You’re in the early stages of dating someone on the first date.
You’re hopeful things will go well, but they spend the entire date dumping their issues with their ex on you. They talk about all their insecurities and problems but don’t ask you anything about yourself.
You should’ve left them an invoice for your time!
And when you get home, they throw a litany of relationship questions your way through the safety of a screen.
“How many people have you seen?”
“What happened to your last relationship?”
And so on.
You feel compelled to answer, hoping to build trust, connection, or rapport, or to avoid “unnecessary” conflict. It’s great to be open and communicative, but there is a downside to sharing too much at once.
They — the person you’re dating may jump to wild conclusions.
Ironically, they assume that you’re not over an ex, you’re using them as a rebound, or there’s something inherently flawed in your ability to maintain a relationship.
This scenario is an exaggeration but it’s not far from personal experience.
Their questioning can morph into a pseudo-interrogation. The interaction, whether it’s in person, or god forbid through text, is no longer about genuinely trying to connect.
But first, what happens when you tolerate these behaviors or “play into them?”
You waste time, and you feel confused and hurt. And if the person you’re dating is determined to ask you about your entire life story on the first date, they’re not genuinely interested in you.
Because there’s more than enough time to get to know someone.
Sometimes I get the feeling people don’t understand this and demand to know EVERYTHING all at once. Or if they don’t feel a “spark” or connection in the first ten minutes they lose interest and move on.
In short, their incessant questioning or trauma dumping may disrupt a delicate balance early in the dating process. If you pay attention, you’ll see their behavior stems from a basic need.
That basic need is for control, reassurance, and safety.
Constantly reassuring your partner is costly to the relationship. One person may feel like a parent and the need to perform or entertain them is exhausting. It’s a toxic dynamic. This does not lead to a genuine connection.
Parenting the person you’re dating is humiliating, frustrating, and downright annoying. Not all fearful avoidants are like this, but it’s a common theme I’ve noticed with them.
Why are “fearful avoidants” so alluring?
In attachment theory, there are three primary attachment styles. Anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant. Everyone exhibits all variations at some point, but we all have a bias towards a primary one.
A relationship can include a homogeneous pairing. This could look like two avoidants together or two anxious partners together. But, from what I have noticed, to maintain equilibrium, one person will naturally gravitate towards the opposite even if it is not their primary attachment style.
However, most people naturally seek partners with an opposite attachment style.
Anxious people pair up with avoidants, and it’s a push-pull dynamic.
There are resources online to discover your attachment style, but they’ll only give you a “rough idea”. Usually, professional counseling is better suited to discern your attachment style.
I have had relationships with dismissive avoidants and fearful avoidants — at least from what I could observe to the best of my ability. DAs were emotionally distant and predictable, but my experiences with FAs were a whirlwind of emotions.
A fearful-avoidant person has traits of an anxious-preoccupied individual and a dismissive-avoidant.
A relationship with them can feel exhilarating, and passionate, but it’s a wild ride. They may seem very engaged and interested at first. They can be very charming, charismatic, loving, and physically expressive.
There’s a lot of emotional intensity but there’s a flip side.
One minute they love you, and the next you’re public enemy number one to them. Their behavior is hot and cold. If they feel — often without any real cause — that you encroach on their independence or feel you’ve betrayed them, they shut down, avoid, and distance themselves from you or the relationship.
Why do they insist on knowing the mundane aspects of your life?
They believe every little detail will help them feel safe. If they “know everything”, that belief leads them to falsely think they can accurately predict and manage the relationship to feel “safe.”
It’s all about reducing their anxiety. But that only reinforces anxiety and makes it worse.
However, it’s no surprise that this quickly causes the relationship to be emotionally taxing for everyone involved. One person is always anxious and controlling, and the other walks on eggshells to avoid upsetting their avoidant partner.
Because they’re creating an illusion of intimacy
Secondly, some individuals “lay it all out there” at the start. They’ll use this excuse “This is who I am, take it or leave it.”
This is what I call “trauma dumping.”
Even after my experience with an ex, whom we’ll call “Julie”, I had one or two dates where women told me damn near their entire life story and all the bad things associated with it.
This falsely creates an illusion of genuine connection or interest.
They’ll share their “deepest and darkest” traumas and secrets and encourage you to do the same. If you’re inexperienced or naive, you will feel like you’re creating a bond.
When Julie shared everything with me, I felt sympathy for her, and weirdly I fell in love with the idea of “being there” for her.
But that’s fake intimacy and it’s not real love.
However, I eventually caught on to what she was doing. She probably wasn’t doing it intentionally, but she had this need to vent to anyone, and she used dating as a convenient means to unload her problems.
The result of a boundary-less relationship
When I neglected my boundaries with Julie and other similar partners, I let myself get over-invested in her or the relationship. And when the relationship inevitably ended — due to its toxicity, I felt a great deal of self-doubt and grief.
It took me a while to heal from it. I couldn’t date anyone because I was preoccupied with healing from a relationship I needlessly poured too much into.
My relationship with her and others like her often seemed like a therapy session rather than a healthy partnership. If you don’t lead the relationship and shut down their interrogation-like communication, you’ll overshare and feel used and discarded after they get what they want from you.
Mistrust in fearful avoidant relationships
Fearful avoidants struggle with trusting others, or rather, their ability to discern healthy partners from toxic ones.
It’s more like they see red flags where there aren’t and shut out genuinely stable people. They fear betrayal or engulfment and mitigate these fears by hopping from one person to another before things get too serious.
This mistrust of others often stems from past trauma, such as childhood neglect, abuse, or abandonment. It’s not their fault, but your job isn’t to fix them.
So don’t waste your time trying to fix or save them.
Managing Relationships with Fearful Avoidants
If I could redo my relationship with Julie if she didn’t have all the “preliminary red flags” I would have altered my reactions to her in a few ways.
- Audit your feelings afterward: Do you feel drained or energized after time with them? I typically felt anxious, physically and mentally exhausted after we spent time together. This is how you can identify toxic behaviors or toxic people. If the relationship is more focused on meeting their needs changes may need to be made.
- Set boundaries at the START: I asked for commitment without thinking it through. I didn’t consider my boundaries before approaching the idea of a relationship. One day, I just randomly “sprung” it on her. We agreed to a relationship, but this came at a cost. She did whatever she wanted. Julie was habitually late, flaked on dates, and dismissed my ideas for date activities. I let her dominate conversations and trauma dump without trying to know me better. We should have remained in the present moment. It wasn’t until after she unexpectedly pulled away I thought about my limits.
- Challenge them: I trusted Julie more than I should have. Every time she dumped her baggage onto me, I felt overwhelming sympathy for her that she didn’t deserve. When she left without respect for me, I wondered, “How much of what she told me was true? Were all the bad things that happened to her real? What if she was the problem in her other relationships the whole time?” Because some of her views and opinions on relationships and men were toxic and cynical. Was this a relationship worth pursuing? Probably not.
A few final important reminders
As we’ve learned, fearful avoidants can be overzealous in their approach to dating. They may “trauma dump” as I call it. They dump it all out there, which may feel like connecting, but it reinforces an invisible wall between two individuals.
Because no one likes to feel like a therapist to their partner, nor does anyone want to parent their significant other. It’s even weirder in the initial stages of dating.
I felt like Julie’s dad or her therapist. In my naivete, I assumed we were connecting and she was genuinely interested in me if she was going out of her way to tell me all her traumas.
But, it’s wrong. It’s not what dating is about. Be intolerant of trauma dumping, ignorance of your needs, emotional dysregulation, and biases in the early stages — or at any time.
Yet, after Julie bounced, and I was left to figure out what happened, it started to all make sense. From her story, she experienced a lot of hurtful things. Julie had to know she was in a safe, consistent, and reliable environment.
Their aim with overt questioning or trauma dumping is certainty, safety, and consistency. This need for “safety” is excessive and ultimately poisons the dating experience.
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It’s important to reciprocate, but you can still do that with boundaries. You don’t have to share everything all at once. If you choose to share something it should be on your terms and not dictated by their insecurities.
Fearful avoidants aren’t bad people, but their need to know everything about you isn’t about building a healthy relationship — it’s about controlling their environment to feel safe.
They’re not entitled to every detail of your life on the first date (or the second). Don’t feel pressure to share more than what you’re willing or comfortable with.
Set boundaries, maintain frame, and most importantly, ensure your needs are met. Stop entertaining people who use you for free therapy or attempt to control you.
A healthy, emotionally mature person will respect your boundaries and will be happy to build a genuine, loving, and lasting connection with you.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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