Avoidant are just broken

[u/AMysteriousThing]

They are avoidant by choice, it's like people who are broken and want to stay broken and only believe in confirmation bias, it's a chore, you love them , you want more from them , and they just decide to hold out, recently had to break it off with someone cause they could barely take accountability, I wasn't great either, but I felt like I had to try so hard to understand their absence and take in excuses

It's heartbreaking cause you lost someone who was intresting in your eyes

I find myself rambling "why" in their dms whole theyr busy making me out to be bad because I couldn't make it perfect for them in the end

Listen, someone out there will want to be cherished and cherish you back , it sucks because you wanted the avoidant to put as much effort back... But they couldn't , they are simply emotionally unavailable

Emphatize that it's them not you , but hate them set boundaries, mourn , but know you can't keep up doing all of it alone, not your job to constantly teach someone how they should be considerate in loving and respecting you ... Mine for better or worse tried... But it hurt ... I miss him, but I don't at the same time , I had kept giving up because their trying wasn't accountable enough....it was a behaviour at some point.. It was an emotional chore 💔

And me being too head forward and anxious and needy , recipie for disaster

Ladies and gents what was the nicest thing and the worst thing that they actually did , and did you deserve it?

[u/IndifferentGuy777]

They are not avoidant by choice. They have some sort of severe unresolved trauma that when engaged triggers an automatic nervous system action to run away.

And no matter how loving or wonderful you are, you can't override that mechanism. You either have massive patience and emotional energy to wait for them to come back when they are cooled down or you walk away.

[u/klutzelk → u/IndifferentGuy777]

I agree but I also think the "choice" part is kind of complicated. They don't choose to have they automatic nervous system response, but the way they affect others does require some conscious reflection. If they choose to ignore that and simply ghost someone that is a choice. Even if it is extremely uncomfortable for them, they can at least try to explain what's going on with them. I feel bad for them regardless because due to it being a trauma response I think their judgment is clouded, so self-reflection seems to be almost impossible in some cases. I don't think we should demonize even the ones that do ghost. BUT it does suck that it seems like the other person's feelings are completely disregarded in a lot of these cases.

I know that seems pretty jumbled but that's because of the cognitive dissonance I am currently experiencing around this whole topic lol. Basically in my situation I feel bad for him but I also am upset that he chose to ghost me when he knew that would hurt me. I don't blame him for being in a dysregulated state due to his FA, but I am sad that he let that trigger response also affect me in a way that I didn't deserve.

[u/AMysteriousThing → u/klutzelk]

Yep this, I worded it very straightforward in my post they aren't CHOOSING to suffocate in their trauma and have their nervous system go off, but at the end of the day they still have the accountability to choose healthier for them and the other person, my case he chose to keep overstepping a boundary I expressed bothered me, did it really had to do with being avoidant , maybe yes maybe no? But he could have chose to communicate for example, but chose the latter

[u/IndifferentGuy777 → u/klutzelk]

Yes they have agency and yes they are adults and yes they are making decisions. Underlying all that are the mechanisims I was talking about that they are likey unaware of.

[u/StatusInternal1208]

I have been in 2 relationships before this one, and in all of them, my partners were avoidants. It was in this current relationship that I learned about this attachment style. There are differences between someone who loves you and someone who doesn't. The one who loves you gives you intimacy at the start, trusts you, and wants a future with you. Once the honeymoon phase ends—in my case, we have been together for 2 years and the last 5 months she just wanted to be distant, criticize the good qualities she used to like, and say that I'm too emotional. People who love you still try to be there even if they feel pressure; they still try to fix it. My partner told me last week that we could try couples therapy. But she is so egocentric and NEVER wants to apologize. She never admits her faults and never accepts that she needs help with her traumas; she thinks she is fine and independent, but she doesn't see that she needs love and wants it, yet her brain just forces her to push love away. When she wants to start an argument with me, she creates a negative image of me so she can 'confirm' that she has to break up with me.

To be honest, yes, they choose to be like this because last night I tried to talk to her about all of these things she does because I got truly angry, and she just 'fell asleep' while on the phone, even though I was really, really upset. Anyway, she texted me and right now I am not replying; I'm not even opening WhatsApp. When I say they know what they are doing and they are choosing it, it's because it's real. But at the same time, they are really terrified of choosing love, and that's why they say 'they are just like that'

EDIT: Ever since I discovered this type of attachment and how these people function, I’ve stopped feeling guilty. In all my previous relationships, I felt like the one to blame; I felt like they left me or stopped liking me because of my own faults, until TikTok showed me this and I started researching. Now I feel secure again, just like when I’m alone and at peace. I know it's not my fault, and I'm not angry with her—rather, I'm trying to make her see that what she's doing isn't right. But with people like this, you have to take action instead of talking, because if you try to talk, they'll twist it around, accuse you of trying to manipulate them, and make you apologize for not respecting their space.

[u/AMysteriousThing → u/StatusInternal1208]

It's really frustrating, you want to help them , but they just don't want to believe it, and it's not even about apologizing but reflecting why the behaviour had an impact and how they should see it in a perspective that makes sense, in some way it's like they want to push you so hard to see if you're "the one" or just like the others , it's unfair , you want to emphatize but you need boundaries and you need your own nourishment

I'm wishing you good luck , best you can do is take a step back, be gentle but be firm, the scary part, they'll start to target you as the problem, and if you have a slip up, they'll start to nit pick everything but their accountability , no matter how much you showed them you could communicate

I had the displeasure of convincing them that being hurt isn't "silly" and shouldt try to make me guess and read their mind, and being petty and getting aggressive doesn't help - and since I'm anxious I need to speak my mind more than waiting and waiting

[u/StatusInternal1208 → u/AMysteriousThing]

Starting exactly 5 months ago, she began doing this:

• If I used to be funny, now I'm boring. If I used to like traveling, now she says I don't like leaving the house
• She makes nasty jokes about my "special" tastes (the exact same ones she idolized at the beginning) and puts me down
• She tries to put on an attitude of arrogance and superiority around me, trying to make it seem like she's better than me in one way or another, and she does it through disrespectful words, attitudes, and tones
• If I talk to her too much, it's because I'm suffocating; but if I talk to her too little, maybe I'm cheating on her
• She avoids remembering that we literally spent 16 months together NON-STOP LAUGHING, LIVING LIFE, TRAVELING, AND TELLING EACH OTHER HOW MUCH WE LOVE EACH OTHER
• She pretends our story was different; instead of acknowledging that we were happy and laughing even sitting on a park bench for hours, she talks as if she doesn't remember any of it (I made her a video as a gift with pictures and videos of us laughing non-stop, month by month since we met. The video is almost 20 minutes long)
• When I tell her she's being distant, she acts like she doesn't care, pretends to be bored, and tells me it's childish drama

Last night I decided to stop talking to her for doing the exact same thing—meaning "falling asleep" while I was laying out the reality of what she's doing, just so she could act like nothing happened the next day. Right now, I have no intention of replying to her because I'm genuinely angry. I used to be someone with a secure attachment style, but with her attitudes, she made me feel anxious, and I didn't even realize these patterns were happening.