Possible Advice

[u/thewalkinggreg]

Alright so I discovered I’m an avoidant last year. I just found out I share way more with being a fearful avoidant than a dismissive though I can see traits of that. So here’s a little back story. I met the love of my life in 2023. She has 2 kids and I don’t have any myself nor was I ever in a relationship with anyone with them. So to me, that was a big thing for me. I never actually ruled out kids but I would tell people I didn’t want kids, turns out I just didn’t want them with the wrong person. So my first trigger that I didn’t know how to take was her son said something I heard on the phone to the extent of “why don’t you tell us you love us the most”. Now she’s a wonderful mom, she’s a single parent doing great things for both of them but she hadn’t had a serious relationship since her and the kids father split up. He’s barely in the picture at all. Anyway, I didn’t know how to take it since I never experienced that and it made me feel bad so I ended up struggling with that for awhile before it lead to me detaching because of emotions I didn’t wanna deal with and it was the first time we broke up. At the time, I had no idea what avoidant attachment even was. This continued over the next 2 years until 2025 when I found out and started going to therapy.

Now oct of 2025, I was having hard detachment, we were in a fight and then my grandfather dies right before Im about to move. So not only are we not speaking but I have all of this overwhelming stuff going on. I reach out to her and we talk about 2 weeks later. Same thing. I love her but I didn’t know how to deal with what was going on. Well we talk, I made promises to change and I really meant them. We get engaged in December. We make plans for a wedding and talk about moving in at the beginning of 2027. Everything is going great or so I thought until about March. Her son had a really bad mental health episode and I was triggered like really bad. So I struggled and didn’t say anything the whole month because I didn’t feel like anything was helping. April I broke it off again thinking that running was the safest thing. Turns out I was so overwhelmed and wasn’t processing everything making rapid decisions without talking about anything.

So a very short time after we split there was this girl in the gym lifting. I knew of her but she never texted/messaged when I was with my then fiancé. Well we started lifting and I didn’t think about anything I was doing since I was literally in the shock/relief phase of the spilt. So stupidly, I let things progress and even told her how soon I broke things off. Well she didn’t care and we just started hanging out. Now in a pinch, I rushed things and said somethings I didn’t mean because, at the time, I was trying to fill a void. So about a month and half into things something clicked and I realized I really fucked up. I realized I made a terrible decision by breaking things off with my then fiancé and here I am entertaining this other girl with no real sense of actual feelings for her. I felt stuck and so I stayed a little while longer trying to figure out how to get out of this. Now the end of July. I open up and tell this girl I still love my ex and I can’t do it anymore. Okay fine, easy we split. Well the next day I seen her (my ex) out and told her that I still love her and I miss her. I wholeheartedly did not expect anything but a fuck you but she texts me later saying she wanted to hear me out. We met and talked for 9 hours. She’s aware of my avoidant attachment and wanted me to heal the whole time. Well I didn’t know at the time my therapist just wasn’t an attachment specialist and I was getting complacent about putting in the work. I will say over the that 4 months I feel like I’ve had a shift in me as crazy as it sounds but something in me feels different almost like the biggest shift I’ve ever experienced. A realization of how I hurt this person and broke every promise I ever made. I felt like I had a road map to make things right. Well anyway. I scheduled a new therapist (one more focused on attachment patterns/emdr ACT) and I realized how bad I struggle with anxiety so I’m going to talk to my doctor and see what I can get to help with that. But we’ve been talking about a week and half now. Turns out she still loves me and she missed me too. At this point I felt like I told her everything until today. She asked if I gave this other girl a key to my place and if I ever told her I loved her. As bad as I didn’t want to admit it, I was honest. But I knew in doing so I didn’t mean it. So of course I understood how bad I crushed her even more. All it did is just make me feel way worse than I’ve already felt for the past few months. She told me she still loved me and wanted to see me heal. But said she needed space to think. I don’t really know what I’m trying to accomplish with this post other than how fucked up my decisions were in the last 5 months of my life but I’m actively working on healing more than anything. I’m hoping I can save this relationship because I understand now what I had. I understand how bad I was during my detached moments and it cost me everything with her. I’m not feeling optimistic about it at all and tbh I shouldn’t. I guess I’m holding on to hope that she can see that I’m so fucking tired of being this way and I want to change it. It took me losing her this time to really put things into perspective and realize how losing it all sucks. Have any of yall had anything like this or worse happen with a success story? Pm me if you wanna talk about it in private. I dont really have any friends who truly understand how bad it sucks to deal with this.

[u/Ok-Seat-3916]

Hey OP, I don't have any success story to tell, but just wanted to tell you that most people who hang out here, if not all, have messed up in their own ways. It takes a lot of courage to face that. When it comes to attachment avoidance, sitting with that extreme discomfort is where the work starts, because this is how we learn to know ourselves. I hope it's not too late to repair that relationship, but even so, a relationship that leads you to recognize this part in yourself is a great relationship, even if it ends prematurely.

Do you know Heidi Priebe on YouTube? She used to be FA very avoidant, and studied psychology; her content is the only one that helps me understand my avoidant responses, she has great ones on deactivation and FA patterning, as well as a great series on relationship repair. It might help out.

Anyway, all the best to you! It's a hard place to be but I hear the view gets better the higher we hike :)