How Avoidant Attachment Controls the Relationship

The partner who has the lowest tolerance for intimacy and closeness often determines the emotional limits of the relationship. The often unconscious dynamic creates a pursuit and distancing cycle, leaving both partner’s needs unmet. 

What are Anxious and Avoidant Attachment Styles?

Attachment styles explain how we interact with others in a relationship. Avoidant attachers may not have had stability when it came to sharing emotional vulnerability. It caused the child to learn to need and depend less on others. Meaning when feelings are overwhelming, they do not reach to others for support but withdraw. Anxious attachers are the opposite. When they feel unstable in a relationship, they overcompensate by trying to get as close as they can to others.

How do these Attachment Styles Affect Relationships?

In a relationship dynamic where one partner has an anxious attachment style and the other has an avoidant attachment style, the avoidant is often the one with the low tolerance for intimacy. They dictate how close the relationship gets, how much intimacy is available and how deep the emotional connection can get. As intimacy increases, the avoidant partner pulls away and the anxious partner tries to get closer.

This distance created by the avoidant  can take many forms, including but not limited to:

• Silence

• Delayed communication or interaction

• Emotional unavailability for their partner

• Mixed signals

Withdrawal from the avoidant partner causes the anxious partner to panic and overcompensate. They do everything they can to pursue their partner, trying to close the emotional gap the other created. They often are on high alert for emotional shifts or changes in tone. As soon as they sense something's off they will chase, overexplain and do everything in their power to try to reconnect.

This creates a vicious cycle which often plays out like this:

1. Connection grows between partners, increasing closeness

2. The avoidant partner feels overwhelmed by this closeness

3. Distance is created by the anxious partner

4. The anxious partner feels abandoned 

5. Pursuit for the avoidant partner heightens

6. The avoidant partner pulls away further

This is a dynamic that develops over time. Both partners adapt to this cycle. The anxious partner learns what’s “allowed” within the avoidants window of tolerance. This causes the anxious partner to shrink their needs, and become a smaller version of themselves. The avoidant attacher often doesn’t notice these changes as they are reactions from our nervous systems. Deep down the avoidant may fear being truly known with the belief that they will disappoint the people they love. This causes the unconscious creation of distance.

This emotional distance the avoidant partner creates may sound like an intentional choice as a way to control the relationship. But this is often an unconscious process. This partner may be trying to figure out their needs, and regulate their emotions rather than deliberately manipulate their partner. The avoidant partner’s nervous system sees distance as safety. The anxious partner’s nervous system sees connection as safety and security. This isn’t about blaming the avoidant partner, or deeming the anxious partner as clingy. It is about reactions from the nervous system, and how the difference in reaction often leads both partners to feel misunderstood.

If you feel you are stuck in this cycle, and need support breaking it we are here to help. Contact us at 416-949-9878 or info@georgetowncouplestherapy.com.