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Avoidants come back after space
Why they return
While together, the avoidant person is triggered, decides the other person is the problem, and runs. They date someone else, who triggers them too. Now they have space from you, so maybe you weren't so bad. They return saying it wasn't you, and then they are triggered again, because sitting with emotion is uncomfortable and they want to hop out.
How the pairing forms
The pairing forms easily. The anxious person sees someone stoic, confident, and able to be alone. The avoidant person sees someone warm with a big personality. Then the avoidant pulls away, the anxious person asks where they are going, and the avoidant starts to feel suffocated.
Two sides of one coin
Anxious people avoid something too: whatever is coming up for them. They want someone to confirm they will be okay, because being in their own skin is uncomfortable. Hyper-independence and hyper-codependence are the two sides of one coin.
Why does closeness feel like a threat to avoidants?
Psychologists Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver described deactivating strategies, which avoidantly attached adults use to suppress attachment needs, downplay emotions, and keep distance from anything that stirs them up. In 1992, Mary Dozier and Roger Kobak found that avoidant participants denied distress in an attachment interview while their skin conductance, a measure of arousal, jumped. The calm is on the surface and the body is still reacting.
How does the pursue-and-withdraw loop sustain itself?
In 1990, Andrew Christensen and Christine Heavey named the demand-withdraw pattern, in which one partner pursues through requests or criticism while the other retreats. Each partner's move intensifies the other's: more pursuit brings more withdrawal, and more withdrawal brings more pursuit. Sue Johnson, who founded emotionally focused therapy, called one version of the cycle the protest polka.
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