A Guide For the Recovering Avoidant

avoidant is the term usefully coined by attachment theorists to define those of us who through no fault of our own but with full responsibility for our condition have grave difficulties around Intimate Relationships we may want in principle to be close to people but in reality we tend to find ourselves feeling claustrophobic and sickened whenever we grow overly involved with anyone we long to sleep somewhere on our own after love making we want to make independent plans for the weekend we rather ungratefully cool whenever a partner becomes too affectionate towards us or if a relationship threatens

to work our thoughts turn as though by some automatic process to the charms of other people researchers tell us where this comes from somewhere long in our pasts our relationships with our caregivers didn't go as they should have done someone let us down someone implicitly taught us that love was not to be trusted someone injected us with a dual suspicion of ourselves and of the solidity of any bond with another and so we learn to associate distance and Solitude with safety we may be high functioning in many parts of life when it comes to love

we may until now simply never have been able to get things to work it sounds dispiriting and even rather dangerous to be around but we can find Hope and in an important detail that there is a substantial difference between acting avoidantly from unconscious motives on the one hand and on the other feeling drawn to avoidant responses while being actively and preemptively aware of what is actually going on there is a difference in other words between acting out and insight the latter doesn't miraculously remove the problem but it gives us an enormous Advantage the capacity to

warn others that we care about and might well in a rational part of our minds be sincerely trying to build a relationship with that we are not fully well arguably in love we don't need or in any case unlikely to find perfection what we need are people with a more or less solid grasp on some of their leading imperfections who can then warn us of them with charm Grace and apology before too much damage has been done there is a sizeable difference between ruining a weekend for someone by mysteriously deciding at the last moment that

one has made other plans and explaining to the partner on a Thursday evening that the prospect of 48 hours in their company though fully welcome in theory in practice has generated an awkward set of emotional responses that lie outside one's full control and for which one feels embarrassed and thoughtful there is a sizable difference between acting madly and sharing ing the temptation to do so ahead of time for the recovering avoidant the following speech might be helpful I'm so sorry for being peculiar I care about you a lot it's just I've observed that when I

do care something a bit odd happens a part of me tries to manage the distance and find fault a part of me that dates back to a defense mechanism of childhood needs to put some walls between us because proximity feels at some level odd and frightening it's how I learned to cope way back and the mechanism still operates within me now it's not that I don't love you it's the being around love and depending on someone brings with it Terrors on account of Dynamics in my past that I'm working on I'm trying to switch off

the alarm I'm a little crazy but I have a good therapist I'm committed to the work please bear with me but I would understand entirely if you couldn't none of this is perfect one wouldn't necessarily wish this kind of relationship on anyone one cared about but in the real world which is where many of us have to live we cannot magic away the condition the 25% or so of the population with avoidant traits have options they can have all the neuroses that their condition lends them they can feel eerie whenever someone is too close to

them they can want to get away after too much time together they can hate cuddling but they can put in the effort to acquire one advantage they can can know they are damaged they can give a map of their folies to those who depend on them furthermore once they've laid hands on the maturity to be able to say I find love so hard and so frightening it might even become a little less so and on the other side of the equation once one has been thoroughly warned one may just find the sad Behavior easier to

bear or at least easier to understand and where necessary to get cleanly out of the way of we don't just have the option of being avoidant or not the madness can be invited into the relationship and addressed without shame or mystery we can aspire to a valuable third position as we work on improving ourselves that of the recovering avoidant the avoidant under no Illusions as to their sanity and daily committed to learning to slowly bear the Ecstasy and Sublime risks of mutual love