Dating & Relationships

Talking points: attachment, mindset, relationships, psychology

The last “A Man’s Guide” was a big hit. I had a feeling it would be, but the response still surprised me! Next up, a serious breakdown of avoidant attachment. Here’s the definition, where it comes from, the signs, and tips for moving away from it in a relationship.

This is a great episode to listen to with your partner. Take notes, discuss, and see what comes up! Lastly, thank you to everyone who reached out with comments, questions, ideas, and gratitude. I love doing these longer-form presentations; it means I get to nerd out and really lay things down.

(00:00:00) – Intro
(00:03:56)- Defining secure attachment versus avoidant
(00:06:51) – Attachment styles don’t mean you’re broken or diseased in some way
(00:08:20) – What an avoidant attachment style ultimately is, where it comes from, and one major type many men embody
(00:15:12) – One major origin point of avoidant attachment: emotional distance or unavailability
(00:23:59) – Another major origin point: premature independence
(00:26:44) – And the third: rejection of attachment
(00:29:27) – Last one: inconsistent responses and emotional stability
(00:33:49) – Signs of avoidant attachment in your relationship
(00:40:39) – What to do if you’re with an avoidant partner
(00:50:43) – What to do if YOU are the avoidant partner!

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Transcript

All right, gentlemen, welcome back to the ManTalks show. Today, I’m going to be breaking down the ultimate men’s guide to avoidant attachment. You’ve maybe heard of this. Maybe you haven’t. I’m going to break down what it is. I’m going to talk about why it happens. I’m going to give a little segment for the folks that are out there that are with an avoidant partner.

How do you actually not deal with, but how do you better interact with an avoidant partner? And then I’m going to close out the segment with very specific things that you can do. to start to develop a secure attachment style. Now, what I want you to know is that if you have been labeled as an avoidant attachment, if you have read any material about attachment styles and you’ve sort of self identified or you’ve gone and done some tests and it’s like, yep, definitely have an avoidant attachment style.

That’s not a death sentence. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to be that attachment style indefinitely forever. Uh, You can actually move through a lot of these behaviors quite quickly, and that’s one of the things that doesn’t get talked about. It’s also interesting because when you look at some of the, research around attachment styles and you look at some of the ways that attachment styles are talked about, one of the interesting things is, and I want to make this clear out of the gates, avoidant isn’t worse than anxious.

And I feel like I have to say that, right? Okay, so there’s three attachment styles. There’s a couple uh, sort of like subcategories that we’ll talk about and we’ll focus in on other episodes. But they’re secure, which is what we’re aiming for, a secure attachment style. It’s a healthy attachment style.

You’re able to be open, connected. You have a good amount of your own independence, your own sovereignty. You’re able to self reflect and understand what’s happening within you and bring that into the relationship. the sort of highlight. of a secure attachment. The thing that we’re all aiming for is that you’re able to balance the relationship, feeling secure, safe, trusting in your intimate relationship.

You’re able to balance that with independence and sovereignty. So you’re not giving up independence for the sake of trying to maintain a relationship and you’re not giving up the relationship. in order to try and maintain your independence, which is really what an avoidant attachment style is. And avoidant attachment style, so that we can just define it here and now, is really a sacrificing of intimacy, closeness, connection, or relationship to over prioritize independence and sovereignty.

avoidant attachment style can kind of be described as, or defined as an unwillingness, Or a fear of being in deep relationship with another. An unwillingness or fear of being in deep relationship with another. It’s almost like having the best way I can describe this. And I said this to somebody in a session once who wasn’t avoiding attachment style and he was like, holy shit, that’s it.

It’s almost like having an allergic reaction. to intimacy, right? So you have this like allergic reaction as soon as you start to get too close to the other person, as soon as this sort of depth of intimacy starts to show up, you have this almost like allergic reaction that causes you to pull away, that causes you to shut down, or that causes you to push the other person away with various tactics.

And we’re going to talk about some of those tactics that show up because they can be very helpful helping you to identify specifically when your avoidant attachment style is starting to come up, when it’s starting to flare up like gout, I guess. Uh, but as I said before, I’m going to be doing a lot of these deep dives called a man’s guide to.

So if you enjoy these, cause I did a deep dive, a man’s guide to codependency. That people really loved. And a lot of you guys commented on the videos. A lot of you hit me up on Instagram and said, listen, this is one of the best episodes that I’ve ever listened to. It’s so clear, so concise, and there’s so much actionable content that I can take with me.

And so I’m going to be doing a ton of these. Because I love this. This is where I get to nerd out and geek out. So if there’s a topic that you want me to cover, DM me, message me, let me know. And don’t forget to subscribe. Don’t forget to Subscribe wherever you are listening to me or watching this episode on.

Alright, so now that we’ve got that piece outta the way I wanna reaffirm anxious and avoidant. Neither one is better than the other. In our modern culture, there’s sort of this. leaning towards a villainization or villainizing of avoiding an attachment styles and more leniency or acceptance. or okayness with avoidant attachment styles and avoidant behaviors.

My guess is that some of that revolves around the fact that men are a little bit more likely maybe a lot more likely, and I’m not exactly too sure what the research or the data shows on this, but men are more likely to be avoidant and women are more likely to be anxious for a number of reasons that I’m not going to cover in this video.

I maybe can do that on another time, but The big thing that I want to emphasize, the two things, number one, avoidant, anxious, one’s not better than the other. Let’s just move that aside. And number two, I really want to emphasize to you that these attachment styles are not unhealthy things. I think in our psychological culture, in our therapeutic, industrial, complex culture, what’s happened is that people diagnose themselves or they hear those terms that label being put on them and it’s almost like they have some type of infectious disease that they need to kill off, okay?

These attachment styles don’t mean that you are broken or faulty in any way, shape, or form. The big thing that I want you to get straight out of the gates is that these attachment styles are broken. Specifically avoidant, which we’re going to talk about today, is an adaptive strategy. It’s an adaptive strategy that you developed in childhood because of a primary caretaker whoever that primary caretaker might be.

So because So in your childhood and what we know from developmental psychology is that literally your brain and your nervous system are wiring specifically the first three to five years of your life are wiring to your mother. And so when you are very young, especially from in utero, To be, you know, zero to 18 months, that sort of first year and a half of life, your whole nervous system and your whole experience as a child is interconnected with your mom.

And so your nervous system is literally going through what she’s going through. So she’s wildly anxious. Your nervous system is going to have had the experience right out of the gates, you know, first entry into this world for better or for worse, your nervous system will have had the experience of a lot of anxiousness.

If your mom was maybe dealing with postpartum depression, or she had, you know, four other kids to deal with, three other kids to deal with, and she’s very overwhelmed and overrun by that, she might not have had the time and the attention to actually give to you. And you may have felt very early on like you were alone.

It was very hard to actually attach or connect to her or to a primary caregiver. And there’s a lot of sort of caveats that we could put into that. Simply put, today we’re going to talk about avoidance. You became avoidant because growing up, your foundation of attachment, your foundation of relationship wasn’t stable or secure, or something happened to produce mistrust.

of the deep intimacy that comes along with those relationships. And I’m going to give you a very clear few bullet points of causality. So I can give you very clear things of like, here’s the three or four or five things that actually cause Avoidant attachment styles, and that is crucial to understanding how to get out of your atta this avoidant attachment style and move to secure.

Again, we want to move to a secure attachment style because otherwise it’s very hard to feel like our needs are important, our wants are important, our desires are important. And it’s very hard to feel connected in any quality of relationship when we have an avoidant attachment style. So there are two types of avoidant attachment styles.

For the purpose of today, we are going to focus very heavily on one of them. There are two types. So the first one is fearful avoidant and fearful avoidant can be classified as Uh, sometimes called disorganized attachment style. I’m going to set that entirely aside. It’s a bit of a different beast and I might do another video that focuses specifically on that one.

Uh, You can let me know again in the comments on YouTube or hit me up on Instagram at ManTalks and let me know if you want to do that deep dive. But what we’re going to be talking about today is dismissive avoidant attachment, dismissive avoidant attachment. And this is what I’ve seen a lot of men embodying.

A lot of men that I’ve worked with over the years have had some type of dismissive avoidant. Some, you know, if you’re a nice guy, you might have anxious attachment style. But even a lot of nice guys have a more dismissive avoidant attachment style. So here’s what a dismissive attachment style is.

This attachment style often has a desire to be overly independent and self sufficient. oftentimes to the point of pushing others away. Another version of this is that they don’t trust relationships. Relationships feel dangerous or hostile. Getting too close to other people, maybe because of a betrayal in previous relationships or, or early on in life has caused some type of very deep mistrust that intimacy, relationships, closeness are a safe thing and so it literally feels in the body like this is not safe and I need to protect myself from it.

Like I need to protect myself from intimacy. I need to protect myself from closeness and oftentimes people that have a more, Avoidant attachment style prefer not to rely on others and not to have other people rely on them. Now, there can be variants of this, right? You might be an avoidant attachment where you’re like, I’m okay with other people relying on me.

I like that responsibility. But I sure as hell, I’m not going to rely on other people. I will not allow myself to, you know, be put in a position where I have to rely on another person because that feels dangerous. That feels too close to intimacy and I’m going to avoid that at all costs. The next thing that’s very important about understanding and sort of defining what an avoidant attachment style looks like is that they often, an avoidant person will often view themselves in a better light.

And view the other person or the other people in a more negative way. So it’s very common in a relationship for an avoidant person to feel internally, to literally have the experience in the relationship. That the majority of the problems are coming from the other person, right? And you kind of feel, you can kind of feel that if you’re in the relationship with an avoidant person, it sort of feels like, why are all the problems on me, right?

Not like on the victim and yada, yada, yada. But, you know, anytime a conflict comes up or disconnection in the relationship, it’s like, it’s always the fingers being pointed in one direction. And for the avoidant person, so if you’re watching this and you’re avoidant, What you’ll probably experience is, it feels like you are the one who is not superior in the relationship, but that you’re causing less problems in the relationship, that the problems that are happening, the disconnection, the conflict, the arguments, the lack of sex, the, you know, lack of communication, et cetera, they’re not really on you, that you’re doing a pretty good job and that the other person is largely the, the main part of the problem.

Now, I’m not saying that that can’t be true in some relationships. For the most part, if you’re an avoidant person in a relationship, this is how you’re going to show up. There’s going to be this internal perspective that you are not as much at cause for the dysfunction. as the other person. Now, that’s very important because we’re going to talk about causality, what actually causes avoidant attachment style.

And again, if you feel like you know all of these things, you can skip to the end and get into how do you move out of it. But I want to make it super clear that understanding what causes avoidant attachment style is part of the way out of it. OK? Understanding the cause Avoidant Attachment Style is part of the way out of it.

We have to have a very robust understanding of these parts of ourselves and of our lives. So maybe just before I go on, a lot of the work around attachment style, you know, if you’re familiar with any of this work uh, you’ve maybe read a book called Attached heard of a lot of the work that Dr.

John Bowlby has done, or Mary Ainsworth those are very common. I pull from that, but I also pull from my good friend, colleague, and mentor, Mr. Dewey Freeman um, who you’ve You know, unless you’ve tuned in my show, you may not have ever heard of before he’s been doing attachment work and developmental psychology for 40 plus years.

He’s trained thousands of therapists and he’s created his own developmental an attachment based model, which I think is very simple and profound. And I will be sharing that in a future video. But there’s a couple causalities that I want to talk about here. Number one is emotional distance from a caregiver.

Emotional distance from a caregiver. And so Dr. John Bowlby actually observed that caregivers who are emotionally distant from their children are sort of unresponsive. to their children’s needs can lead to the development of an avoidant attachment style. So you can imagine being a kid and, you know, you are crying or you’re upset about something and your parent is largely non responsive.

They are not really responsive or caretaking of your emotional upsetness, of your distress. And as a child that can feel um, a whole bunch of ways. But what it teaches that child is essentially my emotions, my emotional experience doesn’t matter to the people that are around me. My emotional experience doesn’t matter to the people around me, or it’s not safe for me to trust my emotional experience with the people around me.

So in these cases, The child learns that showing any type of vulnerability seeking any kind of comfort during hardship, right? So just note some of these things as I’m going through, because if this is like pinging with you, these are parts of the things that are going to help you get the hell out of this avoidant territory.

Uh, So seeking comfort in another person when we’re going through hardship will not elicit a supportive response. from the caregiver, from the other person that we are in relationship. So that’s a really big piece. This emotional distance can be a really big piece. And I’m going to insert my good friend, Dewey Freeman, his definition of what makes a secure attachment.

It’s a super simple thing. It’s been a massive game changer for me to understand. And I think it’s going to help you. change the way that you engage in your relationship. So it’s super simple. Here it is. Attachment, secure healthy attachment is dependent on our ability to go through a hard time and come out the other side.

Okay. So secure healthy attachment is dependent on our ability to go through a hard time with another person, right? To stay in relationship. You probably communicate with them and they come out the other side. Okay. So a hard time can be, you know, you as a kid being bullied at school and talking to your parents about it and getting real support.

It can be, you know, you just crying as a kid cause you’re upset or you hurt yourself. and getting support for it. You can, that’s going through the hard time with that other person. You’re telling them, Hey, or you’re, you know, displaying in some fashion, I’m going through a hard time. And that other person is going through the hard time with you and you come out the other side.

Okay. Now this is important because how this shows up in your current day relationships. is going through a hard time usually revolves around some type of conflict, disconnection with your partner. Or it can be something that’s happening outside of the relationship, right? Maybe one of your parents is ill or sick.

Uh, Maybe you’re going through some type of struggle at work, or there’s a challenge in your business, or with one of your friends, and you can bring those things to your partner and you can, or any relationship, and you can go through that with them, you can go through that hard time and come out the other side okay.

What starts to break down this secure attachment, this healthy attachment, Is when we have the perspective of I can’t go through a hard time with you and come out the other side okay. So you hear this and see this in a lot of marriages and relationships. where the individuals have these reoccurring arguments and conflicts that they don’t feel like they ever moved through.

And so because of that, it’s like, no, I don’t trust you to go through a hard, I can’t trust you to go through a hard time with me. We never come out the other side okay. And it breaks down and erodes the attachment between the two people. So again, attachment, secure attachment. is two people’s ability to go through a hard time and come out the other side okay, in relationship, with contact, with intimacy, with openness.

So, back to emotional distance from caregivers. This is one of the main causes. of avoidant attachment. And it can look one or one or two other ways. emotional distance from the caregiver can also be high levels of control from that caretaker, high levels of manipulation from the caretaker.

And you know, maybe they were constantly controlling you, what you did, what you could say, you know, what you could wear. They were constantly manipulating you or, you know, sort of gaslighting you as you were growing up and, telling you that something wasn’t true when you knew that it was, or something didn’t happen when you knew that it was.

Uh, An example of this is You know, I’ve, I’ve worked with a number of men who caught a parent having an affair and the parent lied about it and said, no, you know, that’s not happening. That type of you know, it’s an extreme version, but that type of betrayal and then gaslighting can create a big rift in the attachment to the degree where you feel like you can’t trust.

Uh, Relationship. And so you start to pull away. So a last example, and this is for, you know, when we’re very young, is when you are a child and you start to cry or show distress, but you are ignored for whatever reason. Doesn’t matter what the reason is, right? Because again, you’re a child. You don’t have, your prefrontal cortex isn’t online.

You’re not reasoning through things like, Oh, I can see that mom’s super busy with my brother and sister. That’s not happening. It’s just, I’m distressed. I need something. I’m hungry. I need a diaper change. I need to be held because I’m, I’m feeling scared or whatever it is. If you are ignored or told to be quiet enough times by your caregiver, by mom, dad, whoever your caregiver is, the likelihood of you learning to suppress your emotional needs is very, very high.

So you start to avoid seeking comfort. So a big, big star, big asterisk that I want to put to this is if you are someone who experienced emotional distance as a child, Or emotional shutdown. You were told to be quiet. You’re told to stop crying. You’re told, you know, all those types of things. It’s very likely that you will continue that in your relationships.

You will continue to emotionally distance from your partner. You won’t trust that you can bring your emotional needs. You won’t trust that you can seek any type of comfort from your partner. And so you will leave all of those things out of the relationship. Now that’s a really big indicator. of how to actually resolve this avoidant attachment style and to start to move towards a secure attachment style, which we’re going to talk about more later.

But what I want to drop here is just the note that if this is something that you experienced quite a bit of, right? Mom was shut down. Dad was shut down. You know, it wasn’t safe for you to talk about what you were experiencing mostly or express what you needed. In any way, shape or form, you know, you’d ask for something that you wanted and you’d get yelled at or, you know, you’d go and try and seek some comfort when you were upset and you would get rejected or, you know, told to shut up or told to go to your room.

All of that is going to inform that you are going to have to risk starting to bring some of your emotional needs into your relationship because my guess is that they do not have a place. Usually the story here is my experience doesn’t matter. I’m going to touch more on that later.

Next, number two is the encouragement to be prematurely independent or situations that, that sort of thrusts you as a kid into premature independence.

So sometimes caregivers will encourage their children to be excessively independent. At a very, very young age you know, asking them to contribute around the household, asking them to take on adult like tasks which can cause that child to be put into a more adult orientation long before they are able to, and so the The secure attachment with the caregiver, with the adult, doesn’t actually have time to form or set and you’re being asked to take on something much bigger than you.

The analogy that I like here is, imagine pouring the foundation of a house and the concrete hasn’t actually set yet and you’re starting to try and build the frame on top of that. It’s going to create all types of challenges as you continue to build the rest of the home. So, an example of this is, You know, a caregiver who sort of pushes their child at a very young age.

To do a lot of tasks alone, right? If you’re like six years old and your parents are getting you to do the laundry or helping them balance their checkbook, or, you know, like you’re six years old and they’re, you know, getting you to try and understand monetary policy, like that, that kind of stuff is, is just.

Going to be too hard. Things that you’re not developmentally ready for can also be a big one. So trying to take on responsibility around the house, right? If you were, if you grew up in a single parent household and you had to take on the responsibility. Um, You know, for good or for worse of tending to another child, of being a disciplinarian for one of your siblings having to care for other kids like that, having to care maybe for a sick parent, etc.

Those can be a, big cause to the avoidant attachment style because again, like I said, it doesn’t allow for us to develop a very secure attachment with a caregiver. And what starts to happen within that child’s brain is other people’s needs matter more than mine. Other people’s needs matter more than mine.

And so I have to prioritize other people’s needs above mine. And this can create a very real sense of hostility within us. So that when we get older, it’s like, F that I’m not doing that. I’m not going to prioritize your needs. I’m not going to prioritize what you want or what you need. And anytime that you tell me what you want or need, I’m going to shut down.

I’m going to pull away, especially if it’s closeness, right? Especially if what you need is for me to be emotionally close to you, because then that feels like I’m going to have to take care of you.

Next is rejection of attachment needs. Rejection of attachment needs. So if a caregiver, if one of your parents consistently rejects or punishes you as a child, when you attempt to seek comfort or support, right, you had a nightmare um, you’re getting bullied at school, you hurt yourself physically and you get rejected or yelled at, you get punished or rejected.

When you’re trying to get that support, what can happen to you as a kid is that you adapt by developing the avoidant attachment style because you learn that it’s not okay for me to ask for support. It’s not okay for me to make my needs known, and so how I, how I have to adapt and survive, right, again, avoidant attachment styles and anxious attachment styles, they are adaptive strategies.

So, if I keep asking you, as my parent, for support, for help, and you reject it, and you punish me for that, what it teaches me is that what I need and want ultimately need to stay out of our relationship, okay? And again, this is the big piece of avoidant attachments is that we believe, and I was an avoidant attachment style.

We believe that our needs, our wants, our fundamental core desires within a relationship don’t really matter, and so we start to withhold them because we believe, what’s the point? And so there’s sort of this learned helplessness that can show up within an avoidant. There’s a learned helplessness that can sometimes show up in an avoidant that says it doesn’t matter what I want or need.

I can’t bring, my needs or wants or my desires forward because that would cause some type of conflict in the relationship. So again, an example of this is, you know, a child reaching out for a hug when they are feeling sad or when they’re feeling lonely or when they hurt themselves and then being pushed away or scolded leading them to stop seeking physical affection.

That’s an example, Or you might bring a problem to a parent, you know, something that’s happening at school or with one of your siblings. And what you’re looking for is support and reassurance that what you’re feeling is okay, and instead what you get is, you know, I don’t have time to deal with this right now, or this isn’t a big deal, you know, I don’t understand why you’re making a big deal of this, or like, just get over it, or even worse, you get punished for bringing that to your parents, right?

What the hell’s wrong with you? Like, well, this is stupid. Why do you think that this is an issue? That’s going to reinforce internally when I’m going through something challenging, it doesn’t matter to other people. So I should just offload it. Lastly, one of the main causes, one of the last main cause I’m going to talk about today is consistency or predictability of intimacy and connection.

Predictability and consistency of connection or intimacy. So, when we are young, when you are developing very early on in life, what you need more than anything else is just consistency and predictability. When you are an infant, especially how you develop a sense of safety and trust in other people and in the world.

Is through repeatedly crying, through repeatedly trying to express your needs, even though it might be, you know, pre verbal, you might not actually be saying, I’m hungry, I want to eat, or, you know, I need to take a piss or anything like that, it’s just pre verbal, and having those needs be consistently met.

closeness, having physical touch and physical connection, having emotional connection, being consistently and predictably met. One of the biggest harms is inconsistent responses from caregivers or inconsistent emotional stability. So if a caregiver is sometimes nurturing, But sometimes incredibly cold and disconnected almost in like this bipolar way where you just you don’t know if you’re going to get this loving, kind, nurturing person or you’re going to get this completely shut off individual or, or on the other side of the spectrum, you don’t know if you’re going to get this loving, kind person or this person who’s like this monster who’s yelling at you and screaming or calling you names or being verbally, emotionally, or physically abusive.

That type of inconsistency is going to cause the response of, I can’t trust you to be consistently relational. And again, this doesn’t mean that the parents or caregivers aren’t allowed to have some type of volatility, right? I’m not saying that a parent getting upset or being disconnected sometimes isn’t acceptable.

That’s totally normal. What I’m talking about is that the consistency that happens with your parent is that you can consistently expect them to be inconsistent. you can consistently expect them to be inconsistent. So what you experienced growing up was, I just never knew what I was going to get.

I never knew what to expect. Sometimes I’d say a joke and they’d laugh, and sometimes I’d say a joke and they’d like lose their shit. And so that type of inconsistency causes a a mistrust. in relationship, in connection, in intimacy, and it causes a mistrust in the other person’s ability to take care of themselves.

And so again, the avoidant attachment style starts to develop because we have this confusion as kids that starts to develop a lack of trust in the caregiver, which sort of fosters that avoidant attachment style, right? Because it’s like, I can’t trust you. To be consistent. And so it’s easier for me, again, protective strategy.

It’s easier for me to pull in the nets and disconnect from you because I don’t know what I’m going to get. And so if I’m disconnected from you, at least I know what I’m going to get then. Because our brain is a pattern recognition machine. Our nervous system is, is connected to that and it wants to know can you be predictable?

So again, a big part, I’m just going to drop this hint in, a big part of creating a secure attachment, a healthy attachment style, is predictability. It’s consistency in staying in connection, staying in intimacy. Leaning into the discomfort of a conversation when you’re wanting to shut down, when you’re wanting to pull away, when you’re wanting to blame the other person, it’s consistency and predictability in staying connected and staying in the, the we dynamic of the relationship.

instead of pulling away entirely, which is what ends up happening for a lot of avoidant attachment styles. A lot of avoidant attachment styles, especially the ones who experience the lack of consistency and predictability, are the same ones who might develop some connection and some closeness and then, you know, they’ll do something to pull away.

And so we repeat that pattern again. All right. So now we’re going to talk about what it actually looks like, what this avoidance looks like in your relationship. So these will be some signs of what to look for, whether you are the avoiding partner or you’re with an avoiding partner. Then I’m going to talk about what do you do if you are with an avoiding partner.

an avoidant partner. And then I’m going to close out with the, probably the big question that some of you are here for, which is what do I do if I am the avoidant partner? How do I start to move out of that behavior and move towards a more secure attachment style? Now the interesting thing about avoidant people is that oftentimes they have great relationships.

they can be very fun to be around. And they can oftentimes have a lot of, a lot of friendships, a lot of relationships. But there’s a certain quality of depth that’s lacking and you can kind of sense that or feel that whether you are with that person or you are that person, right?

So as an example, for me in the past, a lot of my male friendships, they didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes of my life. They didn’t know that I was struggling with alcohol or smoking weed too much or that I was womanizing or struggling with porn. They just really didn’t know about. the challenges that I was facing because that would feel like too intimate of a detail to tell them.

It felt like it was too much closeness to actually even let the men in my life, my buddies, some of my best friends ever in on the game of what I was struggling with. So that’s just an example, but I’m going to give you a list of things that you can look for. When it comes to an avoidant partner. Now, again just because your partner has one of these things or you have one of these things doesn’t make necessarily make you an avoidant person or partner.

But if you have a bunch of them, it’s probably a pretty decent sign. So number one is not returning texts or calls. Or emails, although I, you know, I don’t think a lot of couples generally email each other but not returning texts or calls, forgetting to respond consistently can be a big sign of avoidance, forgetting plans, special occasions, dates, that can be another big sign And those two things can really be self destructive or sabotage mechanisms. Right? The avoidant person might not even be fully aware that they are doing these things on a consistent basis. Another one is not reciprocating expressions of intimacy or love or affection. Right? So you might find that if you are an avoidant partner, you, you might say that you want more intimacy or want more sex with your partner.

And then when they try and initiate, you find yourself shutting down, you find yourself making excuses for not having that intimacy or not having sex. Uh, You might find that they, you know, your partner is expressing love and admiration for you or to you and you struggle to actually let it in or reciprocate that back to them.

Another one is deflecting conversations generally when it comes to the relationship progressing around more commitment. Such as, you know, getting into a committed relationship, moving in together, getting engaged, those types of things. An avoidant person will oftentimes, it’s those inflection points where they will have a lot of maybe combativeness, or they’re shut down, or there’s excuses about why you can’t talk about it, but there’s some form of deflection away from that conversation.

Um, Next is maybe dismissing or making fun of the other partner’s attempts to create closeness and intimacy or connect in a deeper way. So you might have a partner, right? If you are the avoidant person, you might have a partner who’s trying to get you to read a book that would bring you closer together or go to a workshop or listen to a podcast or, you know, go on a certain date, whatever it might be.

And you find yourself responding to those things, which those are bids for connection. Those are bids for affection and closeness. You might find yourself responding to those things by mocking them dismissing them, you know, calling them ridiculous or whatever that might be. Next is there’s a certain level of discomfort with emotional closeness.

There’s a dislike of opening up to others and expressing thoughts or feelings. Opinions are okay. Beliefs are okay, but opening up about thoughts or feelings specifically about the relationship or intimacy that might lead to more closeness is oftentimes, it feels like a threat. avoidant people will definitely find it very challenging to trust that somebody else can be relied on.

And this is a big one. And you can see most avoidant people are successful, not maybe, maybe not most, but many avoidant people are actually quite successful because they have an extremely high level of self reliance. But they have a very low level of external reliance, of relying and trusting on others.

And this can bleed into their work environment where They start to get into a leadership position and they start to struggle with actually relinquishing control. I remember when I started my company one of the biggest challenges that I had was when I brought on a COO to help me run my business and I had such a hard time relinquishing things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing in my business that I had hired them for.

But for the life of me, it was really this battle because I was so not used to trusting other people with being able to contribute to my life. Next is that they prefer to maintain very rigid or strong boundaries in the relationship. They may pull away or shut down if somebody questions those boundaries that are very rigid and very harsh.

They may pull away if people start to get more emotionally close, and when conflict arises, they prefer to kind of go into their own camps. So, more avoidant people, especially people that are very avoidant, when conflict arises, the approach that they take is not, let’s try and solve this together.

It’s you go and think about it, I’ll go and think about it, and then we’ll kind of, you know, figure our own stuff out and we’ll move through it like that. Lastly is they might seem a little bit distant or aloof, maybe cold sometimes. And they might really overvalue their independence and self sufficiency.

So it might be this thing that is this You know, it is a very big strength in their life. I know that for me, my independence and my self sufficiency has been a very big strength in my life, but it was also a crutch. And it was also a blind spot that oftentimes was causing me to miss out on where I could be getting support to actually move faster and farther.

So those are a couple signs. Next, I’m going to talk about what to do if you’re with your avoiding partner. And then I’m going to talk about what to do if you are the avoiding partner. Again, if you are the avoiding partner, you can skip past this part. But it is kind of helpful to also know what to look for within your partner, because the things that I’m going to lay out here uh, are good for your partner to know so that the two of you can actually work towards a more secure, healthy, deep attachment style.

So if you are the person that is with. If you’re with the avoidant attachment, if you’re with somebody that has more avoidant behaviors, then, and I think it’s also helpful. One of the things I want to say before we get into any of this is try your best not to use this label in the relationship, right?

Whether your partner is anxious or avoidant or whatever it is, these labels are meant to just be a category or a categorization of behaviors. It is not meant to be a label that you put on somebody else. Right? It’s not meant to be something that’s like you’re acting so avoidant right now.

That is no go behavior in the relationship. I really want to make this clear. If you’re with somebody who’s anxious, you know, being like, Oh, you’re, you’re so anxious right now and I can’t stand it. Or like, you know, this is your anxious attachment style right now. People say that and it’s not helpful and it doesn’t do anything but reinforce these behaviors.

So what do you do if you are with. Somebody who has more avoidant behaviors. Number one is do not chase. Do your best to not chase. And this is going to be very hard, even if you are a secure person, because being with an avoidant person can elicit more anxious emotions and feelings. Because when you’re used to just being in a relationship and knowing what to expect and having consistency.

And when you lean into emotional closeness or some type of intimacy, it’s reciprocated and responded back to. When that doesn’t happen, the natural tendency is to start to self question. And when we start to self question, is there something wrong with me? Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to change tactics?

That can lead to this Pursued and pursuer dynamic where the avoidant person becomes the pursued person and the non avoidant person, whether they’re secure or anxious or whatever, begins to pursue the other person. And that dynamic is going to actually push the avoidant further and further away. So how we need to respond to it is you have to continue to encourage and let the other person make decisions to choose closeness, to choose connection and how you do that is by creating openings.

You create opportunities for closeness. You create inflection points where people can choose closeness. And so that’s, you know, simple things like saying, Hey would you like to plan a date for us? Or Hey, how would you feel if I planned a date for us? Or, I’d love for you to come and sit closer to me.

Are you up for that? I would love uh, I’d love a hug right now. Are you good with that? Right. So creating these opportunities where the other person can choose closeness or not. All right. Now that’s going to, I’m going to go down the line here cause there’s some other ones that are going to play into this.

Next is try and reduce the amount of criticism that you bring into the relationship. Criticism is like fuel for the avoidant person. It is fuel for the shutdown and the pulling away. And it really reinforces relationships aren’t safe. They’re not worth the energy. Instead, try and reinforce what’s already working in the relationship and try and maintain a focus on the areas of the relationship that are great.

Because for the avoidant person, it’s also very common, as we talked about earlier on, that the avoidant person views you as the problem already. And for them, the more that you criticize, the more that you actually reinforce the story that they hold that says, You’re the problem and I’m not. Right? So the more that you point the finger at them and say, you need to change this.

You need to fix this. You need to stop doing that. I hate when you pull away. How come you don’t text me back? All those things are going to make the avoidant person just like, Oh, like, get away from me. I need to create space from you. So try and really catch yourself in the act of criticizing, complaining, and start to shift a lot of your energy and focus towards reinforcing what works well.

Within the relationship. Next is to stop making demands or using ultimatums as a tactic to get what you want or change behavior. Stop using demands or ultimatums in order to change behavior. What a lot of people do when they get into a relationship with an avoidant. Is when they’ve sort of exhausted other efforts to have that person come closer is they start to use ultimatums, right?

Like if you don’t start doing X or Y, we’re done, right? Or if you’re not going to do that, then I’m going to start withholding this, right? If you’re not going to open up to me, then I’m not having sex with you as much or whatever it is, right? I’m just throwing out examples that I’ve heard couples use and deploy in the past.

And when people are in a more avoidant state, and you start to use an ultimatum, again, it reinforces That experience that they’ve already had in early childhood of my needs don’t matter. And if I’m not giving that other person exactly what they need, then I’m not going to get what I want. And that can be frustrating because sometimes you’re not really sure what they want.

It feels like this, you know, elusive thing that is mysterious, that’s missing from the relationship. And you’re like, I don’t know how to give you what you want because you won’t tell me really how you feel. And so what a lot of people will do is they’ll, they’ll demand something. You have to go to therapy or I’m leaving you.

You have to read this book. You have to listen to this podcast. Otherwise we’re done. We have to go to this workshop or, you know, I’m moving out or whatever it is. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time and place. For ultimatums. But for me, 98 to 99 percent of the time, they are not warranted. They do not work and they are not relational.

Ultimatums are not relational. They do not create choice. And they do not create an opening for any type of closeness or conversation. Which brings me to my next point. Choice, choice, choice, choice, choice. The other person, the avoidant person, needs to be given a lot of choice. And they need to be inquired with about what it’s like for them to have that choice.

So I’m going to explain this a little bit. Our avoidance are often the way that they are because early on in life, they were either had their choice completely taken away, right? The choice of, I want closeness, I want connection, I want to be in relationship with you, or their choice was taken away by them having to take on so much responsibility.

And they didn’t actually feel like they had much of a choice in that matter. And so what can happen is that avoidance become the sort of controllers of choice in the relationship, right? It’s like, if I can just control everything in the relationship, then I never really have to be in this seat of telling you what I really want.

And so I never really have to choose because I’m just withholding in order to get, I’m withholding what. you need or what you want in order to try and get what I want. So the more that you actually give your avoidant partner some choice, right? Do you want to go on a date tonight?

Do you want to eat this? I’d love for you to come and sit closer to me on the couch. Do you want to do that? Are you open to that? even like small things like, I’d love to make out with you right now. Are you open to doing that? Do you want to? Those types of things can really be helpful because what it does, Is it puts the avoidant person in the seat of having to make a decision, having to make a choice in a really small way.

And the more that they can make choices, the more that they can make decisions in the relationship, the more it teaches them, it’s actually safe for me to have a voice in the relationship. It’s safe for me to choose what I want in the relationship. And most importantly, it is safe for me to be honest and open about what I really want.

Which is vulnerability, right? Which is emotional connection. And the follow up is, what’s it like to get to make choices in our relationship, right? So you can ask questions like, are you open to talking about this? Are you open to having a conversation with this? Are you open to uh, sharing what you’re experiencing?

If not, right? If the person says, no, I’m not open to talking about this. I’m not open to affirming this. Uh, Having a conversation about it. Affirm that that’s fine and that you’re there to connect with them. You’re there to have a conversation with them when they are ready and reaffirm that you’re not going to chase them.

Right? You’re not going to chase them and reaffirm that it’s their choice to lean in and open up and connect when they are ready, whether that connection is emotional, sexual, physical, intellectual, et cetera. Last, and this is the hard one try not to personalize what is happening, right? Try not to personalize them pulling away.

What ends up happening for a lot of people who are in relationship with avoidance is that, and this is what really starts to hurt or erode the connection in the relationship, is that people that are on the other side of the avoidance start to personalize that there’s something going on with them that’s causing the other person to pull away, that’s causing their person to shut down.

And when we do that, it creates a whole of challenges. So do your best to not personalize, maybe get some on your own resources, but all of those things will help and support you. now for the big stuff. What do you do? How do you handle it if you are the avoidant person in the relationship and want to move to a more secure relational style?

A couple of things. Number one, you have to unequivocally, like you just have to if you want to, this is going off the choice conversation before, but where we all need to start is understanding the origins of your avoidant attachment. Where did it actually come from? And the reason why this is important is that part of the healing for all avoidance, is to see the patterns and the behaviors that created their avoidance in the first place.

Because, and I don’t know how else to say this, more often than not, an avoidant has learned their avoidant attachment from an avoidant attachment. Okay, oftentimes if you are avoidant, you learn that avoidant attachment style from another attachment style, right? One of your parents had a very emotionally disconnected attachment style in some way, shape, or form.

And so, it’s quite common that it’s a learned behavior, and if you can start to see the patterns. in your parent. And this is the hard part, but it’s the thing that we all need to come into contact with if we are the avoidant person. What we start to see is that we are putting our partner in the same position that we felt we were in growing up.

Okay. We’re putting our partner into this position where they’re starved of the connection, the intimacy and the closeness that they’re wanting. And that’s a very similar position that we were in when we were a child with a caregiver or with somebody that we deeply loved. So we have to start to do that work.

Now, maybe I can create a separate section on that for you guys to kind of dig into, but that work should really be done with a psychologist, therapist, or coach that really knows what they’re doing when it comes to attachment style. This is why at our men’s weekends and all the programs that I do, a big portion of it focuses in on helping you become a secure attachment style.

Number two, prioritize your experience. Prioritize your experience. Avoiding people usually have the story that what they need or want doesn’t matter, or they have to sort of manipulate and coerce things to get what they want. Right? So there’s usually this story of like, well, what I want doesn’t matter.

If I say what I want, it’s going to cause a problem. If I try and tell somebody how I really feel, it’s going to be used against me. It’s going to be used to harm me. I’m going to get rejected because of it. I’m going to get punished because of it. And so because of that, avoidant people actually do not generally prioritize their real internal experience.

So their real wants, needs, and desires. Are oftentimes omitted from the intimate relationships in their life. And they might seem counter to that because again, in relationships, when a avoidant gets in a relationship with a secure or an anxious person, what ends up happening is that the avoidant person is getting pursued.

They’re constantly getting chased. And so for the other partner, it can feel like the whole relationship is about the avoidant person, but for the avoidant person, what it’ll feel like for them is my needs actually aren’t a priority in this relationship. And that’s what create a tremendous amount of confusion.

And, and conflict in the relationship. So you have to start to be willing to be specific about what you’re experiencing in the relationship, not complaints about the other person, but actually to communicate your wants, your needs, your desires. And you might want to start by owning the fact that you have a hard time building, developing, maintaining closeness in the relationship.

because that’s you prioritizing your experience of, I have a hard time trusting, not you. But I have a hard time trusting closeness. I have a hard time being open and honest about what I’m feeling. I have a hard time actually asking you for what I want and need. I remember working with a man, and this is just an example, who was in a relationship with a woman and they’ve been dating for a couple of years.

And he said he really had struggled for his entire life to communicate what he wanted sexually in the bedroom. He felt like he had never been able to actually ask for what he wanted in the bedroom because he was so worried that he was going to get rejected and denied. And so he had to start to open up with the woman that he was dating and start to say, Hey, listen, I’d like to explore X, Y, and Z.

I would really love for you to do this or for us to explore this. And it was something that he had never done in any prior relationship and it really opened up their relationship in a massive, massive way. So you have to start to prioritize your own experience, your own needs, your own wants and desires.

And where you can start is just writing, just taking a pen and paper and making a bit of a list. Like what are some of the things that I want in the relationship, right? Do you want to go on a date night a week? Do you want to go and have a specific type of date? Do you want to do more travel or adventure or hiking with your, you know, with your partner?

Do you want to go and travel to certain places? Are there certain conversations that you want to have, right? So start to really just write out what are some of the things that you know you already want to be included into the relationship that you’ve maybe been struggling to talk about or to open up about.

Number three is shift from blame to ownership. Shift from blame to ownership. Avoidance tend to over index blaming the other person as a defense mechanism, right? It’s not a attack weapon. It’s a defense mechanism. And so one of the things that we have to do when we recognize that we are the avoidant partner.

is that part of how we are creating distance and space between us and our partner is over indexing that they are the problem, that there’s either something wrong with them or, you know, the decisions that they’re making or that, you know, they’re constantly in the wrong. we have to start to take ownership over our part.

in the conflict and you have to start to take ownership over your part in the disconnection in the relationship. And so when something isn’t working in the relationship and you have conflict around it, you have to step away and take a real solid look at what’s my responsibility in this. How am I contributing to the disconnection?

How am I contributing? To this conflict. And once you start to do that, you can bring that back to the table and take ownership over, you know, what I, I shut down in that conversation, or I actually wasn’t listening to you, or, you know, I was blaming you for what was going on, but you have to start to look at taking ownership over your part of the relational dysfunction and specifically, and this is the big, big, big piece.

That you need to start to take ownership over in order to move into a more secure attachment style, you have to take ownership over the ways in which you are pulling away, shutting down, or disconnecting. It cannot be the responsibility of your partner. And the reason for that is that even if they were pointing it out and they were right, it would still cause you to pull away.

So you have to take ownership over all the ways in which you disconnect, shut down, pull away from emotional closeness, physical closeness, and sexual closeness. And so where I would encourage you to start with that. Is again, just sit down and start to take stock of what are some of the ways in which I pull away, shut down, or disconnect in my relationship.

And just start to write some of those pieces out so you can catch yourself in the moment and take ownership over them and lean into closeness and connections. The times in which you would normally You know, conflict starts to brew up and you shut down and pull away, or, you know, your wife or your girlfriend makes a comment about how you forgot about something instead of shutting down or like, you always do this, or, you know, you’re always criticizing me, you lean in and say, you’re right.

I did forget this. I did forget to pick that up from the grocery store or whatever it is. Next, use shut down as a bridge. Use shut down as a bridge. Now this is a really, really important one. Every single time you want to shut down or pull away, or you find yourself shutting down or pulling away, call it out.

It might be in a conflict and you can say, I’m shutting down right now. Or it might be, you know, you and your partner haven’t had great communication for a few days. And you can feel yourself pulling away. You can feel yourself wanting to disconnect. You can feel yourself wanting to move towards coping mechanisms, whatever they might be.

Call it out and say, you know what, I feel like there’s a lot of distance between us. I feel like I’m pulling away. Have you felt that too? And in this way, you’re using the recognition of the shutdown as a bridge for connection. You’re using the recognition of shutdown as a bridge of connection. And you can use that to open up into a conversation about number two, point number two, which was prioritize your experience.

And you can say things like, Hey, I’m shutting down. I need a minute. Let’s reconnect. And you can take a breath and lean back in. And then you can say what’s actually underneath the shutdown, right? What’s actually happening behind that? Are you worried about letting them down? Are you worried that your needs don’t matter?

Are you worried that you, you know, if you ask what you want, you’re going to be rejected? Are you just struggling in some way, shape, or form because you feel a little bit lonely, right? Like whatever it might be, but use that shutdown as a bridge to reconnect to your partner. Next is build trust. With routine and repetition.

So just because you use shutdown as a bridge one time doesn’t mean that that’s going to magically move you out of this avoidant behavior. You are going to need some repetition, right? It’s like a golf swing. You’re not gonna get up to the golf tee and crack it 300 yards right down the middle of the fairway, right?

You’re gonna, you’re gonna shit the bed a couple of times. It’s gonna go way off to the right or way off to the left. You know, you’re gonna hook it. You’re gonna slice it. That’s gonna happen. It’s gonna take some practice. So you need to have a bit of a routine and some repetition to actually lean into intimacy and to begin to trust That it’s okay for you to ask for your needs to be met.

It’s okay for you to be open and transparent, to prioritize your experience. It’s okay for you to take ownership not only over your part of any conflict or dysfunction, but it’s okay for you to take ownership over what you actually want.

One thing that can be very helpful in this part of it is to schedule a weekly or bi weekly experience or date or conversation with your partner where you get to share something with that person. You get to share in something with that person. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but it can be an art class, you could go do pottery, you could go to a sporting event, you can go and Have a hobby together, right?

A photography walk, a walk through the forest, a hike. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but it is a very specific and intention intentional time where you and your partner are committed to creating some type of connection. Now, the reason why this is important is because you’re going to find yourself wanting to sabotage around that and all of your.

Avoidant BS is going to pop up around it. You’re going to, you know, the two or three times in, you’re going to find like, I don’t want to go do this thing, or, or maybe we can just skip this week or whatever it is, and it’ll be a training ground for you to prioritize consistent connection, consistent intimacy.

Remember what I talked about in the beginning for many avoidance, one of the things that creates avoidant attachment in the first place is inconsistent connection, inconsistent intimacy. And so we have to be willing to prioritize that in order to do the last piece, which is get uncomfortably close.

Realize and remember that for you as an avoidant person, closeness feels foreign. And closeness feels like a threat to your system. And so you have to be willing to lean in and you can ask yourself the question, if I was putting the relationship first, what choice would I make? I love this question for me in the past.

And for any avoidant man that I’ve ever worked with, this question has been a radical game changer because for the avoidant person, it is a me first life. I have to protect myself first. Because nobody else is going to do it for me. And so we have to start to shift and say, okay, I’m in this with somebody.

I’m in a life together with somebody. I’m in a relationship with somebody. So if I was putting the relationship first, what choice would I make, you know, about this date, about this decision? And you don’t have to use that every single time, but start to leverage that question because it can really help you reorient.

your mind and your body to a more relationship centric way of living and choosing versus a me centric individual way of living and choosing that’s leaving you alone, disconnected, unhappy, and not getting what you actually crave and want in your relationship. So with all that said, Thanks so much for tuning in.

Please man it forward and share this episode with somebody that you know, could use it. This might be one of those episodes. Probably is one of those episodes that you sit down with your partner and you tune into it individually or together. You take notes, you talk about it, you discuss, and you make a plan for your relationship and you work on this together.

So thank you so much for tuning in. Let me know what other topics you want me to dive into. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.