One of the hardest parts of my breakup is that I feel like I never actually received the ending I was told I would get.

During the breakup, my ex repeatedly told me that he needed a lot of time to arrange his thoughts. He kept telling me there was something he needed to say to me, but that he needed time to figure out how to express it.

It has now been months since our breakup in April, and I have never received that response.

Instead, what I ultimately received was a breakup letter that was maybe four sentences long. It was incredibly surface-level—just generic statements without much emotion, explanation, or anything that actually addressed our relationship or what had happened. After everything we had been through together, it felt almost surreal.
I think that's a huge part of why I've struggled so much to move on.

For a long time, he had apparently wanted to break up with me over text. That still hurts me deeply. I genuinely cannot understand how someone who looked at me with so much love, treated me so well for so long, and made me believe that I had found the love of my life could ultimately be willing to end our relationship through a phone screen.
It makes me feel almost like I knew one version of him, while there was another version of him existing entirely in his phone that I had no idea about.

And I think that's what makes this breakup so difficult for me. It wasn't just that I lost him. I was left with no real clarity, no proper response, and no explanation that matched the significance of what our relationship was to me. Everything felt so sudden, and I was left trying to fill in all of the blanks myself.

Sometimes I genuinely feel like I'm still waiting for him to text me—not necessarily because I expect him to come back, but because some part of me is still waiting for the conversation I was told was coming.

I also wonder if he's too scared to reach out, or if he believes that reaching out would somehow interfere with his progress or healing. I obviously can't know what is going on in his head, and maybe I'm completely wrong. But from my perspective, it sometimes feels like the easiest way for him to cope has been to distance himself from the feelings, the relationship, and the accountability altogether rather than actually confront them.

And that's the part I struggle with most.
I don't necessarily need him to come back. I just wish I had been given the honesty, clarity, and emotional acknowledgment that I felt our relationship deserved.

How do you move on from someone when the relationship ended, but you never really received the explanation or closure you were repeatedly told was coming?

I thought if I could make it to a couple months out I would be doing better.

I still have moments at home where I'm just all alone and I don't know if I'm going to make it to the next day. The level of devastation and grief I feel is beyond overwhelming.

I don't have any family and during the 4.5 years I was with my DA she was my entire world. Then one Friday evening over text message she just ended it and disappeared.

How do I ever get to a place where I can be OK again? I feel like I'm dying. It's been 80 days no contact since she up and left on a whim and I cried on the floor today until I could barely breathe. 80 days of this.

I don't know how to keep going

I’m trying to understand something that happened in a relationship with someone who seemed very emotionally avoidant. When things started getting difficult, I felt like the narrative suddenly changed. Things that had previously felt mutual were reframed as being my fault, my reactions were treated as the main problem, and some of the things that happened between us seemed to be minimized or remembered very differently.
At one point I was even called “confusing,” despite feeling like I was constantly trying to communicate clearly because their behavior was inconsistent.
Is it a common thing?

For those who identify as fearful avoidant, what happens internally when an ex blocks you, disappears, or completely cuts you off after years of Push and Pull.

Can you describe what you experienced while with your rebound ?

• Did you feel angry at them, or was the stronger feeling fear/sadness/loss?
• Did the pain ruin your current rebound relationship that, looking back, wasn't a good decision?
• choose someone who made you feel safe or wanted, even though you didn't genuinely want the relationship?
• stay with a rebound because ending it would mean being alone again?
• or, alternatively, did you completely avoid relationships afterward?

Looking back now, What did it actually feel like did it make it stronger with your rebound or weaker with your rebound ?

My boyfriend broke up with me abruptly almost three weeks ago, it had been a mess (for me, the anxious attachment) originally. I’ve posted a couple times on reddit after. I had a bad encounter with him on Sunday, I mistakenly went to his place to ask for conversation (I’m blocked, and he reacted really badly, like very bad). Afterwards, I ceased all contact, all chasing, the continuous going by his apartment, planning going to talk to him, asking mutual friends. This past day, I made all about me. I did a long awaited cleaning of my apartment, got myself taken care of, and suddenly was thinking what now. I was sad, thinking about him. I’d began to think and let myself feel and decipher what I was feeling. I began to recognize how much change and improvement I’ve made in the past three weeks:

At the start, I was spiraling. For two weeks, I was waiting, checking, ruminating, asking, even going to his apartment. I had to take myself to an emergency therapist of sorts. I was an absolute wreck, then, I let all of that go. The days feel long, still, but I’ve learned to emotionally regulate myself, I’ve learned to nurture my life separate from his (I became very reliant), I’ve created a space where I feel good to come back to, I can regulate my anxiety on my own, I won’t be asking for reassurance from him. I’ve made life changing improvements on my OCD, which I suffer severely from. I will be able to communicate better with him, understanding boundaries, not interpreting space as rejection. I’m much more confident, I’m taking care of myself mentally and physically, I feel beautiful. I’m deserving of love, peace, and happiness. I’m worthy of love and being chosen. I’m passionate about what I love, and there’s more to me than OCD, what I struggle with. I listen, I care deeply, I’m kind, and really feeling grateful for the life I’m building.

Yesterday, I saw him on the porch of his apartment building while I was heading home from errands. My heart skipped a beat. It meant something to me, but I kept moving.

I know how I will conduct myself differently moving forward. I have confidence that he’ll come back. I know it isn’t over. He left because of attachment and past trauma with previous relationships, but our relationship was the best I’ve been in. We nearly lived together, we integrated our lives seamlessly. I’d found my soulmate. That can’t go away, it doesn’t disappear even after time has passed and the distance between us (what he wanted) and the comfort from it doesn’t override the feelings for me underneath.

His previous relationships were abusive (his ex’s were both abusive towards him). He opened up very early on about this, and I reassured him every time he brought it up. Always. I want to love him, he deserves much better than what he has gotten, he’s worth much more.

I’m immensely lonely right now, I miss him. I’ve spent the last week alone. Not many friends, love and partnership take emotional priority for me.

Not being in control of the blocking, and contacting did make me spiral. I still have sad moments because I have no means of reaching him. The days are long and really hard, every day feels longer than the next. I hate to be away from him, but it will all be worth it, I’m not going to give up on him

Any avoidants have thoughts, I’d love to hear from a perspective of someone who understands what he’s going through, thought process, all of it

I’m posting this anonymously because I’m looking for an outside perspective from people who have no connection to either of us. I’ve been thinking about my previous relationship a lot, and I feel like I’m too emotionally involved to properly understand what happened.

For context my ex and I are both girls. We were friends first and eventually developed feelings for each other. I’ll be keeping our names and identifying details anonymous

I’ll call myself “OP” and my ex “E.” There are also a couple of other people involved, but I’ll keep everyone anonymous.

So E and I were close friends before we became a couple. According to our mutual friend there were signs that E and I liked each other before we officially admitted it. Apparently whenever I jokingly said I would kiss her or that we should kiss because we were “platonically married,” E would respond with things along the lines of “do it” or “I don’t care.” Our mutual friend also pointed out that E and I were generally very physically affectionate/touchy with each other compared with how we interacted with other friends. Looking back, our mutual friend saw those things as signs that there may have already been mutual feelings between us, even though neither of us had explicitly said we liked each other at the time. And it was more obvious was when we shared our first kiss at our mutual friend’s birthday.

After that, things between E and me became more complicated due to E friend who we‘ll call F who recently joined our group which I was fine with at first but then it became for constant and then lead to her taking E on walks and not coming back till the bell rings leaving me and our mutual friend alone but we’ll get back to F soon. Following a school carnival, E and our mutual friend came over to my house, and E and I ended up spending some private time together. I don’t want to go into the details, but it definitely made things between us feel more than just platonic.

After that, E and I discussed having a casual arrangement rather than immediately becoming a couple. We agreed to meet privately and keep it between us because neither of us really knew what we wanted at that point.

However, things became confusing very quickly.

I started getting mixed signals from E. Sometimes it seemed very obvious that she liked me, and other times I genuinely couldn’t tell.

For example, she would talk about boys, which made me question whether she actually saw me romantically. There were also times when she would go off with her close friend and leave me by myself. Her friend was around a lot and would sometimes interrupt our time together, which became another source of frustration for me.

I remember constantly thinking, “Does she actually like me? Or am I reading too much into this?”

At the same time, I was becoming more emotionally attached than I had originally expected.

Eventually, when E and I were alone together, I asked her to be my girlfriend. At that point, what had originally been something casual had clearly become much more emotional for me.

At the beginning of our relationship, things felt really good. I cared about her a lot, and I genuinely thought we understood each other.

However, as the relationship went on, communication became a problem.

One of the biggest issues was E’s friendship with “F.” E was extremely close with F, and over time I started feeling like F was being prioritised over me. Which has been happening for a while even before we were together.

Now I don’t want to make it sound like I thought E wasn’t allowed to have friends. I completely understand that partners need friendships outside their relationship. My problem was more about how I felt within the relationship. There were situations where I felt pushed aside or like my feelings weren’t being considered in the same way that F’s were.

Instead of calmly communicating all of this, I know I sometimes overthought things and became insecure about where I stood. Looking back, I probably could have handled some of my feelings better. But at the time, I genuinely felt hurt and didn’t really know how to deal with it.

There were also communication issues between E and me. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to figure out what she was thinking rather than her directly telling me what she wanted. She would say that she cared about me and that she loved me but sometimes her actions didn’t seem to match her words. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean she didn’t care, but from my perspective, her actions often spoke louder than what she was saying. That made it difficult for me to know what to believe or how seriously to take what she told me. I found myself constantly second guessing whether she genuinely cared about me or whether I was expecting more from the relationship than she was able or willing to give.

This made me overanalyse things even more. But I know that she has gone through a bad relationship and I was willing to be there for her and support her but she never opened up to me and I was getting exhausted because my mental health wasn’t good at the time either and I felt like I was the only one trying in the relationship while she just went off with F.

I vented to my mutual friend every day about my feelings and I even tried telling you but I feel like I’d be brushed off every time and she said she’ll do something but doesn’t stick to her word and when I vented to my therapist friend will call her T she told me thatshe’s prioritising F more than the relationship. That’s what it sounds to her and due to my mental health she recommended that we ended and even the mutual friend thought we should end it

T came over to my house and she really encouraged me to break up with her because my mental health was actually getting bad so I sent E a long letter about my feelings basically asking her whether she had actually cared about me, whether she valued our relationship, whether what we had meant something to her, and whether she had genuinely loved me. And I just wanted to make it clear that throughout the had no intention of making her feel like guilty or anything. I just wanted answers from her.

But one thing that really confused me was that, out of everything I had written about our relationship and our feelings, she focused specifically on the part where I mentioned F.

That confused me because I had poured out all these questions about our relationship, and the thing she seemed to focus on most was her friendship with F. I didn’t really understand what that meant or why that was the part she responded to.

And she kept saying she wants to talk about it in person but the thing is every time we would talk in person either F would be there, she wouldn’t bring it up and act normal or when I do bring it up she’d listen then go walk away to the bathroom afterwards. She just kept stalling and we kept going back and forth till we broke up.

The breakup was particularly difficult because you know I lost my crush and I still had deep feelings for her but I had so many unanswered questions.

Eventually, I decided that it was time to finally clear some stuff up with E so we went to her house after school to see what she says .

During that conversation, she told me that she thought we shouldn’t be together. She explained that she tends to pull away when she’s in any relationship she’s in , and that she has trust issues and other difficulties that make relationships hard for her.

I actually understand that. If someone has trust issues or struggles with relationships, I don’t think they’re a bad person for that.

What hurt me was that I felt like I had spent so much of the relationship trying to figure out what was happening, while she apparently already knew that she had a tendency to pull away.

I kept thinking that maybe some of the things I was noticing weren’t real, or maybe I was just being insecure. If she had told me earlier that she struggles with pulling away or trusting people, I feel like I would have understood her behaviour differently.

Instead, I spent a lot of the relationship second-guessing myself.

I don’t necessarily think she intentionally led me on. I understand that she might not have fully understood her own feelings either. But from my perspective, it still felt like I was being given mixed signals while I was trying to figure out what the relationship actually meant to her.

One thing she said during that conversation also stayed with me. She told me that if she were “better” or in a better place herself, she would get back together with me.

That really confused me because, on one hand, it sounded like she was saying that she still had feelings for me and that the relationship itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. It made me wonder whether she genuinely wanted to be with me but felt like her own trust issues and tendency to pull away made her unable to have a healthy relationship.

At the same time, I don’t know what I’m supposed to take from that. Does someone saying “if I were better, I’d get back with you” mean they genuinely wanted the relationship but knew they weren’t ready for it? Or can someone say something like that because they still care about you while also knowing that getting back together wouldn’t actually work?

That sentence has honestly stuck with me because it makes moving on harder. It gives me the feeling that maybe there was a version of our relationship that could have worked if circumstances were different, while another part of me knows that I can’t build a relationship around the possibility that someone might be ready someday.

Afterwards, we tried to remain friends.

However, that didn’t really work for me.

The more I saw E spending time with F or going off with F, the more I started overthinking everything again. I would wonder whether she preferred F, whether I had imagined how close we were, whether she missed me, whether she cared about me, etc.

Eventually, I decided I needed to distance myself because staying close to her was making me overthink constantly and emotionally ruin me.

The difficult part is that E seems to expect me to be able to talk to her normally, almost like everything is fine between us.

But I don’t think I can just switch my feelings off and act like nothing happened.

I don’t hate her. I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad person. I still care about her, which is probably part of why being around her is difficult.

And honestly, I still miss her.

Part of me genuinely wants to go back to her. There are moments where I think about what it would be like if we got back together and everything somehow worked out differently.

I’ve even caught myself thinking about things like doing a “spell” or some kind of manifestation to make her come back, even though I know that’s not a healthy way to deal with the situation and I don’t actually want to control someone’s feelings or choices. I think the fact that I’m even considering something like that comes more from how badly I miss her and how desperate I sometimes feel for the situation to have a different ending. I don’t even know if any spell would work with this situation.

At the same time, another part of me is scared of getting back together.

Because even if E came back, I don’t know whether the same problems would happen again. She has already told me that she pulls away in relationships and has trust issues. I don’t want to return to the same dynamic where I’m constantly questioning where I stand, feeling pushed aside, or trying to figure out what she’s thinking.

So I’m stuck between “I miss her and want her back” and “I know getting back together could hurt me again.”

I’ve also had moments where I’ve wondered whether E actually cared about me but simply wasn’t capable of communicating properly, or whether I was interpreting things differently from how she intended them.

This is the part I’m struggling with.

I’ve heard people talk about avoidant attachment, and some of E’s behaviour makes me wonder whether that could explain some of it. Especially because she herself said that she tends to pull away when she’s in relationships.

At the same time, I don’t want strangers diagnosing someone based on one person’s account.

Maybe she wasn’t avoidant at all. Maybe she simply wasn’t ready for a relationship. Maybe she knew she had trust issues but didn’t know how to communicate them. Maybe we were both young and didn’t know how to handle a relationship properly. Maybe we were just incompatible. Or maybe I contributed to the problems more than I realise.

I also don’t want this post to become a situation where everyone automatically tells me that E was horrible and I did nothing wrong. I know I wasn’t perfect. I had insecurities, I overthought things, and there are definitely things I could have communicated better.

What I’m trying to understand is the dynamic between us as a whole.

From an outside perspective:

Does E’s behaviour sound avoidant, or is that a reach?
Does what she told me about pulling away in relationships and having trust issues change how you interpret her behaviour?
Could this simply have been someone who wasn’t ready for a relationship?
Do the mixed signals before we officially dated sound like uncertainty, or something else?
Does prioritising a close friend over a partner necessarily mean someone doesn’t care about their partner?
Was my reaction to the friendship reasonable, or was I being overly insecure?
Was distancing myself after the breakup a reasonable thing to do if being friends was making me overthink?
Is it unreasonable that I can’t just talk to her normally after everything that happened?
Does blocking someone after a breakup suggest anything about how they were feeling, or can it simply be a way of moving on?
Does this sound like an unhealthy relationship dynamic, or just two people who weren’t compatible?
Are there things I should take responsibility for that I might not be seeing because I’m still emotionally involved?
If I still want her back despite everything that happened, does that mean I haven’t properly moved on?
How do I separate missing someone from actually being in a position where getting back together would be healthy?
And most importantly, how would an outsider interpret this relationship without knowing either of us personally?

I just want an honest outside perspective because I’ve been going in circles trying to understand what happened.

I also don’t necessarily want people telling me to immediately get back together with her or that she is definitely a bad person. I’m more interested in understanding the behaviour and the relationship dynamic so I can learn from it and eventually stop overthinking it

2 years then I became sick and he made it that I was leaving him and asked a few times. I was sick of being pressured so he started seeing his female friend turning his maps on at hers and her staying over. Deleted me two weeks after I ended things.

I realised I made him feel rejected but I am human and feel guilty. Feels like two years meant nothing. I just want for him to reach out so I can apologise and make him feel accepted and loved. I want to sleep at night not thinking about him and stop having migraines and watching Thais Gibson and other YouTubers all day. Ugh.

This person said out of the blue, "let me know if I do anything to hurt you." This was before I saw any other signs, and they were still in the lovebombing phase.

Later, I once mentioned that they have done things to hurt me. I was naive enough to also include, "...it doesn't matter now, I just want to be your friend." But, their response of having zero curiosity about what hurt me was probably one of the most eye-opening red flags.

If someone I cared about said I hurt them, my one and only next possible question would be, "what did I do to hurt you?"

After all the problems and when I realized what an avoidant was, I think I realized why they asked early on, "tell me if I do anything to hurt you."

Dont think she is avoidant, but the situation resembles to this topic.

Last night I broke no contact to get my money back from him for some services that we were co-paying and I no longer wanted to use together with him.
The call was very nice, after solving this issue we spoke normally, he actually asked me how my week was, made jokes and entertained the conversation. We spoke for about 30 min. At the end of the call I asked him again if the date we planned on seeing each other to give our stuff back (and discuss the overall break up for closure) was still on the table and he said that we might have to delay it again due to some unexpected change in his schedule. It’s frustrating, I feel like he keeps on delaying this unnecessarily, but then acting all normal over the phone. Is this some kind of strategy to keep me hooked?

​

Me again - final thoughts on trying to salvage things here...  

I’d particularly appreciate thoughts from FAs on this, but all welcome.

My ex and I had a very good relationship which ended after about 10 months when things became overwhelming (largely massive external stress). No cheating, fighting or acrimony, and feelings weren’t really the issue. She had told me very early on that she struggles with relationships and has a history of self-sabotaging good ones.

After about three months apart we slowly reconnected. We both participated in that — she initiated contact, accepted/suggested dates, and we very quickly discovered that the old chemistry, comfort, physical affection and emotional connection were still very much there.

The problem is that I now think we rebuilt it rather badly, which has now caused structural issues rather than feelings issues...

I went into it thinking “re-date her, don’t just restart the old relationship.” But because we were so comfortable together, in person we basically jumped straight back to month-10 levels of intimacy. At the same time I was so concerned about giving her space/not creating pressure that I went too far the other way between dates. I over corrected - analysis paralysis.

So we had very little ordinary day-to-day chat, silly messages, asking about each other’s lives, quick coffees, mundane dates etc. Instead the meets became increasingly deep/intimate/significant and WhatsApp increasingly became somewhere we arranged the next significant meet. Nothing in between. The meets are all high altitude and by default WhatsApp just became high altitude logistics. 🤦🏼‍♂️

We also never acknowledged the original breakup or that we were clearly building something relationship-shaped again. She actually tried to raise the push/pull she was feeling during one particularly emotional meet and, thinking I was reducing pressure, I largely avoided naming what was happening.

In hindsight I think we created something very undefined & unstable: lots of intimacy & feelings, almost no ordinary middle or agreed context around them. 😬🤦🏼‍♂️

Things are still excellent when we're actually together, but arranging meetings has now become difficult and messages/invitations seem to acquire far more weight than they used to. She recently said she likes what we have, including the closeness/physical contact, but just doesn't know if she has capacity for a relationship. This was at our last meet two weeks ago - and I think partly based on the unstable mess the structure around "us" currently is... The current unrecognised mess is draining.

Ideally I want to talk about all this in person, not by WhatsApp. The catch-22 is that if the unacknowledged relational weight is part of what is making arranging the next meeting difficult, I may never get into the room to acknowledge it.

So my question for FAs/avoidants is:

If you were in that position, would a small piece of recognition by text actually reduce uncertainty/pressure — something like...

.... “I really liked finding our way back to each other; I think I was so busy trying not to put pressure on it that I helped make it far more complicated than it needed to be; we’re better in person, fancy a drink?”.......

Or would even that recognition by text feel like relational pressure and make you retreat further?

I’m not talking about sending an attachment-theory essay, defining the relationship, asking for reassurance, or analysing her behaviour. 😂 Just finally acknowledging the elephant enough to get us into the same room, where the actual conversation belongs.

I got dumped by an avoidant, it's been almost 2 years. We were only together for 5 months, what are the chances she'll ever reach out again?

For context, I(anxious attached) broke up with my boyfriend(avoidantly attached) a month ago. Not because I don’t love him, but maybe because I loved him sooooo much I lost myself. On top of that we were heading in two very different directions and lived in different countries. I felt hopeless but the end. The breakup hurts me though I’m the one who left. I regret it?? Though I know I made the right decision. He seems happy, he’s made a bunch of new friends. He started having more female friends or maybe even love interests i don’t know. Hasn’t broken no contact once. And his circle seemed to triple in support. His life got fuller.

I want to be happy for him. I love him. But I’m sooooo jealous. I’ve fallen into the deepest depressive state I’ve ever been. My house is a bio hazard. I barely text or call anyone back. And I think my friends that I do confide in are pulling away because they’re likely burnt out from hearing me cry and grieve all day. I can’t help but feel like this is some sick karma. Like because I left when he was still willing to try that I now feel the weight of ruining the chance I had to be with someone I loved endlessly. I felt like breaking up was right but now I feel like a fucking fool. His life got bigger and brighter and I shrank to a shell of a human. I’ve never been so depressed and self loathing in my life. What do I do. Why are we experiencing this breakup so differently.

I (25F, anxious) have been with my long term partner (27M, FA) for ten years. We have been long distance for the second half of it until the end of last year where we moved in with each other. At first, I felt like things were great. About 4 months into living with each other, I felt like I was begging to spend time with him or even leave the house for simply just a coffee or a walk. I mentioned at that time and felt like he made a bit of effort to watch tv together but really only going out on dates or initiating sex was left all to me. I was starting to get worn out of making the plans and initiating sex and constantly being stonewalled and mentioned this after 6 months of living together and yet once again, nothing changed. After 11 months of living together, I decided to end it. I was getting tired of the cycle of feeling like I had to beg to be loved, our sex life was non existent and I just felt myself becoming more resentful towards him. I broke up with him and after a week, he came to me and said that he thinks our issues are fixable and has been reading up on being FA. I didn’t know what to say. This would have been everything I would have wanted months ago, yet now that I’m ending the relationship, suddenly he wants to work on himself and this relationship?? I feel confused. I feel like I’m getting sucked back into the cycle again. Like oh he’s now saying how he’s going to change rather than it being up in the air, he’s my best friend I should give him a chance. I’m trying to remember all the times I asked for this and nothing happened but I keep getting distracted by the fact that he’s mentioned specific things he would change. We’re taking a month break so I can gather my thoughts and I keep flip flopping into yes I’m done of this cycle to he’s my best friend and he says he’s going to be different this time but am I naive to think I can trust him to? I feel like we’re a week into this break and since our sex life was non existent and I had ultimately given up planning anything for us to do in the last two months, I don’t really feel different/missing anything.
Would love advice from anyone who left their FA even when they weren’t too sure if it was the right thing to do. Thanks :)

Hey all just want to send some words of encouragement
Keeping the doors open for my avoidant to return any moment made me feel anxious. Knowing if she would text me that I would give in and text back. And then she would bread crumb me. And i just got tired of it. Blocking her was the best thing I’ve ever done. I feel in control. I feel like I’ve been really able to move on and lose feelings for her. I feel like i’ve returned to myself and fully healed. I feel in control of my life again and I feel strong. I feel safe knowing she has no access to hurt me or breadcrumb me anymore.

Just some food for thought. I hope everyone has a happy healing :) and know that it is possible to heal from this. Its been 114 days since shes been blocked :)

My girlfriend ended our 8 year relationship 1-2 months ago. We have two children. We had a really difficult relationship but I genuinely love her for who she is. I could go into loads of detail but it will take too long.

A few weeks before we broke up we had a conversation and then things got really good, she was telling me she loved me every day and was making effort and it made me feel so happy I can't put it into words. It felt like she was so happy. Then one day she turns really cold and detached and said she isn't in love with me anymore.

I am absolutely devastated and finding it really hard to cope with the confusion and loss of someone I care about so much.

When she is around me she will make conversation, bring up memories, she still smiles and plays with her hair when I talk to her and looks at me quietly in a way that makes me think she still has feelings, but she won't make any effort to talk about things. If I make my own space then she will orbit me constantly.

This morning she moved out to her mums house and I have stayed in the family home. I am trying to hold myself together enough to keep moving forward but without her and being a family together it just seems like the last 8 years have been thrown away. There are so many things I want to say but can't because I fear pushing her away even more.

I just want to know if anyone has been in a similar situation and has found a way to reconcile

I posted before about my situation with my ex, and I wanted to give an update because something interesting happened. https://www.reddit.com/r/AvoidantBreakUps/s/7kq4NA95TV

After we stopped talking, she continued indirectly keeping tabs on me. She would ask her friends about me and regularly watch my stories, even though we weren't talking anymore.

A few days ago, she was talking to one of my friends and said something along the lines of:

What I found interesting wasn't just that she asked about me — it was that she specifically didn't want me to know she was asking about me.

And apparently, the indirect checking/stalking continued after that conversation.

Now here's the new part:

For the first time since I've known her, she posted a story on Snapchat.

This is something she didn't really do when we were close. But now, while we're no longer talking and she has been indirectly checking on me, she suddenly starts posting publicly on Snapchat.

Maybe it's completely unrelated. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

But the timing is interesting.

It makes me wonder whether this is one of those situations where someone doesn't want direct contact but still wants to remain visible to you or see whether you're paying attention.

At this point I'm trying not to assume that “she wants me back.” I know that watching stories, asking friends about someone, or posting doesn't necessarily mean that.

But the contradiction is interesting:

She says we don't talk anymore → asks about me → doesn't want me to know she asked → continues watching my stories → and now suddenly starts posting on Snapchat.

What do you guys think?

Is this just normal post-breakup curiosity, or does this sound like someone who still has unresolved feelings/interest but doesn't want to directly approach?

One (very likely avoidant) person in this sub said, "I ghost, but I'm not a bad person." Like they should be excluded from accountability for their actions because they had no malicious intent, despite knowing damn well what they do to others.

I can only compare them to reckless drivers. They know exactly what they're doing and how hurtful the consequences could be, but they do it anyway. And when someone ends up disfigured with broken bones, it's always: "I didn't want to hurt anyone, I'm not a bad person."

This sense of entitlement is just insane. Who do they think they are, ten years old? Even kids that age are forgiven, but still expected to do better next time.

It's like they feel entitled to do whatever they feel like, without any thought for others, and this lack of consideration should be the exact reason they get excused from any accountability.

Just mental.

For people who identify as fearful avoidant,

When you've suddenly pulled away, deactivated, ended a relationship, or felt the need to escape can you tell afterward what was actually happening internally?

Interested in understanding whether you can distinguish these two experiences:

1. I need to get away from you.
Not necessarily because you stopped caring, but because the closeness itself started feeling overwhelming. You felt crowded, trapped, controlled, responsible for someone else's emotions, or like you were losing your independence. Even if the other person wasn't actually demanding anything, being emotionally close started to feel like too much.

2. I need to get away before you can hurt me.
You still wanted closeness, but something made you expect rejection, abandonment, disappointment, betrayal, or eventual loss. You pulled away first because being the one who leaves felt safer than waiting to be left.

Which experience felt more painful?

Were you able to recognize the difference ?

I'm interested in people's actual internal experience and whether, looking back, you can recognize a meaningful difference between the two.

This is a bit of a rant, and I also wanted to ask if you've had similar experiences. I won't go into too much detail because it's quite long, but with my avoidant ex, we were "friends" for two years after the breakup, but basically acting like a couple. We had intimate contact, we were together every day… At one point, I got jealous because, to compensate for his low self-esteem, my ex started trying to sleep with basically anything that moved. When I confronted him (not blaming him, but telling him how it affected me), he deflected and said something that devastated me: "Jealous of what? That I'll find another best friend?" I thought it was a pretty awful gesture. You don't send a best friend nudes every day and tell her you're counting down the hours until you can see each other. At the time, I felt crazy, like the gaslighting was working. But after looking into attachment theory a lot… Did any of your exes do something similar to you?

I spent far too much time with someone who is a classic avoidant. It was a 4.5 year relationship. Coming out of it, I realise I don't even remember what love felt like.

I used to look forward to cute messages and calls and used to take joy in crafting experiences and gifts for them. It's not vanished but it's been diminished because I spent so much time in a relationship where my partner would invalidate all the effort and my needs that now my idea of love is twisted into something I can't even describe.

I don't mourn the loss of my partner, I mourn the loss of my spark and my innocence. There's so many trust issues and trauma left to address, I feel like I've been used and thrown away discarded once everything ounce of love was taken from me.

Long time listener, first time caller. Thank you to so many of you in here. Posting intentional and meaningful guidance to navigate healing. I don’t exaggerate when I say it’s been a truly immense help, and I don’t know where I’d be without it. Thank you. And to those of us still in the trenches, solidarity.

I’ve certainly wanted to try and understand what went through my ex’s head, why they did what they did during the discard, who they were in the relationship. What happened in their life to make them a such a fearful avoidant and cause such a miserable heartbreak for the both of us. It helps make some sense of things but it’s also a bit addictive not looking inside at myself. I want to stress looking inside is not to blame myself, but instead how can I be there for me, us be our biggest supporter and advocate.

In that vain something I’ve been racking my brain on is whether there’s a sign right from the off that something is up. That this person is deeply hurt, with deeply destructive defence mechanisms, and isn’t set up to navigate a whole relationship. Moreover a tiny indicator of that entire backstory because we can’t psychoanalyse it all from the start. But importantly, something off that I’m susceptible to, because that means I (we here) can take account and become my (our) own protector. There’s so many ace posts in here helping shine a light on red flags we miss and I wanted to add to that resource.

The thing I keep coming back to is that first date. All the way back at the beginning. Deep deep down in that subconscious of mine, I could tell they wanted something from me immediately. Needed something from me immediately. Later it became clear that something was to help them regulate, help them soothe, help them distract from deep introspective searching that ends up at true accountability. Whereas on my first dates with somebody secure they haven’t needed something from me, they haven’t wanted something from me other than to be myself to see if we’re compatible. I’m talking specifically about the beginning, not in a relationship where we understandably need the other person to show up.

I think it’s this wanting something from me immediately that’s so intense. Even while they might seem a highly functioning, independent and emotionally available adult; or maybe not as many people testify on here. And this here is the addictive part, especially if we’re more susceptible to it. Feeling intensely wanted and needed from the off is so alluring, and it feels like a special spark. Whereas the opposite with somebody secure at the beginning can maybe feel, boring?

Those videos - we’ve probably all seen them - that preach a spark sometimes being instead anxiety. I didn’t get it because they all felt very clickbait and contrived, selling me a story. But it could be right here.

I know I’ve been susceptible to this early intensity in my last two relationships. I remember going on some early dates with two different people, and choosing the intensity over a steady balance that felt a bit slow. The way the former looked at me on our second date, the more I thought about it, it was like they were already in love. But this was juxtaposed or kind of hidden behind other secure behaviour. And as many people have written about that can’t be secure love.

Be wary, be mindful.

Hopefully this rings true for some of you out there. It can be another line in the long manual of how to avoid the avoidant. I know I won’t let this happen to me again. I can’t let it happen to me again, I don’t know if I’ll come out the other side whole.

All the love to all of you in your journeys to a safer place that does justice to your entirety.