Dealing with an ex who has the avoidant attachment style can feel like an impossible task.
The way they treat you makes you feel like you’ve already lost them forever
But then they give you glimmers of hope: a message out of nowhere, an unexpected phone call, or a sudden sign of interest.
And just when you start to think that you might have a chance, they disappear into thin air.
So why is this happening? Well it comes down to your behaviour: the things you’re doing (and not doing) that are causing them to keep their distance. And you need to understand this process, or you’re going to lose them forever.
So let’s talk about what you need to do to avoid losing your ex forever. And while we’re at it, we’ll talk about what you can do to get closer to them. Let’s go through this step by step.
Step 1: Understand Avoidant Attachment
Many people think they understand avoidant attachment but are just going off buzzwords that don’t represent the reality of the situation. It’s easy to diagnose anyone who ignores you or treats you badly as having avoidant attachment but it’s not really that at all.
Someone with avoidant attachment can be extremely respectful, loving and affectionate and someone with secure attachment can mistreat you horribly.
Avoidant attachment is really just a way of describing how someone responds to intimacy in a relationship with another person.
They find intimacy to be stressful, and that affects how they respond to moments of connection and intensity–so positive things like sleeping together for the first time or moving in together but also negative moments like fights and breakups.
These moments will cause them a lot of big feelings and to avoid dealing with these feelings, they’ll make use of avoidance as a strategy. They’ll go cold, pull away and become distant.
That’s the entirety of what makes an avoidant, an avoidant. So don’t let anyone tell you that avoidants have to talk to you a certain way or be rude or always be extremely independent.
All that someone needs to be an avoidant is a persistent pattern of avoidant behaviour towards a romantic partner.
Of course, there’s no denying that this avoidant behaviour can have a big impact on the other person and on the relationship. And instead of getting the avoidant the space they want, it only creates confusion and hurt feelings for both of you.
And this creates a negative feedback loop that you may actually be stuck in right now.
Here’s the typical pattern: things are going well. You and your partner grow closer and start to rely on one another emotionally. They start to feel overwhelmed by this closeness.
They feel as though you are relying too much on them, creating expectations about their behaviour and making demands of them emotionally that they’re not sure that they can deliver on. So they pull away from you in some way.
This will be subtle at first: they’ll reply to your messages less often and with less enthusiasm. They’ll make you reach out and make plans. They’ll be busy more often.
And, to you, this feels like rejection. You’ll wonder what went wrong. Did you do something to upset them? Did something change? Are they alright?
And there are two typical responses you’re going to have here. Either, you’re going to ask them for clarification. Like “what’s wrong?” or “Are you mad”, something like that.
Or you’re going to just try to fix things by closing that distance between the two of you, getting closer to them. You might message them more, cling on to them, or otherwise make more demands on them.
But—as I’m sure you know by now—neither of these responses are going to get you the closeness you want. They’ll just cause your ex to feel more smothered—more overwhelmed—and that’s just going to cause them to pull away from you even further. And the cycle repeats.
And it often gets so bad that it leads to a big fight or even a breakup. Everything seemed totally fine a few weeks ago and just when it felt perfect, they pulled away and ruined everything, because they couldn’t manage their feelings.
So now you know why it happened, how can you reverse course and win them back?
Step 2: Match Their Energy
The big reason that relationships with avoidants end this way is because of a mismatch in energy. When they’re pulling away, you’re clinging on. When they want space and silence, you want closeness and conversation. This is what creates the sense of disconnection between the two of you—you’re never on the same page.
And after a breakup, this only kicks into overdrive. And how could it not? Your feelings of loneliness and rejection are at an all time high after this profound rejection. So you’re driven to cling to them like never before. You need to fix things to feel better about yourself.
Meanwhile, the breakup causes them to feel incredibly overwhelmed by emotions and so they want nothing more than to be alone with their thoughts. And they know the best way to make that happen is by icing you out.
Don’t worry, this is a very common pattern that I see every day in my work with clients and it is fixable. What you need to do is flip the script: change your own behaviour, and you’ll change how your ex treats you. And to do this, you have to match their energy.
Start by going no contact. Commit to a period of about a month with no contact of any kind with your ex:
- No phone calls, emails, text messages
- No conversations, hangouts, or dates.
- No late night booty calls or random drop ins.
- Nothing, as much as humanly possible, for 30 days or so.
This sounds physically impossible, but let me tell you why it works: because your ex doesn’t expect it. They think that you’re going to continue to reach out and bug them.
And secretly, that’s exactly what they want. When you reach out, you give them access to you in a way that’s safe and doesn’t require any vulnerability on their part.
They know that they can continue to reject you and you’ll still be there for them when they need you.
But when you go dark the same way they have, they’re going to finally start to worry that it really is over.
It will scare the hell out of them to think that they might have actually lost you for good.
They’ll have to finally face the idea of living a life without you. They’ll see that they’ve chosen loneliness over connection with someone that they love.
They’ll see that they’re the one who’s making this happen, not you and so they’ll blame themselves.
This is going to cause your ex a lot of pain, but these feelings were inevitable when they chose to end the relationship. By going No Contact, you’re just speeding up the process.
This way, they feel these feelings now when the two of you are still connected, rather than a year from now when there’s no real chance of reconciliation.
I know that this is going to be a difficult move to make, but after working with tens of thousands of clients over fifteen years, I can say that it truly is the best thing you can do to win back an avoidant ex.
But that’s not all that you have to do. Because during this time apart, you need to be working hard to shift your own emotions too.
Step 3: Become Emotionally Independent
One of the biggest things that scare an avoidant away is the feeling that they have to be responsible for your emotional wellbeing. And when you react to their distance by becoming clingy, you’re only further validating this fear.
So if you want to reconnect with your avoidant ex in a way that can actually last for the long term, you need to start by creating emotional independence.
Emotionally independent people don’t rely on others for happiness, validation or security. Sure, they care about other people and want them in their lives, but they could make it on their own if they really needed to.
Developing emotional independence is a long journey but this breakup is actually going to be a very valuable opportunity to make strides in the right direction.
Because you’re going to be spending a lot of time alone without your ex, you’re going to have to learn to take care of your own problems and find an inner confidence that will allow you to go on.
If you don’t know where to start, I recommend that you think about self improvement.
Things like working out, running, and eating healthy can be great for your physical health but they also do wonders for your emotional health as well.
That’s because they require a lot of self control and the more you exercise self control, the more confidence you gain in your own abilities. Because the difficult emotions you’re facing drive you to do the exact opposite.
When you give into these bad feelings, you feel compelled to order a pizza, sit on the couch and sink into depression.
If you can fight these feelings: hit the gym, eat a balanced diet and go on with your day, then you’ve taken one more step towards emotional independence.
Another pillar of emotional independence is handling your problems internally.
RELATED: Your Avoidant Ex Is AFRAID Of You
Sure, there’s no harm in turning to a partner, a friend or a family member to vent or to help you talk out an issue, but if every time you stub your toe you reach for your phone to call your mom, you’re not building emotional independence. You’re building codependence.
So do your best to look inward for the answers. Learn to trust your own judgement and you’re going to see that you don’t need other people to solve your problems for you.
And when you achieve this, your partner is going to be able to sense it. Because when you lack emotional independence, it shows itself in subtle ways you’d never be able to control. And when you have it, it’s obvious to everyone around you that you can stand on your own two feet, no matter what happens.
This confidence is attractive and it’s vital to rebuilding a relationship with an avoidant.
Step 4: Get Insight Into Your Ex’s Mind
What if you could go deeper without even breaking No Contact? Well that’s why I created my free quiz. I designed it to answer the lingering questions you have about your breakup and give you some insight on what to do next to win back your ex.
And most importantly, it’s going to tell you what your chances are of actually making it work. Take it now for free, it’s totally confidential and takes less than 5 minutes.
Step 5: Make Getting Back Together THEIR Idea
The thing about avoidants is that they often feel like they’re being pressured by their partners. And in a real way, they are. I mean they connect with you, make you interested and offer love and affection and then they keep you at a distance. So it’s no wonder that you take steps to try to get that closeness they’ve been dangling in front of your face.
But this creates a pattern where you’re always the one pushing things forward—asking for more—so, whether they give in to your demands or push you away, they’re reacting rather than acting. And when you’re stuck in a reactive state like this, you feel like you lack agency and control.
So give your ex the chance to make some moves here. Once No Contact is over, you might have to make the first move just to begin the conversation, but then you need to allow them some more space.
Let them reach out to you. Let them make plans and try to reconnect. It might take a little longer than you want for them to bridge the gap, but the connection is going to be way stronger because it isn’t forced.
The pressure they’ve felt from you in the past is going to evaporate when they realize that they have a choice in how this relationship develops. And since that pressure was driving the fear that broke you up, the two of you are going to naturally come together with almost no effort.
The work you do now is going to pay dividends. By giving them space, developing emotional independence, and making them feel like getting back together is their idea, you’ll draw them towards you and dispel all their fears.
They’ll begin to see that they have every reason to reconnect with you and no reason not to.
Remember, avoidant attachment isn’t a death sentence for your relationship, even if you’ve been through a breakup already. You DO have a chance when it comes to reconnecting, but you also need to keep your ex’s personality in mind if you want them to want to be with you again.
