Anxiety caused by avoidant partner
I am going through a breakup right now with someone who has always had a difficult time opening up emotionally. He is a great man with good morals but carries a lot of trauma and only opened up once in his life to his best friend. I loved him truly and I wanted to be there for him, but I realized the more I try to connect the more anxious I‘d feel because he would not reciprocate.
He’s also not the type of person who enjoys “deep chats”, and while we were in a relationship he did not seem to care to ask about what I think about to the level I wanted and all in all I felt very neglected and concluded that he did not love me in the first place. But one week after we broke up I told him this, and he broke into tears saying he does love me and that he just can’t open up emotionally to anyone and was going though depression. We had a heart to heart conversation and now we are talking about potentially getting back together.
I knew I had anxious attachment but I never knew it was this bad. I want to be able to control my emotions but they’re controlling me. I know I rambled a lot but if anyone has any thoughts on how I should approach this I’d really appreciate it. If I can, I want to try again while learning to better manage my emotions as we love each other deeply and both want to heal.
@spiritedrabbit
I'm anxious attached and my partner is avoidant. The main thing for me was learning to support myself so that I was less reliant on my partner. Self belief, self validation and self esteem building have all been key for me. And recognising that when I'm panicking about distance between us, my partner is probably perfectly happy and totally unaware, so I really don't need to fix it, I just need to get on with something else, until they want to re-connect.
You probably will have to accept that your relationship is unlikely to ever be of the demonstrative type, and if that is really important to you, then you might have to accept that you are not compatible, however much love there is. Be realistic about what you need. If you need lots of validation and reassurance from your partner, your relationship is likely to be undermined with frustration.
Avoidant people can learn to be less avoidant. But it will be a slow process and the more you push for change, the slower it will go. So my question is can you fulfill your needs and change your expectations to accept your partner as they are, rather than how you wish they would be? It's a challenge in societies where the belief is in "the one" and where moving on if there are incompatibilities is the norm. But, if you can both accept each other and learn to accommodate the differences, the hard work can give you something those who are instantly compatible will never have.
