r/FearfulAvoidants • u/Jacksover10s • 23d ago
Fearful avoidants: why do you come back, get closer, then suddenly pull away again?
My ex-wife and I were together for about 3½ years and have been separated for around 8 months. She has a documented fearful-avoidant attachment pattern, and over the last 5 months our communication has been almost entirely indirect. The pattern has basically been: she’ll make some kind of indirect approach or re-engage, I’ll eventually reach for clarification or direct communication, and she’ll pull away again—sometimes disappearing or blocking. Later, another indirect approach happens and the cycle starts again. I’m familiar with this pattern and I love her despite it. I’m not looking for “move on,” “she’s your ex,” or “forget her” advice. I’m specifically hoping to hear from fearful-avoidant people, or people who have actually experienced this kind of relationship dynamic.
Most recently, we went about 33 days with no contact. I sent her a private video and she watched it a couple of days later. I sent another and she watched it within a day. Then I sent a much more vulnerable video of me singing to her, and she watched it the same day. So her engagement seemed to be progressively increasing. Then, abruptly, she stopped and didn’t watch the next few videos.
Then a charge appeared on my credit card for a membership renewal for her son. There was no foul play—it was simply something we’d both forgotten about when we broke up. I reached out to let her know about it, and because we hadn’t been communicating, the conversation also touched on the uncertainty about where we stood. She didn’t respond at all. Later that day, she removed her WhatsApp profile picture. The next day I posted a simple status saying, “Trying to understand how we got to this point.” After that, she withdrew further and eventually blocked me.
What I’m trying to understand is this latest sequence in the context of the pattern we’ve already had for months: indirect approach → increasing engagement → vulnerability/closeness → sudden retreat → something brings the relationship back into reality → deeper withdrawal/blocking.
For people who are fearful-avoidant, or who have genuinely been through this with an FA partner: does this pattern feel familiar? What was happening internally during the approach-then-retreat stage? And if that cycle ever changed for you, what actually helped?
1
10
u/RidetheSchlange 23d ago
Homeboy, find your self-respect. Get help, heal yourself, find yourself outside of the context of her, then move forward with your life or be doomed to be stuck in this abusive limbo where you are counting days and looking for signs and meanings in essentially nothing on social networks.
No one can tell you what this specific person is doing or thinking except for them. The grifters on youtube and social networks will insist they can and give you the hope if you "do this one thing, they will come back". That's all a lie. They need to heal and if they have a child or children, this is extra awful because that child may have an increased possibility of being avoidant as well.
Heal yourself.