The Anxious And The Avoidant

The Avoidant and The Anxious 

fell in love with each other,

which is almost never a good thing for those two attachment styles. 

At first, the love is powerful—magical, even.

But after the magic starts to fade,

She, The Avoidant, would pull away.

When the first bad feeling came, 

she longed to run away,

And he, The Anxious, would drive himself crazy trying to figure out what was wrong.

He would feel guilty.

And scared.

His mind would race and his body would shake. 

He really was too damn anxious.

And she wouldn’t talk to him about what she was feeling.

She would withdraw,

And hyperfocus on the bad feeling she was feeling—on the doubt she was now thinking,

Driving him crazy;

Driving him to drink;

Driving him to sink into himself;

And spiral. 

Because The Anxious is insecure—he’s terrified of losing her. 

He starts to think he is too much.

He starts to wonder if he cares too deeply. 

He suspects that he loves her more than she loves him. 

But he was just the mirror that revealed her unhealed wounds to her. And she eventually showed him his unhealed wounds to him. And he realized he was more broken than he ever imagined. 

She, The Avoidant, craved connection,

but was terrified of it.

She was unconsciously afraid of closeness.

She desperately wanted love,

she just didn’t know what to do when she got it and it was different than what she expected it to be.

So,

She ran.

She pushed him away.

His availability to be there for her and talk through her feelings

intimidated her.

It made her uncomfortable.

It made her insides squirm and her head rode the tides of doubt. 

Emotional consistency felt foreign to her.

In fact, it felt unsafe to her.

She confused chaos with closeness—chaos with connection.

She chased the chaos, not peace.

When someone makes her work for love, that is what feels normal to her; that is what feels ‘earned’; that is what makes her feel worthy of it.

But when love is freely given,

that's when The Avoidant pulls away.

They can still love you and leave you.

They were wired to equate closeness with danger, not safety,

Which causes them to shut down when The Anxious opens up.

The Anxious desperately tries to keep the love alive, but, paradoxically, that’s how the love dies. 

The vulnerability triggers what The Avoidant spent her entire life elegantly avoiding.

Avoidant's don’t need space, they need healing.

They simply need to heal.

The Avoidant unintentionally will make The Anxious feel like the problem for having basic needs.

They confuse peace for boredom.

So when the love is healthy and steady they assume something is off because they long for the chaos.

The Avoidant self-sabotages.

They avoid their true feelings and try to repress them by distracting themselves, but anything that gets repressed will inevitably manifest. Her feelings hit her way after the reason that caused her feelings have passed - usually in the silence and in the distance.

The Avoidant will revisit him long after he’s gone.

When The Anxious has moved on,

that’s when she starts missing him—

when it finally sinks in that he isn’t coming back to her.

But The Avoidant will miss him in silence.

She won’t admit to herself that she needs him.

She can’t. 

It hurts her too much to admit it. 

And all the while, The Anxious has been dying inside.

He feels it all, and then some.

But, he isn't coming back.

He lets go.

He moves on.

He has to.

It’s how he survives it. 

When she said, “I’m not ready.”

It was out of fear;

Fear of being seen;

Fear of finally being heard;

Fear of being truly loved;

Fear of being left after becoming naked and vulnerable.

The Anxious feels like he’s lost her—that his soulmate rejected him.

He feels like the problem, and still holds onto the fantasy that she is perfect for him the way she is.

He doesn’t feel good enough for her.

But,

He needs to remember,

he didn’t lose her,

The Avoidant lost someone who would love them through it all.

They lost someone who would've stayed and healed and grown with them.

“The Avoidant drove you away,

    And it was never your responsibility to stay,” they say.

The Anxious needs to remember

    he shouldn’t have stayed.

. . .

But,

The romantic;

The Man;

The steady Man;

The secure one;

The one who can handle The Avoidant;

And still love her with all of his heart and soul,

And not become cold;

That man, 

Well,

I reckon he stays when she pulls away. 

Here's the thing about these attachment styles, we aren't stuck in them. We can grow. We can heal. We can change. If we look inward, and work on ourselves, we can truly change.

Ironically this is what The Anxious person needs most for their own growth-a refocus on themselves and their own life.

And this is what The Avoidant needs in order to see themselves and heal. The two attract each other, repel, heal and attract again. But if there is no healing, the cycle just repeats.

CH 12/29/25