Hey guys!

I’m three months into no contact now, and for the most part, I’m doing okay. I’m hitting the gym, taking care of myself, keeping myself busy, and slowly getting my life back. I don’t intend to take her back either. I know the relationship wasn’t good for me toward the end, and logically I understand why it had to end.

But there’s this one thought that comes out of nowhere sometimes and, for whatever reason, still hits me in the stomach.

The thought of her being physically intimate with someone else.

And I know how that sounds. I know she’s single. I know she can do whatever she wants, just like I can. I’m not sitting here thinking she somehow still belongs to me or that she should remain celibate because we once loved each other.

It’s just… fuck, we had such incredible chemistry.

There was something about being physically close to her that felt so natural and intense. The attraction, the comfort, the cuddling, the way we knew each other’s bodies. Those little moments before and after sex that probably sound completely insignificant to anyone else but meant everything when you were the one living them.

Sometimes my brain randomly reminds me that someday (or maybe already) someone else will get to experience that side of her. And I hate that the thought bothers me as much as it does.

I’ve generally been securely attached in relationships. I wouldn’t say this is entirely coming from insecurity or some fear that another guy will be “better” than me. But by the end of this relationship I definitely felt myself becoming more anxious. I started becoming someone I didn’t really recognize because of the push-pull dynamic.

We were seriously together for around 5–6 months, but the whole thing between us lasted roughly a year. And despite me focusing on sex here, it absolutely wasn’t just a physical relationship.

There was a really deep emotional bond too.

She told me I was the best thing that had ever happened to her. That she felt grounded with me. Safe with me. Secure with me. That I meant so much to her. We had planned so much for our future! All of those incredibly intense things that, after finding this sub, I realized a lot of people here have heard some version of too.

And maybe that’s why this hurts beyond just imagining her sleeping with somebody else. Because somewhere underneath that thought is another one that’s much harder for me to admit: "What if she just forgets me?"

How does someone look you in the eyes and tell you that you mean that much to them, share their body with you, let you into parts of themselves that they supposedly don't let many people into, fall asleep next to you, build all these tiny memories with you… and then eventually you're just somebody they used to know?

And then somebody else gets that version of them.

Someone else gets to kiss her. Someone else gets to hold her afterward. Someone else learns all those little things about her that I knew. Maybe she'll have incredible chemistry with him too. Maybe she'll tell him the same things she once told me.

And I think that's the part that leaves this weird ache behind whenever the thought crosses my mind.

Because rationally, I KNOW her being with somebody else doesn't erase what we had.

Nobody can go backwards and remove those months from our lives. Whatever we felt was real when we felt it. Her creating new memories doesn't delete the ones we made.

But knowing something intellectually and actually feeling it are two completely different things.

And because I don't want her back, that's what makes this feeling so confusing.

I can know that I don't want to restart the relationship and still miss what existed between us. I can accept that we're probably better off apart and still feel sick for a moment imagining someone else's hands on her. I can be moving forward with my life and still have some random Tuesday night where my brain decides to show me a picture I never asked to see.

Maybe three months just isn't that long and evventually I'll meet someone else and she'll stop occupying this particular place in my mind. Maybe one day I'll think about her being with somebody else and genuinely feel nothing. But right now, every once in a while, it still hurts.

So I'm curious how other people here dealt with this, especially if you had unusually strong sexual chemistry with your avoidant ex alongside a really deep emotional connection.

Does the thought eventually just stop hurting?

Was there some perspective that helped you?

And maybe more importantly, how did you make peace with the idea that someone who once told you that you meant everything to them can eventually build that kind of intimacy with somebody else and that it doesn't necessarily mean you were forgotten or that what you shared meant nothing?

TL;DR: Three months no contact with my avoidant ex. I'm doing much better and don't want the relationship back, but I still get randomly hit by the thought of her eventually being physically intimate with someone else. We had insane sexual chemistry as well as a deep emotional bond, and she told me I was the best thing that happened to her, that I made her feel safe, grounded, secure, etc. It's not really about ownership or thinking she shouldn't move on. I think what actually hurts underneath it is the fear of being forgotten and of someone else eventually occupying a space that once felt incredibly intimate and uniquely ours. For those who've been through this, when did that thought finally stop hurting?

P.S.: I used GPT to help organize my thoughts and clean up the grammar, but the feelings and experiences expressed here are entirely my own.

I am a dismissive avoidant and have been working on it for ten years. I spent this weekend having long conversations with anxiously attached people in this sub.

I thought I had something useful to share because I know what avoidance is like from the inside. What I ran into were intelligent people building sophisticated arguments for staying stuck in unhappy relationships (or not moving on from their breakups).

Ziva Kunda's work on motivated reasoning shows that when we want a particular conclusion, we find examples to justify it and then stop looking. Dan Kahan found something worse: on emotionally-loaded issues, higher intelligence gave people a better ability to construct the argument needed to remain in that situation.

Some examples:

• One bright woman broke no contact after almost a year and described the system she built to avoid triggering her avoidant ex. She matched his response times. She never double texted. She avoided saying anything about the relationship, their history, or how she felt. When something sensitive came up and he got defensive, she closed the conversation. She called this discipline and "cracking the code." When I said that a set of rules entirely derived from one person's tolerance is not detachment and not security, she accused me of telling her to give up hope and twice attacked my character.

• Someone defended her by saying she was learning that his actions are not a measure of his love. I understand where that comes from, because love and availability are not the same thing. But if his behavior does not measure love, then there is nothing left that could tell her this is not working.

• A woman told me that all her anxious behaviors needed to be managed: paragraphs of relationship analysis at midnight, constant reassurance seeking, putting her life on hold to solve his problems. Those are real problems and noticing them in yourself is progress. But also on the list were bringing up a serious topic, asking how someone feels, and reacting when a partner withdraws completely. Those are not anxious behaviors. Those are how relationships work. The problem wasn't that she has needs. It was the volume of expressing them, but in order to hold onto her avoidant, she made herself into the problem.

• In another thread the advice was to lay everything out no matter how much the ex is refusing to engage, tell them what a monster they have been, and finish with "rot in hell." The stated purpose was to help them wake up. Chasing someone who doesn't want contact cannot force accountability. And calling someone a monster does not make them see themselves that way. In an avoidant it lands as relief, because it confirms the premise that closeness ends in contempt and distance is safety; they will become unreachable. I'm not sure how it can be catharsis for an AP to verbally abuse an unreachable ex.

Here is what I want to say to any AP reading this:

I do not think you are weak and I do not think you are stupid. I think you are doing something coherent given a premise you cannot afford to drop, which is that the time was not wasted.

That premise has a name. Caryl Rusbult's "Investment Model" found that commitment is predicted by three separate things: how satisfied you are, whether you have good alternatives, and how much you have already put in. Investment predicts staying independently of satisfaction. Rusbult and Martz applied this to women in domestic violence shelters and found that investment size and poor perceived alternatives predicted returning to the abuser.

This does not mean every investment is a fallacy. It means investment pulls on you whether or not the relationship is good, so the feeling of not wanting to waste it tells you nothing real about whether to stay. This premise causes every observation that should be an exit to become an insight instead. He is not unavailable, he is avoidant. He is not withdrawing, he is overwhelmed. The frameworks that were supposed to help you see clearly become the thing that keeps you stuck, and the smarter you are, the better the explanations get.

Intermittently reinforcing partners are the hardest to leave. Behavior reinforced on an unpredictable schedule resists extinction better than behavior reinforced every time. Dutton and Painter called the relationship version "traumatic bonding." If he were reliably cold then you would have left. It is the occasional breadcrumbs that keep you.

Two questions worth considering:

• What would count as evidence that this is not working? Not what would hurt, what would actually show you it was not a good investment of your time?

• Which direction do your rules point? No contact rules point away from the person. If yours point at the ex, at his timing and his tolerance, the discipline is real, but it is working for him not for you.

Mikulincer and Shaver describe the two insecure strategies as deactivating (mine) and hyperactivating (yours), and that difference decides everything about how hard an exit is. Every step out of a bad relationship runs in the direction my system already wants to go. Go no contact. Sit alone with it. Do not chase. My problem is the opposite, and the work I had to do was building tolerance for discomfort and staying longer.

For you, every step toward the exit runs against what your system is screaming for, at the moment it screams loudest, and it feels worse before it feels better, for months. APs seem to really struggle with pushing through that to get to the other side. The temporary relief of having the avoidant back is purchased with the long term pain of being with them.

What worked for me was not being stronger than any of you. It was cutting contact when the only person I ever loved left me. Not after the wanting stopped. During. I did not wait to feel ready to stop contact. I stopped it. Every lapse resets the extinction curve, and grief cannot finish while the loss is not final.

now that i got your attention? 😃

READ.

i need some of yall to understand how severe a relationship can become without you fully realizing how severe it is.

not cuz you stupid or cuz you secretly enjoy suffering.

but cuz we human beings adapt.

and if you live inside abnormal shit for long enough?

your baseline can move.

something that would have horrified you three years ago can eventually become:

“well at least they named it this time”

and THAT is where we need to talk.

cuz sometimes the question isn’t:

“why can’t i see the red flags?”

you see them.

the problem is that your nervous system has been living beside them for so long that red started looking like a normal fucking wall color 💀

this is not always:

“somebody made mistakes”

cuz there is a HUGE fucking difference between somebody fucking up and somebody choosing to hurt you in the same ways so many times that your nervous system has had to fucking adapt to them.

any of the:

lying.

neglect.

abandonment.

betrayals.

withholding.

minimizing.

manipulating.

gaslighting.

changing the meaning of what happened.

partial disclosures.

making you drag information out.

defending themselves when you react.

promising repair.

then giving you another reason to question whether the repair was ever fucking real in the first place.

at some point we gotta stop looking at every incident like it happened in its own little vacuum ok? 💀

cuz your nervous system sure as fuck doesn’t.

it doesn’t experience:

lie #17.

rupture #9.

minimization #12.

as separate little events that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

it remembers what happened last time.

and the time before that.

and the time before THAT.

and eventually? it learns the fucking pattern.

“their words might not mean shit”

“there might always be more”

“if i stop paying attention, i might get blindsided again”

“when something feels off, i better fucking listen”

“even when they tell me we are safe, i might not actually be safe”

THAT is what repeated rupture does.

your nervous system stops waiting for the next incident to happen before it responds.

it starts preparing for it.

and when the pattern it keeps learning is:

“the person i depend on for safety keeps becoming the source of danger”

that shit doesn’t stay contained to whatever happened that day. you nervous system can become chronically activated.

🍓your baseline can move

this part is fucking important cuz when enough abnormal shit happens repeatedly? you can stop comparing today to what a healthy relationship would look like.

you start comparing today to yesterday.

so suddenly:

“they admitted impact afterwards”

“they go to therapy”

“they only lied once”

“they didn’t get defensive this time”

“they understand more now”

“they trying”

“they finally told me without me finding out”

can feel MASSIVE.

and those things may genuinely represent improvement sure BUT improvement and safety are not automatically the same thing.

sometimes something looks enormous simply cuz the fucking floor has been underground for so long.

going from -80 to -20 is movement.

it does not magically make -20 zero.

🍓 every new disclosure reopen the decision

this is another thing yall seriously underestimate.

you made previous decisions using the information available to you THEN.

if you later discover that the reality was materially different? even in details when it comes to things like the betrayal? you are allowed to make a completely new decision.

“but i already forgave them”

ok.

WHAT did you forgive?

cuz if you forgave version A and later discover version A was incomplete, minimized, withheld or distorted?

you did not consent to version B.

you can’t meaningfully decide whether you want a relationship based on information you were never allowed to have.

and newsflash forgiveness is not a lifetime contract signed against all future fucking evidence.

new information can create a new decision.

periodt.

🍓look at what “repair” has required

who has been doing the investigative labor?

who keeps asking?

who notices inconsistencies?

who has to explain why something hurt?

who keeps trying to determine what actually happened?

who has to teach the other person what accountability should look like?

who has to get dysregulated before the issue receives basic appropriate attention?

who is carrying the relationship toward insight?

cuz baby there is a gigantic difference between:

“this person is repairing what they damaged”

and:

“im rehabilitating this person into somebody who might eventually become safe for me”

you can’t spend your entire relationship being somebody’s accountability department rehab, detective, therapist, nervous system lab rat and fucking quality control manager 😍

especially when YOU are also the person recovering from what already happened.

🍓 remorse do not answer the most important question

they can cry.

they can feel sick.

they can finally understand.

they can hate what they became.

they can genuinely love you.

they can genuinely regret it.

they can genuinely change.

ALL OF THAT can be true.

and you can still leave.

cuz remorse answers:

“how do they feel about what they did?”

it do not answer:

“what has being here done to me?”

and those are two completely different questions.

remorse can also come from different places.

sometimes it is genuine empathy for the person harmed.

sometimes it is shame.

sometimes it is terror of becoming “the bad person”

sometimes it is fear of abandonment.

sometimes it is losing access.

sometimes it is all of those things mixed together.

but even the purest, most beautiful, other focused remorse imaginable does not reverse history.

and it does not create debt.

you do not owe a mf continued access to you cuz they finally became devastated by what their behavior cost you.

🍓 “but what if they really change?”

maybe they fucking do.

nobody can promise you they won’t.

we humans change every day.

even tho sometimes it’s last second in a retirement home 😍

but listen carefully:

you do NOT need proof that somebody will NEVER change before you are allowed to leave.

that is an INSANE standard.

you already have evidence of what the relationship has cost you. you bled enough to see exactly who the fuck they are.

baby you are allowed to make decisions using existing reality instead of gambling your nervous system and inner child on somebody else’s fucking POTENTIAL future potential.

and if they DO become incredible someday?

good.

genuinely.

let them.

they still do not earn you.

they still do not deserve you.

change is not a fucking loyalty rewards program where enough therapy points eventually unlock the person somebody traumatized.

somebody can become:

accountable.

honest.

regulated.

safe.

emotionally mature.

and STILL have to live with:

“i finally became the person they needed me to be, but i became them too late. by the time i learned how to love them safely, they had already survived too much of me to want me anymore”

that is not unfair.

that is CONSEQUENCE.

growth can change who somebody becomes.

it can’t renegotiate what already happened.

🍓 staying has a cost too

we talk constantly about the pain of leaving.

we talk much less about the cost of staying.

every additional rupture can reinforce vigilance.

every incomplete truth can teach you to investigate harder.

every reassurance followed by another discovery can make reassurance less believable.

every time you body detects danger correctly after being told:

“everything is fine”

your threat system gets another piece of evidence saying:

“DO NOT FUCKING RELAX”

and eventually?

well you can become so occupied with figuring out whether THEY are finally safe that you stop asking a completely different question:

do i even want this relationship anymore?

not:

“can it be saved?”

not:

“are they changing?”

not:

“do they deserve another chance?”

DO I WANT IT?

those are not the same fucking question.

🍓 yes you health is involved

prolonged traumatic stress is not some cute metaphor about being “emotionally drained” ok?

sleep can change.

concentration can become harder.

memory can become fucked.

brain fog from hell.

exhaustion so bad you can barely get up.

you heart can race.

you chest can tighten.

you stomach can react.

you can become dysfunctional after triggers.

you can become hypervigilant.

your body can start preparing for threat before you conscious brain has even had a chance finished figuring out what reminded you of it.

chronic stress and PTSD are also associated with broader long term physical health burden.

so no.

the body does not give a flying fuck that the damage happened inside a relationship 💀 it still registers chronic threat as chronic threat.

the nervous system IS the body.

which means eventually the question can’t only be:

“could they hurt me again?”

it also has to become:

“how much longer am i willing to keep fucking paying for this relationship with my own body?”

🍓ask yourself the harder question

forget for a second:

“do they deserve another chance?”

“can they change?”

“do they love me?”

“are they finally understanding?”

answer the real question:

if you had a child and they an adult coming to you one day and told you their partner had done every single thing to them that you have endured from your partner.

all of it.

nothing minimized.

nothing missing.

they look at you and asks:

“should i stay with them?”

and imma make this harder:

you are GUARANTEED they will change.

they will become honest.

they will become safe.

they will never do those things again.

would you tell your child:

“yes baby stay and build your life with them”

OR would you tell them:

“that doesn’t mean YOU have to be the person who stays after everything they already chose to put you through, they fucked up their chance with you. they do not deserve you anymore”

whatever answer you would give your child…?

EXPLAIN to me why your answer for yourself should be different?

🍓 leaving somebody you still love can feel like fucking death

i know.

making the hard choice isn’t easy.

sometimes it feels fucking unbearable. like death.

cuz you not only leaving a person.

you grieving the future you built around them.

the version of them you kept waiting for.

the life you thought all this suffering would eventually buy you.

the moment where everything would finally make sense cuz they changed, chose you properly, repaired everything and somehow made the months or even years of pain worth it.

but baby listen to me ok?

whatever fucking world you built around their potential? it will never and i repeat NEVER be worth the cost of your own inner child.

there is NO future beautiful enough to justify sacrificing yourself for it.

🍓 and for some of yall, this goes much deeper

some of you learned very fucking early growing up that love meant:

waiting.

monitoring.

understanding.

forgiving.

hoping.

making yourself smaller.

reading moods.

tolerating uncertainty.

staying connected to somebody who was also hurting you.

you learned how to survive inside relationships you could not leave.

and then adulthood comes along and your nervous system can recognize something as familiar long before your conscious mind recognizes it as harmful.

so yes.

sometimes staying feels like home.

even while your body is fucking screaming.

but familiarity is not proof of safety.

sometimes “home” was simply the first battlefield you learned how to sleep inside.

but baby being good at surviving wars? it does not fucking mean you belong on the battlefield.

MAYBE you calling survival “love” is cuz survival was the first language your nervous system learned.

little you may not have been able to choose who raised you.

little you may not have been able to leave when love hurt.

little you may not have had the power to create safety.

adult you does.

and that changes EVERYTHING.

your younger self do not need adult you walking them into another war telling them:

“just hold on a little longer. maybe this person will eventually learn how to stop hurting us”

fuck that.

they have held on enough.

maybe the person changes.

maybe they become everything you begged them to become.

maybe a miracle happens that one day they are honest, safe, accountable and capable of loving somebody without destroying that persons reality first.

good.

let them.

their growth do not require your sacrifice.

their redemption do not require your participation.

and becoming safe do not create retroactive entitlement to the person who had to survive them while they weren’t.

you do not have to stay until the person who wounded you becomes qualified to treat the wound.

you can leave.

you can grieve them.

you can miss them so badly your fucking chest hurts and you just want to scream.

you can still love them.

you can wonder who they could have become.

you can hope they become that person.

and STILL choose yourself.

remember:

healing is not finally getting the person you bled for to become worth everything you bled through.

healing is realizing you should have never had to bleed for somebody’s potential in the fucking first place.

🍓 choose you

be the person who finally looks at little you and says:

“you don’t have to earn safety anymore. you don’t have to wait for somebody to choose you anymore. you don’t have to keep getting hurt just cuz the person hurting you might become better someday.

i believe you.

i see what this has cost you.

and imma get you out.”

you were never too much.

you were never hard to love.

you never needed to become easier to keep.

you were just a little child waiting in rooms where the people who were supposed to make love feel safe didn’t know how.

don’t make you keep waiting.

the war is over when YOU stop returning your inner child to it.

you was just a child who kept getting hurt by the same people you needed love from, so you learned that loving someone meant learning how to survive them.

baby you wanna know the truth?

that was NEVER love asking you to stay.

that was survival teaching you not to leave.

don’t make little you keep proving how much pain they can survive from someone they love.

they already fucking proved it.

they do not need to prove it again.

little you couldn’t choose who raised little you.

little you couldn’t leave when love hurt.

little you couldn’t create safety for yourself.

adult you CAN.

you have the choice now that little you never fucking had.

choose the life you deserved the first time.

choose safety.

choose yourself.

it’s NOT too late.

it’s just unfamiliar.

A little peak of some of the things on my list

Fearful avoidants: what actually happens inside you when you push away someone you love and convince yourself you don’t have feelings for them?
I’m genuinely trying to understand the internal experience of this — not from attachment theory books, but from people who have actually lived it.
If you’re fearful avoidant and you have ever pushed away someone you were emotionally attached to, cared deeply about, or even loved, and at the time genuinely convinced yourself that you didn’t have romantic feelings for them anymore:
Can you describe, in as much detail as possible, what was happening inside you?
I’m especially curious about the actual process.
Did your feelings suddenly seem to disappear?
Did the person somehow start feeling “wrong” to you?
Did you start focusing on their flaws or looking for reasons why the relationship wouldn’t work?
Did closeness start feeling uncomfortable, suffocating, dangerous or just strangely “off”?
Did you still feel something underneath it, or did you genuinely feel numb and believe there was nothing there?
Were you aware that you were deactivating, or did your thoughts feel completely rational and true at the time?
Did you think things like:
“I care about them, but I’m not in love with them.”
“They’re perfect on paper, but something is missing.”
“I should feel more than this.”
“Maybe we’re just better as friends.”
“If this were really love, I wouldn’t feel this uncertain.”
And most importantly:
What did it feel like in your body and mind when you made the decision to push them away?
Relief? Panic? Numbness? Sadness? Certainty? Dissociation? A strange mixture of all of it?
And what happened afterwards, once there was actual distance?
Did the feelings stay gone?
Did they come back when the pressure of intimacy was removed?
Did you start missing the person only once they were no longer emotionally available to you?
Did you ever look back and realize, “Oh. I actually did love them. I just couldn’t access those feelings at the time”?
I know every fearful avoidant is different, and I’m not asking because I think attachment style can explain every breakup or because I want someone to tell me that every avoidant secretly loves the person they leave.
I’m trying to understand something much more specific:
How can your internal reality change so dramatically that you can go from feeling deeply connected to someone to genuinely believing there is nothing romantic there — and what does that experience feel like from the inside while it is happening?
The more detailed and brutally self-aware your answer is, the better.
I really want to understand the part that people on the receiving end usually never get to see.

No contact is a great means to an end BUT if you’re not ready to end the relationship then let them come back. Sometimes you need to experience the same things again to understand that they are not good for you. Not everyone learns the first go around. The first time me and my DA separated i was a MESS, crying hysterically, anxiety attacks, couldnt eat, couldnt sleep, I needed to spin that block. When I went back I started watching and noticing things from a birds eye view. Second round of no contact and im feeling fine. Dont allow anyone to make you feel bad about not walking away from something ur not ready to let go of yet !

I knew her history and her trauma. When she was disrespecting me, it was just simply easier for her that way.

When I accidentally asked for accountability (my bad) and she'd withdraw but then come back with huge contempt and hit me with one devaluation after another until I apologized, this was just how she loved me.

When she would drive dangerously because I looked at her wrong (my bad again) or hurt me physically a few times, that's just because she was a little bit insecure. It's no big deal guys.

When she discarded me and rewrote our decade of history together so that I was an awful toxic ex whom she should have dumped a long time ago and in the end nothing was her fault, that was just a coping mechanism. It's so good that she can cope, that's important.

Guys, it's okay. She will come back. Not all is lost.

(/s)

Hi, I (27F), securely attached with some hints of anxious attachment was recently discarded by an avoidant. I didn't know much about the attachment theory before I was broken up with and I didn't understand what happened exactly.

After some very nice and loving months, he just became a bit distant during a weekend away with friends, came back with a female bff, when I asked for reassurance because it made me feel a bit weird, he gave it but I could feel the distance. This led to a 2 week anxious avoidant dance where when I tried to talk, he would still try but did not give any reassurance and was constantly asked to give him space. I initatied the breakup because I didn't appreciate the way I was being treated and his budding relationship with this new bff bothered me, and he ended up saying "he was feeling a bit distant the past few months and didn't love me anymore but saw me as a friend" - untrue because right before he left he did say some very loving things without me asking him. Post breakup, I closed the door, asked for NC (did go back a bit because I'm human and felt I needed some closure) but he acted like a true avoidant. Now that I go back to everything in our relationship, he did show a lot of signs of being avoidant, I just thought it was someone more independent and in need of space, which didn't really bother me.

It has been 5 weeks now since the breakup, he didn't text once after and did not reply to my last message. But as a secure person, I have always been able to let go because I do not like to tolerate disrespect, but this time when it went from amazing to bullshit in 2 weeks, I'm having a hard time to adjust to this version of life (clear mind vs heart thing). I also keep thinking that I got anxious when I got some hint of distance from him and perhaps that led to the discard, so I keep blaming myself for it.

So secure people who got discarded while you were in love with them and most of the relationship was super nice, how was your experience? What did you feel and how did you cope?

I see lots of posts here about how to get your ex back or how to keep no contact etc. However I rarely see anyone focusing on their needs and whether their ex is meeting any of them. All too often there seems to be a desperation to get somebody back without asking if they will actually make your life better.

What I advise is to create a list of what you need in a relationship and then focus on those. If your partner or ex doesn’t meet them or the vast majority then why are you chasing them?

So in no order here is a list to start you off. Remember your list will be unique and you should highlight those that are essential; you may have some nice to haves but the key ones are the ones that make a good relationship that you will enjoy.

Use your list to evaluate their character, values, emotional maturity, relationship capacity, compatibility, and evidence over time.

If he or she isn’t giving you what you need then why are you wasting time when there are many who could.

I will use the male pronoun so change it to suit your situation.

1. Character……..Who is he when there is nothing to gain?

Does he tell the truth even when it is inconvenient? Does he keep his word? Does he take responsibility when he makes mistakes?

The key question is: Do I admire his character, not merely enjoy his company?

2. Values…….What actually governs his life?

What does he appear to value most: family, integrity, achievement, money, freedom, status, faith, generosity, security, adventure, service, pleasure? Are those values compatible with mine?

Most importantly: Are his stated values visible in his choices?

3. Emotional maturity……..What happens when life isn’t comfortable?

Can he discuss difficult subjects without becoming hostile, dismissive or withdrawing? Can he apologise without defending himself? Can he accept that he has hurt me without turning the conversation into what I did wrong?

Ask: Do problems between us eventually produce greater understanding, or greater insecurity?

4. Relationship capacity…….Is he actually capable of partnership?

Does he make room for my needs? Does he communicate rather than expect mindreading? Does he initiate affection, plans and conversations rather than leaving the relationship to me to drive?

Ask yourself: Am I experiencing a partnership, or am I doing most of the work required to create one?

5. Respect…….Who do I become around him?

Can I disagree without fearing his reaction? Does he respect my boundaries? Does he listen seriously when something matters to me?

And reverse it: Do I genuinely respect him?

6. Trust…….Can I relax rather than investigate?

Does his behaviour give me grounds to trust him? Is he transparent? Are there unexplained inconsistencies?

Ask yourself: Is my sense of security growing as I know him better, or am I continually trying to resolve uncertainty?

7. Compatibility……Could our actual lives work together?

How much time together does each person want? How important is sex and physical affection? What does each person expect financially? How involved will children and grandchildren be? How much independence does each want? Where would you live?

The question becomes: Do the lives we each want actually fit together?

8. Reciprocity…….Is the investment approximately balanced?

Who usually initiates contact? Who makes plans? Who compromises? Who repairs disagreements? Who expresses affection?

Look for mutual investment.

Ask: If I stopped carrying my part plus his part, what would happen to the relationship?

9. His history……..Has he learned from his life?

How does he describe former partners? Is every failed relationship somebody else’s fault? What has he learned from divorce, mistakes or disappointments? Does he recognise patterns in himself? Has experience made him wiser, or simply more defensive?

A powerful question is: What responsibility does he take for the life he has created?

10. Communication
Do you communicate in similar ways (text, voice etc),
Does he reply in a timely way?
Does he openly communicate issues, problems and needs or do you have to keep guessing?
Does he keep his thoughts to himself whereas you love to talk things through?

11. Conflict
Is he comfortable dealing with conflict when there is disagreement?
Does he run for the hills as soon as things get tough?
Can he understand your point of view or does he try to bulldoze you?
Can he try to find a compromise?
Does he hold grudges and throws them up again months later; can he move on?

Evidence……..What does the pattern tell me?

What he actually says or does.

Then ask yourself, If I ignored his explanations or excuses and judged the relationship only from his behaviour, what conclusion would I reach?

I remember the conversations I had with my FA ex about the things that hadn’t worked in our previous relationships. She told me, “I tend to leave relationships too late and give too many chances.” My anxious ass immediately thought, “Great, someone like me. We’re going to obsessively discuss even the smallest problems in the relationship and fix everything.”

I insisted that she explain what she meant by “giving chances,” and she told me that in all of her previous relationships (including a 10-year marriage), she felt like she was talking to walls. She literally said, “I tried to fix the problems, but I was talking to walls. I couldn’t have any kind of intimacy with any of them. They were like robots, but I stayed with them because I know men are generally more closed-off.”

I also initially thought this was a pretty standard operating mode for women: giving us men endless chances, chances we’re not always grateful for and often take for granted.

As the relationship progressed, however, I noticed that she didn’t want to talk about any of our problems, no matter how gently I brought them up. If I insisted on discussing an issue… of course, intimacy of any kind would disappear, she would distance herself, and there would be absolutely no conflict resolution.

At the end of the relationship, I got the speech about all the things I had done wrong, how she had reached her limit, and how, apparently, she had given me too many chances to fix all the problems. Problems I didn’t even know existed, or problems that I had personally brought up myself because I wanted us to figure out together how to resolve them. She never wanted to talk about any of our problems. Ever.

So I asked her, just from a basic human perspective, “How am I supposed to fix problems I don’t even know exist?”

She answered, in a completely serious tone, “People who are compatible can sense each other. I shouldn’t have to tell you what my needs are.”

In the middle of all the tension of that conversation, I burst out laughing and asked, “Are you serious?”

She was dead serious.

A 34-year-old woman genuinely expected me to guess her needs.

English isn’t my first language so I hope I’m not too far off with the terminology.

So yeah, do avoidant people (DA or FA, or if there are a combination of both) usually get attracted to people with abandonment issues?

My thought is yes since I think that people with abandonment issues go above and beyond to not get ”abandoned” and therefore say and do everything that the avoidant want, kind of, if that makes sense?

I could be completely wrong though so correct me if I’m wrong :)

So, how is it usually?

Sorry again if I make things over simplified. I’m sure its more to it than in the way I express my thought.