Having avoidant attachment on its own is not a personality disorder; it’s a relational pattern. And therefore it could change.
And usually, if you’re having challenges with avoidant people, it’s because you’re an anxious/disorganised attacher yourself. This results in a cycle of each of you dealing with stress in the opposite way, meaning that you’re both triggering each other at a time both of you are on high alert. You’re driven to come immediately towards them or react, and they’re retreating to a safe distance to re-regulate or they’re avoiding their and/or your feelings to maintain a sense of stability – the only way they’ve ever known how.
This means anytime there’s some kind of daily challenge or a crisis, the time when teamwork feels most crucial, your coping strategies are pretty much the opposite, and the sense of being in a team working together to overcome the challenge feels impossible.
In my experience you need two things in order for this to change:
1. Being able to cope with these challenges coming from a really regulated place, where you can talk calmly and without great emotional charge is important. Additionally to be able to come to a conversation without defensive or accusatory language, as well as your own confidence that you will survive the challenge, regardless of their participation, will relieve the pressure enough to make connection possible.
Avoidants tend towards avoiding big emotions generally; in themselves and in you. Even though your concerns and requests are valid, coming at an avoidant with that level of emotional charge frequently feels threatening to them. If they don’t usually shut you down when you’re both regulated, then this is a positive sign that they can engage in the right situation.
This doesn’t feel fair and often puts the pressure on you to become the emotional barometer in the relationship (if you’re not already). But being realistic, this tends to be necessary if you want to make progress with your person.
2. Your avoidant partner needs to at least be agreeable to conversations about this some of the time, and to be prepared to show up and continue to work on things in some meaningful way. They may not be open to doing any 1:1 work with a professional. But if they’re curious enough to read, watch educational content online and make quiet progress on their own and come back to you to talk it through and make new agreements, that is definitely enough to get started with, if you’ve decided to stick with them for now.
In my experience, if you don’t address 1, 2 will be much harder, especially if they’re resistant to discussion in the first place, or your attempts so far haven’t been hitting the spot.
And ultimately, whether your avoidant partner changes or not, you will feel better for addressing your own patterns anyway. And you’ll feel so much better able to navigate things without the shame, fear, abandonment worry, and everything else that comes up during this repetitive pattern.
If you’ve tried everything else and don’t fancy going around the wheel another time, just repeating the same dance, and you want to see what positive change is actually possible, let’s talk!