Avoidants Always Pick the Worst Possible Time to Date (And You Pay the Price)

I wasted months, and in one case, nearly five years of my life.

Women would send me half-baked excuses via text and bizarre explanations for why our relationship suddenly seemed impossible to navigate.

But it’s not the dating scene that’s the problem. Nor are women to blame.

I was dating avoidants.

Dating an avoidant is like trying to share an exquisite 5 course meal with someone who is starving but experiences an allergic reaction halfway through. Right when dinner gets to the best part.

But the avoidant knows this happens every time. They know once they start sharing a meal with someone they’re into, it will happen, but they decide to lead you on anyway.

(And they make you pay for their hospital bill)

What’s even crazier is right before this happens, they always convince themselves “That last experience? Total fluke, it’ll be different this time.”

Then the relationship gets more intimate. You try to define it, you ask them to move in, or they start developing feelings for you.

And then the excuses pile up.

Even worse, especially when it comes to online dating, they start hopping on apps right around the same time when they’re going through some major life event and expect YOU to cater to their emotional unavailability.

You’re in a cycle of excuses

The first time, they’re swamped with work or some big school project.

On the next excuse: some kind of emergency pops up on the same day you planned a romantic night out two weeks prior.

And zero effort on their part to reschedule.

Then you start noticing you’re the only one initiating things or sending texts.

Instead of directly rejecting you and saving everyone the time, weeks go by, months even, and in some cases, years — decades.

The biggest mind-fuck of all this is that avoidants aren’t always cold, calculating, or shy.

Avoidant attachment is often so subtle that you won’t be able to tell until something triggers their fear of commitment or intimacy. And let me be on this: avoidants aren’t always triggered by growing intimacy or feelings.

Conflict is another source of their stress.

While most people can navigate stressful times in relationships, avoidants are ill-equipped or ready to deal with it.

You just won’t notice it most of the time because they’re just as charming or affectionate as a secure person.

But as soon as things get real, they latch onto convenient excuses to dip out, making you second-guess yourself in the process.

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Avoidants learned to associate pain with vulnerability as children. Their parents neglected their needs, and in some cases, punished or humiliated them for having certain feelings.

As a coping strategy, avoidants detach from their feelings and learn to rely only on themselves.

How different attachment styles handle intimacy and vulnerability:

Avoidants → instinctual need to pull away and detach to avoid emotional overwhelm

Secure → Remain emotionally grounded and patient but will set boundaries; won’t tolerate anxious or avoidant bs forever

Anxiously attached→ They’ll generally chase, obsess, or cling to their partner/relationship when they sense growing distance

What you can expect to gain

The sooner you recognize these patterns, things in your life will change:

Your time and energy get re-invested into the right people and circumstances; no more time needlessly spent recovering from an avoidant breakup
No more mental gymnastics trying to convince yourself ‘it’s all in your head’
Now you’re filtering the right people into your life instead of chasing or winning them over; you only look for emotionally available people

Audit their current life circumstances

A lot of people get caught up in what others say and how that makes them feel.

While it’s good to be mindful of how you feel around someone, feelings are often derived more from your own internal state and interpretations than what’s objectively going on.

In short, your feelings can lie to you.

Always watch what people do (especially with who you’re dating), and what they’re current life circumstances are.

Most avoidants aren’t intentionally manipulative.

They don’t necessarily choose to pull away when things get real, it’s more of an automatic response that’s difficult to break.

Relationships overwhelm them, but so do their own lives.

Audit what life events and situations they have going on, because if they display other avoidant patterns, chances are they’ll eventually come up with a convenient excuse about “how their lives are so busy and exhausting that they just can’t give you what you need right now.”

I’m not saying there’s anything you can do about their own personal lives being busy, but if you come to recognize and understand this, you can make better choices with whom you choose to date moving forward.

Consider these factors:

Are they fresh out of a breakup?
Are they currently dealing with some kind of major life stress?
Do they have a history of unstable or chaotic relationships?
Is their social network so vast they struggle to keep up with all their friends or personal projects?
Are they a full or part-time student?

You don’t have to date someone with nothing going on, but if you’re hoping to find someone you can share a life with, they’ve got to be able to have some extra space in order to adequately form healthy, long-term connections.

But avoidants already struggle when things aren’t as complicated.

So that person who just went through a breakup? The one with a full-time job and is also a part-time college student in their 30s? The one who also feels obligated to their parents?

They might not be as emotionally available as you might think.

Even if they’re smart, sexy, charming, and cool to hang out with.

Again, let’s keep in mind: I’ve had so many avoidants use external stressors as plausible deniability.

I never really wanted to call anyone out, because a) I didn’t want to sound like an insensitive jerk and b) they’ll just say something to absolve themselves of any accountability anyway.

So it’s usually pointless to argue. Just move on.

The avoidant will say, “This is just hard for me right now, I think it’s just bad timing. I wish we could have met when I didn’t have so much going on.”

The reality is that it’s always bad timing with avoidants. If they have a lot going on now, chances are they ALWAYS will. If it actually mattered to them, they would make the time.

Until you let them do their thing or let them be who they want to be, you will live in constant anxiety trying to control them.

But you can choose how to respond.

Key things:

If they just broke up, but they’re telling you they’re ready for commitment, don’t just take their word at face value — for them, this is probably a rebound
If they’re right in the middle of a major life event, pay attention to the high likelihood of instability and drama
If they’re dating multiple people while saying they want a relationship, I wouldn’t wait around

Often, what avoidants are actually looking for in dating is a distraction (even if they have you convinced otherwise).

They want emotional entertainment.

I know “audit their circumstances” might be more passive and observational, but it’s so vital here as part of the dating process.

Here’s something tangible you can say when you notice you’ve been strung along,

“Listen, I like you, and it would be great if we could actually get to know each other better, but right now it seems like you might have too much on your plate — it’s better if we go our own ways and invest our time in the things we find the most important.”

You don’t have to use this verbatim, but think of it like a template.

Be prepared for an excuse.

How avoidants use excuses

An excuse is a transitive verb that’s used to try to shift blame or avoid accountability.

It’s meant to coerce the other person (the non-excuse maker) to forgive the excuse maker without taking ownership over their mistake.

There’s a hell of a lot of nuance here; sometimes life really does happen and there’s nothing anyone can do about missing a meeting, a date, or just not being able to show up emotionally.

But in this instance, we’re looking for patterns. For habitual excuse-making.

The anatomy of an excuse:

1. The trigger: There’s an initial need to cancel, postpone, or avoid accountability

2. The excuse itself: Vague, unverifiable, is taboo to challenge; anything that has enough plausible deniability

3. The justification: Followed up with minimizing the situation and empty promises “Let’s try next week.”

4. The deflection: Consists of avoiding responsibility and an unwillingness to budge on anything “I had no choice.” “I just can’t right now.”

Case study: Indefinitely postponing major relationship decisions

Defining the relationship

After dating for a few months, you attempt to label the relationship:

The avoidant says, “I like what we have, but I don’t want to rush into anything just yet.”

An avoidant uses “YET” as a delay tactic while a secure person will be ready to label the relationship when the appropriate milestones have been reached.

Since you’re patient and understanding, you give them a few more weeks.

During this time, you’re simultaneously doing what you can to continue carefully integrating them into your life.

The avoidant will try to push back important decisions as long as they can until you ask again. (Or they feel like they can’t maintain the facade any longer)

You bring it up again, and they say, “I have a lot going on right now. I need space to think about it.”

Eventually they’ll tell you the truth but it still won’t be very clear, even when they send you an essay-length text message.

Next day: “I can’t give you what you need right now. I need to focus on school right now. I’m so sorry.”

Everything was fine until all this happened.

Then they ghost you. You loved this person and now you’re heartbroken.

The move-in conversation

In another example, let’s say you routinely stay over at each other’s places nearly every night.

Maybe this has been going on for six months straight. And before that, you had already been together for 3 months. So it’s not like you’re really rushing into anything.

At this point, you practically live together. The only difference is you don’t own a home together or have a lease.

Normally, most couples want to move in together, right? In most cases, this is obviously the next step.

When asked about it, the avoidant responds with, “I love spending time with you, but I don’t think I’m ready for that step just yet.”

Then they drop the topic and refuse to continue discussing it.

But you’re more likely to get an excuse.

“I just can’t right now, I still have six months on my lease and anyway I was thinking about moving in with my best friend so we could split rent.”

It’s a sound argument.

The logic makes sense, but what’s really going on here? What’s the difference between you and their best friend?

They’re not fucking their best friend and they’re not expected to be as close with them as they are with you.

In this case, they use this excuse “how it’s not really the right time because they’re planning to move in with their best friend” to supplicate to their avoidant attachment.

Someone who’s committed and emotionally available will think ahead and will be more willing to consider discussing this more seriously instead of just choosing their friend over you.

Avoidants will prioritize everyone or everything except you — the one person that genuinely wants to be with them.

And on the surface, it all looks reasonable to the outside world.

Yet this kind of comment can truly hurt deeply, and really just signals that you’re low on their totem pole.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Also, they’re already getting the benefits of unofficially living with you.

So why would they give that up?

Since they can essentially come and go as they want by retaining their own space, they can postpone real commitment indefinitely.

Whatever the situation is, if you start to set boundaries, you’re likely to get a few different responses:

A half-baked excuse
Emotional shutdown
An unexpected breakup

This has happened to me so many times, because I blatantly ignored red flags and thought each time, it was just an isolated incident.

Eventually though, you’ll realize that avoidants have a very similar playbook.

You’ll almost get too good at predicting their behavior.

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After going through these situationships multiple times, I got fed up. I stopped trying to date avoidants, and I put together this guide on setting boundaries, using a simple, no-BS method to set limits in dating and relationships. Download your copy here.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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