna increase your knowledge. There are also a number of books, one of my favorites, does a really nice job of explaining the biology of attachment, but also the way that it can show up in relationships is a book called “Attached” — widely available, you can check that out. My caveat though, about that book is that in reading that book, you will emerge with a conclusion that attachment stuff is kind of binary. It’s all or nothing and you’ll start seeking to label people as either being attached securely or avoidantly or anxiously. 

What that book doesn’t really go into is the relationship between all of those different relational dynamics and how they impact relational systems. For example, somebody with an attachment style, persistently feeling like people aren’t emotionally available enough, whether or not they’re with a securely attached partner or an avoidantly attached partner, and how their way of being will then create dynamics in a relationship and vice versa. It’s a great book, but just when you read it, make sure that you don’t forget about that like systemic response because relationships are always systems. 

Another thing to think about also, if you’re kind of curious about your own attachment style is to consider the enduring-ness of it. When somebody is in a relationship, they will often, particularly for more middle of the bell curves, securely-ish, attached people can often show up in different ways depending on the relational dynamic.

If you’re thinking back over your relational history and thinking that in some relationships you’ve tended to be a little bit more anxious, and then others a little bit more avoidant, that’s actually a good indication that you may be somewhere in the middle of that spectrum versus, if you’re thinking over your relationship history and it feels like you can find examples of pretty much always having been a certain way no matter who you’re interacting with.

Is it a boss that you’re wanting more approval and you know, emotional intimacy from? Is it a friend that you are always feeling like your friends are sort of needy and demanding? Again, going into like the pet thing. I wasn’t actually kidding about that. The qualities that people project onto their pets and the things that they want from their pets are often fairly indicative of attachment styles.

If you’re super into reptiles, you may have avoidant tendencies. If you walk around with a fleet of five dogs who are all over you all the time, could be anxious. It’s like thinking about what your typical patterns are across the board, not just specific to one relationship that will give you clarity.

When it comes to anxious and avoidant people coming together in a relationship, you may be thinking by now like, why is this a good idea? Why would this even happen in the first place? It really does make sense when you look at how people kind of present, particularly in early stage relationships.

The first, even like years of a relationship, there’s a lot of magnetic pull between these two attachment styles. That again, makes a lot of sense, but that tends to create problems as relationships become more serious and long term down the road. When it comes to reasons why anxiously attached people can be quite mesmerized by folks with a more avoidant attachment style.

Anxious partners, anxious people have a long history going back into the earliest childhood of needing to work really hard to get affection, attention, confirmation with people who may struggle to give it. When they encounter somebody who is kind of remote, critical withholding, it feels familiar. It also triggers this old way of being that feels familiar to them around becoming more performative. Becoming so attractive that they are irresistible, becoming sort of over the top. “I can be who and what you want me to be” kind of responses.

The other piece of this is, I think it feeds into self-worth stuff that anxiously attached people often have, which is this, again, subconscious core belief, but that, I can make people love me. If I could just be better, then I would get the love that I need versus being able to see somebody and say, I don’t know that’s an emotionally healthy person, and I don’t know if that I’m ever gonna get my needs met there, which I think a more securely attached person would be able to experience. I think there’s something up with you. Somebody who has an anxious attachment style will generally blame themselves for how other people are in relationships and kind of work harder to fix.

Furthermore, on the other side of that equation, people with anxious attachment styles often want or feel excited about people who are charming, witty, energetic, kind of larger than life folks, and oftentimes people with avoidant attachment styles because they haven’t been able to get a lot of their core needs met through relationships, will find ways of getting that through other parts of their lives like so through career, physical fitness and health.

On the surface they seem super amazing and they’re often great like talkers. They tell funny stories, can often be very flattering and fun and charming, but so somebody with an anxious attachment style can look at that. Sort of an avoidantly organized person and think, “Wow, they’re so exciting.” All of their energy gets mobilized in trying to win the love and affection of that person. That’s often one of the reasons why that can happen. On the other side of that, you know why an avoidantly attached person might feel really attracted to somebody with an anxious attachment style.

This is sort of hard to say, but in my experience, this has often been true. There can be like this love bombing experience on both sides of this equation, and people with an anxious attachment orientation can oftentimes come on real, real strong at the beginning of a relationship, and oftentimes because they are working so hard to prove their lovability and worth also seem really amazing.

One of the core kinds of experiences of somebody with an avoidant attachment style is always thinking there is this perfect person for me out there somewhere. The people that I’ve actually met are always kind of disappointing when I get to know them really well. But this fantasy of this perfect person is very much part of the experience.

When they first meet someone who has an anxious attachment style, who comes in with sparkles and bells and whistles, glitter cannons, they’re like, “Oh. Maybe that is this perfect person that I’ve always been imagining.” The other thing too, I think, which is also terrible to say, but I want you to have all the information that in my experience of working with people who have avoidant attachment styles, they are tend to be very critical of others and they will quickly understand the vulnerability of somebody with a real anxious attachment style.

They will perceive the anxiously attached person as fairly easy to manipulate, particularly in the beginning stages of a relationship. They can say and do and be whatever you need them to be, it’s fine. But they will also fairly early on, be pretty clear that that person with the anxious attachment style is not their person.

They perceive them oftentimes as being weak, being needy, being demanding, being fundamentally, emotionally unsafe. But you know, probably fun to hang out with and working really hard to try to be a good partner, which feels nice for somebody with an avoidant attachment style because the power dynamic of that is very comfortable for them. In these pairings, the person with the avoidant attachment style will always have the upper hand position, and that in itself feels much more comfortable to them, much safer than any relationship in which they were not in the power position because vulnerability or dependence is, is really something that feels quite uncomfortable for them.

These are all reasons why these partnerships can happen and also persist, and so it’s just important to be aware of why. Other attachment pairings can certainly happen too; anxiously attached people can come together and feel extremely gratifying in the beginning because they’re both giving each other everything and trying to be hyperactively loving and giving and showing all of the love in the world.

The other thing though, that will happen in longer term relationships is that this often becomes quite explosive because they’re both craving this emotional enmeshment and validation and active love. Of course, because they are different people with different needs, they will not be able to be perfectly responsive or give each other love in the way they each need it.

That creates a lot of anger and reactivity on both sides. Actually, interestingly, I think a much more stable pairing can be two people who both have avoidant attachment styles coming together in a relationship because it will typically be much less triggering and much more comfortable for both of them to be in a relationship with somebody who’s a little bit less interested and being not just comfortable, but I think appreciative of having more space, less demands in a relationship. The other side of that is that those relationships can sometimes not feel very emotionally connected, but they’re less reactive, I guess I’ll say.

Okay, these are all good reasons why people can come together in the beginning and in the early stages of these, the relationships can seem quite intoxicating, but as relationships grow and start moving towards attachment. Again, remembering that the early stages of every relationship are characterized by romantic infatuation, and that it’s only over time moving into year two, year three, that some of the deeper kinds of attachment needs begin to emerge.

As it does, an avoidant partner, somebody who struggles with being dependent, being depended on vulnerability will generally start to perceive their partner’s emotional needs as being too much. They’re being controlled, they are being…honestly, they start to get very critical of their partners and can also just feel very uncomfortable on a physiological level with emotionally intense conversations, a lot of time together, they sort of feel suffocated. They feel irritated, they feel trapped. They start having negative thoughts about their partner and these thoughts all assist them in gaining emotional distance.

As that happens, it will always create lots of feelings of anxiety for an anxious partner and in the beginning trigger them to work very hard for reassurance. So they may start working harder in the relationship, but it also frequently turns into a lot of pursuing behavior, so getting more intense about how they’re expressing their distress, like yelling louder, getting more insistent about their needs being met. When the anxious partner pursues the avoidant partner, it really confirms the avoidant partner’s fears of engulfment.

It tends to just perpetuate the cycle and either one of these people can ultimately end the relationship when anxious people get so just angry and come to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with the avoidant partner ultimately, which is actually much healthier for them when they do that, say, you know what? I’m working way too hard here. Go find your perfect person will end that relationship, or certainly the avoidant person, just moving away, breaking things off.

The way to fix this dynamic is by, first of all, understanding what you are bringing to the table: your own attachment styles. That’s where the work really is, understanding what you tend towards, understanding why that is, understanding what it feels like inside of you when it is happening, and being able to understand the impact that this has on other people.

That is fundamentally where this work is. We cannot change our partners and if you’re in a relationship with somebody who has a strong leaning towards one side of the equation or the other. The success of the relationship will depend on their interest and ability in doing their own work so that they can be a better partner for you.

Your responsibility is doing your own work so that you can be a better partner for somebody else. So if you have an anxious attachment style, that means working with an excellent therapist who can help you understand what kinds of things trigger you, develop self-compassion — like, why does that make sense, maybe some old, psychodynamic or inner child work, even, can be extremely helpful.

Then develop self soothing skills that are based on your ability to love yourself, your ability to validate yourself, your ability to manage your own feelings of anxiety and insecurity and really recognizing that those are yours to manage no matter who you’re in a relationship with, and also doing some deep work around where those lines are, because it can be very confusing and unclear if you have an anxious attachment style to really get solid around what is your stuff versus what is actually a reasonable expectation to have of a partner in a relationship and what is not.

Mapping all of those things out can help you think your way through situations and be able to understand, “Oh, you know what? This is my old attachment stuff getting triggered, and this is not actually a dangerous situation. What I need to do now is calm myself down and think about how I wanna handle this in a constructive way with my partner, that is, aware of what they need in order to have a good experience in this relationship with me,” versus, “Is this actually something that anybody would feel not okay about? And if so, what do I do to manage my anxiety, first of all, but also how do I address this in a productive way, being mindful of what I need to do in order to create emotional safety from my partner.”

It’s a lot of work and specific things that somebody with an anxious attachment style can do to manage some of these. In addition to working with a therapist, very deliberately reminding yourself that pursuing or attempting to control your partner is not going to have the intended effect, it is going to make things worse. So act the opposite way of how you might be feeling.

Also be challenging the thought patterns that tell you you are unsafe. Doing some CBT work can be helpful. Repeating or reassuring mantra can be helpful. Also, journaling, slowing down and writing through or talking through the thoughts that you’re having, understanding how they’re making you feel, and being able to slow down enough so that you can recognize those old patterns and be able to change them with intention.

But again, additionally, getting clear about your own boundaries and needs and respecting those. What do you really need from your partner? How much distancing are you willing to accept and what we need to move towards the middle and compromise. We also can’t disown healthy parts of yourself to avoid being abandoned, right? If that is part of the fear, and then being able to manage this tendency inside of you, that is going to blame yourself and tell yourself that if you try harder, this could be better. Just having some reality based thinking about that.

On the other side of this too , very similar work, similar in some ways, but for an avoidant person is working with a therapist to understand, “Here’s what happens inside of me when I start getting critical and when I start pulling away, when I start feeling disappointed by people. What are realistic expectations to have in a relationship? Or when am I reacting out of avoidance stuff?” Because if you don’t understand that, you’re going to be having negative reactions to people doing normal things in a relationship that will impair your ability to maintain relationships. And I think also a lot of work around like this whole grass-is-greener thing could be really helpful for people.

Furthermore, understanding what happens inside of you, just physiologically around emotional closeness, physical closeness, and it’s the thing that’s hard is that the feelings are non-verbal, that you may feel very uncomfortable, even feelings of disgust and understanding just how old these are and able to then do like emotional intelligence, self-regulation work. That you’re able to feel calm and safe and relaxed enough in close contact with other people that you want to have an enduring relationship with.

An understanding that some emotional interdependence is really normal and that your work is figuring out how to manage your own feelings so that you can stay in the ring with other people. This is big old work, and also part of this work, I think for avoidant people is learning how to manage their anxiety in such a way, particularly if you know your partner has an anxious attachment style so that you can give them what they need: validation, contact with you, words of affirmation, going outta your way to show them love and care and understanding that you’re not always gonna feel like doing that. 

Some practical strategies for somebody with avoidant tendencies is to notice and maybe redirect yourself if you are having escape fantasies or wanting to zone out or pull away. Really checking in with yourself to see is that actually healthy or are you engaging in old patterns? Is it a reasonable expectation in this relationship for you to be moving towards your partner? How can you do that in ways that are meaningful to them?

And expecting that because of your way of being, it is going to create anxiety in your partner. Before you label them as being unreasonable or demanding, being able to think about what is it about the way that I am showing up that could be creating more of this inside of them, and is this a reflection of me really needing to be more emotionally available or feeling safer for them and taking ownership of that, because it’s very easy. It’s very easy to blame others. 

To be communicating with your partner maybe more than you think that you should. If you are starting to feel activated and like you need space, say that out loud in a non-confrontational way and say, “In order for me to kind of regroup and reset, I need a little bit of time. I’m going to go into the garage for the next three hours, or I need to take a me-day on Saturday morning, or whatever it is. Then I will be available to hang out with you for the rest of the day on Saturday.” Tell them that you need to step back, but also be telling them when you’re gonna step back in.

And furthermore, be keeping your partner in the loop as much as you can about how and when you feel triggered. That if you need space, what’s going on inside of you because this transparency will help them have compassion for you and understand that maybe you’re pulling away or needing space is really a manifestation of your attachment stuff rather than a reflection of your feelings towards them because that is the core fear that they’re holding.

If you can talk about you, it helps your partner feel much safer. And when you do feel regulated or when you are stepping back, use that time to get some clarity around what that was about. Is there something going on in the relationship that feels like a real relational issue that needs to be addressed and needs to be corrected in order for you to feel safer? Does this feel like a non-negotiable thing? Was it just an avoidant attachment style thing and whatever the outcome of that reflection is, then you can have a constructive conversation about that with your partner.

That can be an important part of this work too. Certainly journaling, talking to a therapist, you may be an internal processor, spending time alone, going on a walk, taking a shower. The more that you can do to be self-reflective and self-aware, the better this is. This is where true love comes in, everybody. You know, true love isn’t a feeling. It is a choice. True love is what we do when we are acting in the best interests of our partner and we do not do those things because we feel like doing them. We do those things because we know that they are the right thing to do, and they’re based on our values, they’re based on our self-awareness. Anytime that you have an anxious-avoidant pairing. You need to expect to be doing that, which is loving your partner in ways that are meaningful to them, and that may not feel natural or easy for you.

These are definitely more difficult relationships, but again, the opportunity for personal growth here is so profoundly, just huge because if these relationships are gonna work, it requires you to do a ton of work on yourself. I think be able to show love in the highest and best way that we all can, which is really getting clear of empathy for others, seeing them for who and what they are without criticism or a strong desire for them to be different. 

Understanding that there’s a reason why your partner is the way they are that makes perfect sense. We are all sort of wounded in our own ways, and that true emotional intimacy is being able to see and appreciate your partner for who they are, right? Not focusing on who we wish they were, and also able to have a lot of gratitude and appreciation for their strengths. Not in spite of what they’ve been through, but because of it. How do we then build on all of those positive aspects to build a really strong and mutually satisfying relationship for both people?

It does take more work. It is very valuable work and I sincerely hope that, you know, listening to this today has helped you gain some just insight and self-awareness, but also if there’s one big takeaway, it’s that this is a lot of work part. Just understand that if you’ve recognized any of yourself in these things — really important for you to connect with a great therapist individually who can help you both do this deep work and also ideally, a great marriage and family therapist who can help you both have constructive conversations about how you’re each kind of showing up in the relationship with lot of like skill building and instruction around what are the things that you each need to be doing differently day to day in order to help your partner feel more safe and comfortable with you.

There’s a lot here. But again, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I hope it was valuable for you. Find more resource sources on my website@growingself.com and I’ll be back in touch with you next week with another episode of the podcast.