There is a certain part of the population that carry consistent doubts about the stability and loyalty of all intimate relationships. For the anxiously attached lover, lover doesn’t come with guarantees. There is always something that might threaten the relationship leading to betrayal and abandonment.

Our partners might hold us tight and insist that they do in fact love us very much, but nonetheless deep within our psyches the fears persist. What if they secretly found someone else and are planning to leave us? Why else would they not message us since 7:14 when they usually respond within minutes? Why don’t they prioritize spending time with us as they do with others if they claim to care about us? The anxious lover only rests briefly, disaster is always around the corner, fear is permanent.

To make their suffering worse, the Anxiously attached tend to be almost entirely only attracted to their opposites: The Avoidants. Just like their anxious counterparts, Avoidants also operate from a place of fear. They are afraid of losing their independence, of being exposed, and of being consumed. Yet, though avoidants also fear abandonment, they respond to this threat in a very different way: they wear a mask of indifference, pushing away those they want but cannot control.

And here begins the toxic cycle. The Anxious clings claiming that the other person is too distant, while the Avoidant pushes back insisting that they are standing to close.

What then might we do to ease the friction of dating an Avoidant without pushing them away?

We should for starters become suspicious of our suspicions.

When worries and fear strike, we should question our suspicions just like how we are suspicious of our lovers. Most of our worries we have will simply not come and are just delusions. The safety that we long for lies in learning to disregard our impulses.

Second, we should learn to honestly express our fears.

Avoidants are inherently sensitive to intensity and anger. Rather than characteristically picking up the phone and telling them of the many ways in which they have failed us (an anger response). We should instead learn to articulate our worries in the language of vulnerability, keeping a good chunk of our fears to ourselves. And if we fail and act from anger, we must create space for a couple days without insisting or accusations, limiting our interactions to a simple ‘so sorry about this morning, I hope everything is Okay”.

Without learning these principles we risk needlessly destroying relationships, pushing away good lovers based on suspicions, and years of loneliness because we haven’t mastered the fear of being alone.

We must learn to trust more and suspect less. To shallow our sense of danger and soothe ourselves, we must learn say, “It’s okay they love me, they just need some time alone…” or “It’s okay that they don’t want physical closeness as much as I do. They show me love in other ways.”