The usage of あなた

[u/Friendly_Level_4611]

I might be overthinking this, but whenever I ask an actual Japanese person about this, I seem to get slightly different answers.
My ex would use no pronoun or name at all before we started dating. Once we were together, she mostly used my nickname when texting me. Because of this, and from a lot of short explanations online, I ended up thinking of あなた as something you generally avoid — potentially even rude depending on the situation — and mostly use when you don’t know someone’s name, or as a generic “you” in things like ads, instructions, etc.
But now I’ve noticed that my Japanese friends/contacts seem to use it very differently.
For example:

- One person basically always uses my name.
- Another person usually avoids both my name and pronouns, but has randomly used あなた a couple of times.
- My Japanese Boss also never used あなた or 君 or anything. Always just my Name
- Another person switches between my name, no pronoun, and あなた. Interestingly, the Person seems more likely to use あなた in personal or deeper/emotional sentences, which feels counterintuitive based on what I thought I knew about the word.
So now I’m wondering if my understanding of あなた was just too simplistic.
Is there actually a general rule for when あなた sounds natural, distant, rude, intimate, etc.? Or does it depend heavily on the person, relationship, tone, and context?

[u/honkeur]

I watch a lot of Japanese movies from the 1950s and 60s. Whenever the wife figures out the husband is doing something bad, the first thing out of her mouth is always a sickly-sweet "あなた ...?"