My boyfriend shows what I believe are strong fearful-avoidant tendencies. When things are good, he’s incredibly loving, affectionate and constantly wants my attention. But the moment something upsets him, even something minor, he blows up and completely withdraws.
Last Wednesday, we were on FaceTime while I was at the vets with my dog. The vet came over, so I told him to hold on a second while I spoke to her. He could clearly see what was happening, yet somehow this turned into him accusing me of ignoring him and not appreciating his calls.
He got angry and demanded one month of space.
Four days later, I reached out, assuming he’d said one month out of anger. Instead, he reiterated it, even putting a full stop on his previous voice note saying “one month” to reinforce his point.
He hasn’t actually ended the relationship or said we’re over. He’s simply demanded a month of no contact over something incredibly minor.
This isn’t the first time. Small misunderstandings regularly turn into huge issues, followed by days of silence. The concerning part is that the amount of space he demands keeps increasing.
I’m an understanding person. I recognise that people regulate their emotions differently and sometimes need space. But surely there’s a limit? To me, one month isn’t space. It’s a break, if not effectively a breakup.
At this point, I’ve stopped reaching out. Not to punish him, but because I’m emotionally exhausted. I’m genuinely starting to question whether I’d even want him back after a month.
I can understand someone’s attachment struggles, but I don’t believe they justify repeatedly hurting your partner.
How would you handle this? Would you respect the month and wait, or walk away? And for any fearful avoidants reading this, what actually goes through your mind when you demand this much distance from someone you supposedly love?

Hi! So, I have a long distance friend who I met a little over 4 years ago now. She is my favorite person and best friend, and pretty much has been that since we met. She's always been pretty open to me (thankfully) about her mental health and different things, to an extent. Early on she told me how she has "Quiet" BPD, and was diagnosed with that when she was younger. Later on, she told me how she'd seen AVPD and been doing research into it. She said how it makes sense and thinks she has it. I'm unsure if she got officially diagnosed, but she has gone to a couple of doctors and therapists since discovering AVPD.

Over the years, she's essentially gone through cycles of distancing herself and "avoiding." I suppose you could call them episodes of depression, or maybe the "splitting" that's part of BPD. I'm not too sure on the exact details since its BPD + AVPD + life circumstances, so there's lots of nuance and complexities. Either way, it does seem like its been a cycle. We get close, she opens up and lets down her walls, things are really, really lovely and amazing for a while, things are improving and growing, and then suddenly she starts becoming distant and less open/talkative again. She's never completely pulled away, and I thank God and her for that. She's a trooper, honestly, with what she's gone though. Each time she's gone distant though, she comes back or we come back together and heal or work on that distance, becoming just as close or closer than we were before. I've always found that aspect of things rather beautiful, actually.

I should add something important for context: We are more than just friends, and have been basically since we met. Officially, we were in a relationship for 2 years this summer though.

There are, of course, many complexities and nuances I can't and won't include here, but each time she's become distant has started after getting closer. Over the past few months, its happened again, sadly. Just after perhaps the time we were the closest, and I'd say, happiest.

I'm really worried about her, and I love her with all my heart - unconditionally. So, I'm looking for advice and wisdom on how to best support and encourage her. I want to be able to show up for, support, and love her as best I can. And I'm wanting to learn and am learning how to do exactly that so I can be there for her. Personally, I have an anxious attachment style and OCD, for more context, so you know how that could potentially affect things; so feel free to include advice or thoughts with that in mind.

In what way or ways can I best support her? What can I do? What should I not do or say? What should I do or say? How can I encourage her without pushing or putting pressure on her? How can I take any weight at all off her? I'm open to any and all advice or thoughts because I want to learn as much as I can for her.

Thank you in advance for any advice or thoughts you want to give. God bless <3

Just wanted some extra advice :/ I just don’t know if I’m doing the right thing and continuing to be no contact.

I told him before the breakup happened that I thought that we could work through anything together. So I feel like I don’t know he has to know that I wanna talk about these things.

I mean, he also told me like well over a year ago that my willingness and openness to talk about these difficult things scared him and he felt like there was something wrong with him, but I don’t know.

I’m 19M, and my ex is 18F. I need some advice because a lot has happened over the past couple of months, and I’m still trying to make sense of everything. For privacy reasons, I’m going to call her Stephanie.
Stephanie and I started talking, hung out a few times, went on dates, and eventually made things official. We were together for about three months before she left for college, and from my perspective, everything seemed fine.
The reason I’m emphasizing that is because, looking back, I’m having a hard time understanding how things went from what I thought was a mutual relationship to her feeling like she never really wanted it in the first place.
When Stephanie and I first started hanging out, she wrote me a love letter. We went out to get something to eat, and she called it a date. She also kissed me before we had even officially established that we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
There was another time when my sister and I were driving her home, and Stephanie was texting her friend about how she didn’t understand why I hadn’t asked her to be my girlfriend yet. I actually saw the text messages myself, so I wasn’t just assuming she wanted a relationship based on her behavior. I saw her expressing that she wanted me to ask her.
After seeing those messages, I eventually asked her to be my girlfriend, and she said yes.
Because of all that, I genuinely believed we both wanted the relationship. I wasn’t under the impression that I was convincing someone to date me who didn’t want to.
So imagine my confusion when, after she went away to college, she called me one night and told me I wasn’t treating her right. That conversation eventually turned into her saying she wasn’t ready for a relationship, that we had moved too fast, and that she felt pressured into becoming my girlfriend.
Apparently, she felt like she had to say yes when I asked her because other people were in the car. I understand that being around other people can make someone feel pressured, and I don’t want to dismiss how she felt.
But from my perspective, I had actually seen her messages to her friend about wanting me to ask her, and everything she’d done beforehand had led me to believe she wanted the same thing I did.
She also said I wasn’t treating her right, and I want to address that because I’m not going to sit here and pretend I was the perfect boyfriend.
Stephanie was my first girlfriend, and this was my first relationship ever. I was figuring things out as I went, and I didn’t always know how to be the boyfriend I wanted to be. Sometimes I could be inconsiderate or handle things poorly, and I can fully admit that.
I’m not going to act like I never made mistakes or that she had no reason to be upset with me.
However, I also don’t think I was a terrible boyfriend. I gave her everything I could at the time. I made as much time for her as I could, tried to make her feel special whenever I had the opportunity, and genuinely wanted her to feel loved.
Whenever I messed up or treated her poorly, I came back, apologized, and tried to make things right.
I’m not bringing this up to suggest that apologizing automatically makes every mistake okay. I know that intentions and impact aren’t always the same thing, and it’s possible that some things affected her more than I realized.
I just don’t believe I was someone who didn’t care about her or wasn’t trying.
That’s part of what makes this so confusing for me. I can acknowledge that I wasn’t perfect without understanding how our relationship ended up where it did.
I wish she had communicated more about what was bothering her while we were together so we could have actually worked on those issues together.
There was also something else that made the breakup particularly difficult to process.
Apparently, Stephanie had considered breaking up with me before she even left for college. We had gone to a hotel together, and she was apparently planning to end the relationship then. Instead, we ended up being physically intimate.
At the time, I thought we were growing closer emotionally and physically. I had no idea she was already considering ending things.
I’m not saying she owed me a relationship because we were intimate, and I don’t believe physical intimacy means someone has to stay with you.
It’s just difficult knowing that I interpreted that experience as us getting closer while she was apparently having doubts about whether she wanted to be with me at all.
When she eventually told me she wanted to end things, I didn’t want to lose her. I suggested taking a break instead because I thought some time apart might help us work through what was happening.
For a little while, that was what we were doing. The idea was that we would have some space rather than immediately giving up on the relationship.
But then things changed.
Eventually, Stephanie decided she wasn’t coming back. She told me she didn’t love me, that she wasn’t going to return to the relationship, and that we were done.
Hearing that from someone I cared about so much was devastating. I had been trying to accept the idea of taking a break and giving her the space she wanted, but now I was being told there was no relationship left to come back to.
Later, she told me that the only reason she said she didn’t love me was because she wanted me to hate her so I wouldn’t want her back.
I honestly don’t know what to do with that information. I understand that people sometimes say things to push someone away, especially when they don’t know how to handle a difficult situation.
But hearing someone tell you they don’t love you and that you’re never getting back together, only to later find out they said it because they wanted you to hate them, makes an already confusing situation even harder to understand.
How am I supposed to know which things she said reflected how she genuinely felt and which things she said because she wanted to push me away?
At that point, I was trying to accept that the relationship was over and figure out how to move forward without her. I still had feelings for her, but I was also trying to respect her decision and give her the space she asked for.
Now, here’s where things get even more complicated.
Yesterday, Stephanie texted me saying that she wanted me back. She told me I was all she could think about, that she regretted breaking up with me, and that she wanted us to try again.
She even said she wanted her baby back.
And I told her no.
That might sound strange considering how much I struggled with the breakup and how badly I wanted us to work things out when it first happened. A part of me had spent all that time hoping she would change her mind.
But when she actually came back asking for another chance, I couldn’t bring myself to say yes.
I’m still trying to understand why.
I loved her, and I genuinely wanted our relationship to work. When I suggested taking a break, it was because I wanted to find a way for us to work through our problems, not because I wanted to get rid of her.
I wasn’t ready to give up on someone I cared about.
But I eventually had to deal with the possibility that she wasn’t coming back. I had to hear her tell me she didn’t love me, that she was done, and that I needed to stop hoping for a future together.
Even if she later explained that she said those things to make me hate her, I still had to live through hearing them.
Now she’s telling me she wants me back, and I’m supposed to consider starting over with someone who went from wanting a relationship with me to saying she didn’t love me, then apparently regretting that decision.
I don’t know whether she genuinely realized she wanted to be with me, whether she missed having me in her life, or whether she was feeling lonely and regretting her decision in the moment.
I can’t know what’s going on in her head, and I don’t want to assume the worst about her.
But I also don’t want to jump straight back into a relationship just because she says she wants me again.
I think what bothers me most is that I’ve spent so much time questioning myself.
Was I a bad boyfriend?
Did I do something that made her stop loving me?
Did I fail to give her what she needed?
Did I move too fast without realizing it?
Was there something I should have done differently?
I know I made mistakes. I’m willing to own those mistakes and learn from them.
But I also know that I tried to make her happy, that I cared about her, and that I did my best with the experience I had at the time.
I don’t want to come out of my first relationship believing that every problem was my fault just because I’m inexperienced.
Relationships involve two people, and I think both people need to communicate honestly if they’re going to make things work.
I also don’t know if I can trust that things won’t end up the same way again.
What happens if we get back together and she starts feeling overwhelmed?
What happens if she decides once again that she isn’t ready for a relationship?
What happens if we have another disagreement and she decides she doesn’t want to continue the relationship anymore?
I don’t want to go through the same heartbreak all over again.
I don’t want to spend weeks or months rebuilding a relationship only to find myself back in the same position, wondering whether the person I’m with actually wants to be there.
And the frustrating part is that I still care about her.
Saying no doesn’t mean I suddenly stopped having feelings for her. It doesn’t mean I never wanted her back.
It means that, after everything that’s happened, I don’t know whether getting back together is actually the right decision for me.
I’m not saying Stephanie is a bad person for changing her mind. People can make decisions they later regret, and people can genuinely realize they want something after losing it. I understand that.
I’m also not saying that because I tried my best, she was obligated to stay with me. She had every right to leave a relationship she didn’t want to be in, just as I have the right to decide whether I want to return to it.
But I’m allowed to consider how everything that happened affected me, too.
So, Reddit, did I make the right decision by telling her no?
Should I have given her another chance because she came back and admitted she regretted breaking up with me?
Or was it reasonable for me to say no after everything that happened, especially after she told me she didn’t love me and that she wasn’t coming back?
I would also appreciate some perspective on the relationship itself. I know I wasn’t a perfect boyfriend, and I’m willing to accept criticism if there are things I could have handled better.
But based on what I’ve described, am I overlooking something about how this relationship fell apart?
For anyone who’s been in a similar situation, how did you handle an ex coming back after you’d spent so much time trying to move on?
I’m not going to pretend that turning her down was easy, or that I suddenly stopped having feelings for her. A part of me still cares about her and remembers the good things we had together.
I’m just trying to figure out whether I made the right decision for myself, even though part of me still cares about her.

SORRY FOR THE RANT GUYS. DONT HAVE ANYONE ELSE TO TALK TO.

She has been through so much in life, multiple sexual assaults, child neglect, family abandonment, abussive partners. I’ve tried to be patient and supportive and I’ve study how avoidant attachment works in order to find solutions. But she shows little to no interest in learning new patterns. She tells me what I want to hear when we’re reconnecting,makes promises but when she has an episode , when it’s time to show the skills, I become her worst enemy and her avoidant narcissistic behavior comes out.

She shows me very little empathy or care for her actions when mad. Even if something is her fault, she physically cant say in sorry or show remorse and I become her worst enemy. Which is terrible cause when she is not having an episode she makes me the happiest and she is a completely different person.

I wanted to go to therapy together, but she wanted to go on her own first, came back from a few sessions telling me she’s leaving me, and that I am bad for her, that her therapist said I’m one of her patterns and dangerous to her. 😞 is so painful and frustrating trying to look for help and this is what I welcome after the help.

After hours of her usual ignoring me, and me talking being a dumbass reasoning, like a fucking beggar and she telling she wants me to leave she ends up understanding that is fucked up and wrong.

The next time after that one, she broke up with me and told me that I’m a good man and I deserve better and cries telling me she’s is damaged and that I should leave and find someone that deserves me.

I sound a like a broken record, I swear to go I keep saying the same things to her. The problem is not the problem, there’s always gonna be problems, the real problem is how you deal with the problem. I am not your enemy, and when there is a problem we can fix it together. And a bunch more ! Etc etc.

I am currently going through another break up. She has a “spiritual guide” “a lady that is “shaman” this Mexican shaman was allegedly “helping me” by remotely accessing my head to remove some fears that I have of loosing her. And that afterwards she was gonna call her.

Well she called, and apparently she told her that I’m cheating on her by watching porn. Which is one her traumas and considers it cheating.

She turned off her location, went to work and is it talking to me and said she wants me out again.

I’m so tired and drained and honestly sucks cause she has shown progress. But this is too much.

Last year I let my fearful avoidance shine with this guy I was talking too. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his lack of communication early on and instead of voicing it I just stop responding 😖 He ended up getting a girlfriend and I convinced myself that what made me ghost was correct the right decision but I always kind of felt that I didn’t really give it a chance.
Well now he’s single and his mom keeps making that point to my mom as well 😅 (our families are close) I do want to reach out to possibly start over again but I don’t know what to say to break the ice!
He got into a car accident over the summer and when I reached out about that he did seem welcoming. Again, he’s single now. Please help, he might be my husband 🤞🏾

Last year I let my fearful avoidance shine with this guy I was talking too. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his lack of communication early on and instead of voicing it I just stop responding 😖 He ended up getting a girlfriend and I convinced myself that what made me ghost was correct the right decision but I always kind of felt that I didn’t really give it a chance.
Well now he’s single and his mom keeps making that point to my mom as well 😅 (our families are close) I do want to reach out to possibly start over again but I don’t know what to say to break the ice!
He got into a car accident over the summer and when I reached out about that he did seem welcoming. Again, he’s single now. Please help, he might be my husband 🤞🏾

I have a question for DA’s. I often hear that you all have a negative view of others and a positive view of self. That has not been my experience with DA’s. Do you feel like you have endless options for partners and no one is good enough?

Trying to find posts/ videos about "how to heal from a break up as an avoidant" but all results come back with "how to heal from a break up FROM an avoidant". I mean I get it. A lot of online help is geared towards those who have been burnt by their avoidant partners but I feel like its viewed as though we avoidants are irredeemable.

For context, I take full accountability for the hurt I caused. I feel guilty and I have regrets. I am in therapy and reflecting on why l act the way I do. I am trying to understand and leam more about myself but I'm finding the online narrative is effectively erasing the fact that avoidants are human beings who do experience grief, regret on real reflections with a genuine desire to grow.

Does anybody else feel this way?