The Reason You Keep Picking Avoidants

Dating is a game of musical chairs.

Because you can’t afford to pass up opportunities with the right person, otherwise you might end up going from chair to chair for years only to fall flat on your ass when you least expect it.

That’s what it can feel like to date avoidant after avoidant.

Experiencing a discard can make you unfairly doubt or second guess yourself and it wastes so much time.

Instead of just “getting on with it,” you’re caught in misery and suffering.

“Where did I go wrong?”
“I should have handled that differently.”
“Was I being too needy?”

Then you get caught in a long, pointless cycle of trying to fix things that aren’t broken.

(Maybe you try to “tone it down” by stifling yourself for people who get easily overwhelmed by the mere suggestion of commitment)

Think of it this way too, dating avoidants is like playing a sport with people who are either cheating or playing by an entirely different set of rules you’re not aware of.

And you’re still nowhere near your dating goals.

(More on this later)

This is what happens when you stop dating avoidants, and start dating more mature people

The result is pretty simple.

When you start to do the work, you can expect your relationships to make it past the 3-month mark without constantly worrying “When are they going to pull away?”

Because healthy partners don’t trigger that fear.

If you lean more anxious, you’ll typically overwhelm your avoidant boyfriend or girlfriend sooner than you’d hope to, and if you’re more on the secure side, you might put up with their BS, but not as long as the anxious person would.

So if you try to actually put some emphasis on the relationship, the avoidant will just leave.

Here’s what you need to do

Churning through multiple insecure, avoidant partners isn’t entirely your fault. Attachment theory has a strong influence, but a lot of it is about your environment.

What do I mean?

There are A LOT of avoidants out there in the dating sphere.

And unfortunately, you can’t do much about that.

No matter how much inner work you do, you will still encounter insecure people, liars, manipulators, bullshitters, narcissists, and avoidants, but through greater awareness, you’ll have the confidence to disengage far sooner than you used to.

And you can’t directly change the people you date.

You can attempt to influence change, but that’s about as good as it’s going to get. You might try so hard to love them more just to get a fraction of that love back, but it oftentimes doesn’t matter.

At least, that’s what I’ve noticed personally.

Nothing I’ve tried so far has been successful in trying to get any avoidant girlfriend to re-engage or change her behavior for the sake of the relationship.

And again, you can’t change the entire dynamic that’s going on right now.

As long as social media and online dating exist, this paradigm we have now that enables and rewards avoidant behavior in dating is here to stay.

But personally, I think something is going to shift.

A lot of people are starting to feel lonelier than ever these days and burnt out from dating emotionally unavailable people. (I know I am…)

The same culture that’s let this behavior go on is the same one that is currently reaping the consequences.

(Shallow relationships, fleeting love, ghosting, discarding, and a myriad of other things like excuses.)

And it will learn. Society will adapt.

Earlier, I mentioned when you date an avoidant, it’s like playing a game or sport with someone who’s playing a different set of rules. You get hurt, they come out ahead, and you’re still nowhere near where you want to get to.

Avoidants don’t experience breakups the same way you do. They quickly and easily detach from you and they’re masters at moving on before you even have a chance to say “WTF just happened?”

Then they go on to repeat the cycle elsewhere.

But then it all hits you, and you’re knocked down, and now you’re having to learn to get back up again.

That is why it is so crucial to spot the signs of avoidant behavior ASAP. Because knowing is half the battle.

The warning signs

A series of evasive dating histories (they’re reluctant to share anything about their past relationships or they’re super vague)
Vague, ambiguous responses to relationship goals or future plans
Consistently dredging up exes and old relationships (not over them or using an ex to keep distance between you and them)
Every time you lean in, they pull away
Love bombing and future faking (grand promises they can’t keep just to secure you)
Their communication becomes sporadic or non-existent
They routinely try to control the relationship through physical or emotional distance (using long distance, late nights at the office, or addiction to avoid intimacy)
Commitment phobia
Overthinking and analyzing every little thing (an obvious sign of perfectionism — a key trait of avoidant attachment)
Far too easygoing or agreeable (they’ll silently let resentment fester for a long time only to pull the plug when you least expect it)

Changing your attachment style is mostly outside the scope of this story, but I noticed that one of the things that kept driving my anxious attachment style was my predilection to date extremely self-centered, avoidant women.

I wasn’t just dating them because that’s who was around, but keeping them around (or trying to at least) was due to my overwhelming infatuation with their uncanny ability to care about no one but themselves.

That was a trait I had suppressed for a long time.

Their selfishness was the blank canvas to project all my wants and needs onto, and to provide love and care for someone who was never going to give it back.

But when I did get a smidgen of care or consideration from her, it was like taking a hit of crack.

The point is, that you must learn to develop that care and compassion for yourself. Take a page from the avoidant playbook and do what they do.

Focus exclusively on yourself.

When someone wants help? Tell them “No, go away.” Be selfish. Identify and do whatever you can that you’ve been neglecting in yourself.

Why else do you find the most selfish, indifferent, aloof individuals so attractive? It’s all about energy. Caring and giving might seem nice at first, but go overboard and it becomes repulsive, and avoidants know this, that’s why they have mastered the art of “IDGAF.”

Those who accept and embrace the idea of taking what they want and prioritizing themselves are the only ones who truly thrive in this world.

You don’t have to go overboard, but it’s worth taking into consideration and adopting a few of these avoidant principles:

Avoidants don’t chase people — which paradoxically causes others to chase them instead
They’re eager to say no and not feel guilty, in fact, as evidenced by what my avoidant ex said once, they feel a sense of freedom and bliss from it
They don’t worry or think about the needs of others
They know that people value things that are scarce

Once, I tested this hypothesis.

I was seeing an avoidant girl who was playing all sorts of ridiculous games. She’d flake, leave me on read, or she’d have all these excuses for why we couldn’t go out on a date.

But I still kept texting her back and forth.

So I blocked her number for a few days. Just to see what would happen.

(On some mobile devices, you can still see blocked messages if you dig deeper, I was monitoring what was coming through, but that’s not the point)

She could sense I pulled away, and her avoidant tendencies switched to anxiety because she was texting me over and over again trying to figure out what happened.

I realized: it was never about love. It was all about control.

So if someone plays games, just disengage.

Even if you care about it, resist it for the time being. Ignore them and let them chase you. And finally prioritize yourself, at least for once in your life because if you don’t, no one else will.

I know it’s going to be hard to do all this, but you can handle it.

Besides this, you can learn to lower the volume or deactivate your attachment style so that you no longer tolerate or waste time with insecure people.

It won’t directly change any external dynamics.

Because having a secure attachment style doesn’t automatically pull new relationships into your life, it’s more so, a result of doing the work in the first place.

Secure attachment is a process of changing behaviors, that is ultimately what defines attachment in the first place. And whether or not your attachment is active.

Though, there’s still an emotional or mental aspect of it as well.

What’s going on in modern dating?

I’ve heard here and there that some studies suggest, that of all human beings:

50% have a secure attachment style
25% are avoidant
25% are anxious

But I have serious doubts about this.

If you follow the statistics as they are you’d think you’d have a pretty good chance of finding a lot of “secure” people to date.

For example, let’s say, out of 100 people:

50 would be secure, potentially healthy partners.

25 of them would have an avoidant attachment style.

And finally, another 25 of those people would lean anxious.

So you still have a 1 in 2 chance of meeting someone who is insecure,

It’s not a perfect ratio, however, it’s more likely to look like 1 in 3 people would be avoidant.

But you could at least count on the insecure person being anxious, and if you have a secure attachment, an anxious attachment is somewhat easier to work with.

Here’s why:

Anxious attachers generally want to be close. As such, when they notice their relationships have a habit of failing, they’re more likely to invest in solutions and seek help than the avoidant.

(Though, to be fair some anxious attachers can be quite controlling, jealous, and abusive)

Avoidants, on the other hand, well… do as their name suggests, they avoid things — especially intimacy and vulnerability that naturally come with inner work.

If we simplify it further, this suggests that for every 4 people you date:

1 person will be anxious
1 individual will be avoidant
2 should be secure

You would think your chances of finding a secure, healthy person to stick with for a long time are high, but it’s simply not true.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, of course not, but keep in mind it might not be “beginner’s luck” if you think you’ve found the right person on the first try.

In the modern dating scene, there are so many avoidants out there.

They naturally churn and burn through partners like a pack of cigarettes.

They might only make up ~25% of the population (if we’re strictly following the speculations), but they could easily overwhelmingly account for the majority of the active dating pool in your area.

Especially if:

You live in a small to mid-size college town (where hookup culture is the norm)
The city you live in is a major metropolitan area where many people are hyper-independent and focused on business or their careers
You’re using a dating app/online dating (avoidants flock to online platforms)

…

Dating apps:

Online communication and connection abstract away the human element.

Avoidants fear rejection, guilt, or embarrassment, thus, the nature of apps provides a safe “space” for avoidants to give minimal investment and discard as many people as they like without it keeping them up at night.

A secure or anxious person is more likely to find someone they like, stick with that person, delete the apps from their devices, and focus on that connection.

Yet the same avoidants are always cycling through the apps.

Why? Because they don’t want to get “too close.”

For example, when I was using online dating, I couldn’t believe how many of the same people I’d see month after month on apps like Tinder or Bumble.

It was so bad that I saw not one, but more than 3 of my avoidant ex-girlfriends active on Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge after discarding me.

Remember, avoidants love to be chased (even if they run away from it) but they don’t love the effort it takes to commit.

…

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If you’re dealing with toxic relationships, avoidant behavior, or you’re struggling to voice your needs, 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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