5 Emotions Your Avoidant Partner Feels When You “Break Up”

I have loved an avoidant. With all my heart. And soul. I didn’t only wholeheartedly fall in love with her. I also profoundly understood her, her avoidance, and everything in between.

And when I say I loved and understood her, I’m not talking about months of infatuation and passion. I’m talking about years of hard conversations and empathy for each other.

So, this makes me the perfect person to write this article. I have seen all this and experienced it firsthand. I am also a nerd who cannot sleep at night without finding answers to what I don’t understand. So, I did my homework.

Avoidants, rest assured that I’m not here to bash or judge you. And for the partners of avoidants, understand your partner but never neglect yourself or your own needs.

Here’s how, exactly, this article will help you both.

If you have been with an avoidant long enough:

You know the feelings of frustration when you can’t for the life of you figure out what’s going on in their mind (or heart). They don’t share or communicate and leave you midway without explanations.

So, this article will help you understand what your partner isn’t willing to share or isn’t able to articulate. You’ll stop banging your head against the wall trying to understand something so confusing.

And if you’re the avoidant:

You usually don’t know why you act the way you do and what emotions make you act in these ways.

So, this article will help you understand what’s going on inside you when you’re triggered and how you tend to act. This can help you identify the problem and then break the cycle. An avoidant attachment style is not who you are; it’s how you cope. And that’s changeable if you’re willing.

Let’s get into it.

We’ll cover 5 emotions the avoidant partner feels when they “break up” with their partner. And you probably know why I’m saying “break up.” If not, you’ll figure that out by the end of the article.

The first one can be annoying if you’re the partner of an avoidant . . .

#1 Relief.

Avoidants run away when things are going great. They’re terrified of closeness, intimacy, and vulnerability (the very things that make intimate relationships what they are).

Namely, their attachment system is triggered when they sense their partner is:

Getting close.
Trying to “trap” them into committing.
Getting intimate.
Making them comfortable enough to open up (they feel exposed).

They feel exposed, vulnerable, and weak. And they tend to feel this way when they experience closeness in a relationship.

As a result, they panic. They start feeling smothered and trapped. And they start acting dismissively or even totally cut off their partner.

When they succeed at getting away from their partner, they feel relief. Their fears are no longer threatening. It is as if they were being chased by a ghost, and now they managed to escape.

Sorry to deliver the bad news. At first, your avoidant partner is relieved they got away from you. But it’s neither personal nor permanent. Let me explain.

Avoidants have 2 conflicting driving forces:

Fears.
Feelings.

Fears eat feelings for breakfast. So whenever their fears are triggered, feelings take a side seat. The main focus becomes getting away from the dangers of feelings. And when they do, they feel relief.

When they no longer feel fear, the other driving force (feelings) takes over. In other words, when fear is absent, they can feel their emotions. However, they don’t experience them in a straightforward manner.

Avoidants typically have little access to their feelings, especially ones related to intimacy. So, they first feel . . .

#2 Dissociation.

The feelings of relief eventually neutralize. They slowly start realizing they’re safe. But because they don’t easily access their feelings, they go through a few stages to “feel their emotions.”

The first stage is dissociation. In this state, they feel, well, nothing! They are no longer driven by fear. But at the same time, they still do not miss their partner because they can’t access their feelings yet.

They are dissociated!

Now, when I say dissociation, I mean a combination of a few things.

Numbness.
A deep desire to shut down.
Complete avoidance of the source of the hurt.

The final result is a dull feeling of nothingness. However, it feels safer than reflecting on what happened.

Avoidants typically lack (enough) self-awareness. One of the main reasons for that is this dissociation stage. They fail to reflect back and unpack the experiences that can help them grow (but of which they’re afraid).

For them, the emotional closeness was scary enough to make them run away. It’s equally (if not more) scary to reflect on something they regard as threatening. As a result, they will likely not reflect on what happened, which typically keeps their desire for distance unconscious.

If you’re terrified of ghosts, not only will you run away from them, but you will also not want to think about them. It’s unpleasant to think about things that make us feel vulnerable, exposed, and unsafe. This is one of the points where I have a lot of empathy for avoidants. I understand how it feels.

(Note: They are still unwilling to get back together with their partner during this stage).

So, slowly, the feelings of relief turn into dissociation. The state of dissociation, in turn, will slowly turn into another state . . .

#3 “Clean slate.”

Avoidants don’t access their feelings directly. They, instead, access a foggy version of their emotions.

Again, this happens because of two conflicting feelings:

The desire for closeness and connection (and maybe their desire for their partner).
The foggy feelings of dissociation (which is driven by fear).

They don’t mind getting back together at this stage (might even want or try to). But at the same time, they don’t want to reflect and access their feelings. They only want to reconnect without looking at the past and what happened.

They might have a conversation with you about what happened. But it will be as dry as a cactus (no emotions because they can’t access them and no self-awareness because they didn’t reflect).

During this state, they might get in touch with you, either directly or indirectly. Or they might welcome any attempt you make to contact them.

In short, they now feel fresh enough to get close again. Those feelings of being neutral slowly will turn into . . .

#4 Relief and/or #5 discomfort.

Those 2 feelings usually occur together for the same reason. So, we’ll cover them in one point.

Avoidants are as terrified of closeness as they are of being alone. They experience relief when they get away because they are scared of closeness. But they also experience relief when they reconnect because they are terrified of loneliness. Their fears of loneliness surface when their fears of closeness subside (and vice versa).

It’s this confusing cycle of “I want an intimate relationship, but getting one makes me uncomfortable. So, I sabotage it. But once I do, I realize I still need one.”

There’s this metaphor that avoidants want their partner in the same house with them — just not in the same room. So, they get uncomfortable when they feel they might have chased their partner out of the house forever. It’s now an empty house, and they still need someone around.

They (like any other human being) yearn for a sense of connection and intimacy. They cannot “overcome” such basic needs despite how much they scare them.

This discomfort motivates them to go out and seek their partner (directly or not) or find another partner. It depends on the context.

Once they get their partner back, they start feeling relief again. Their fears of closeness are controllable at that moment because they have been away for a while.

Relief will stay there until something triggers their fears of closeness again. Once that happens, the cycle is repeated all over again — feelings of discomfort that lead them to sabotage the relationship and feel those emotions all over again.

It takes self-awareness and willingness to break this cycle from the avoidant and their partner. But it’s worth it.

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I hope this was helpful

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Also, check my books on Amazon.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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