Picking Up the Pieces After Loving an Avoidant: How to Find Closure and Heal Forward
Ending a romantic relationship often feels like having the rug pulled out from under your feet. Your sense of stability and vision for the future dissolves overnight. Coping with this loss and uncertainty can be tremendously painful in the aftermath.
I know the deep sense of frustration, grief, and self-doubt that swells after breakups with avoidant partners. Throughout my coaching practice, I’ve supported numerous people as they’ve navigated this rocky transition. Although it may not feel like it now, there are constructive ways to process the dissolution, regain your footing, and ultimately arrive at a more hopeful place in your next chapter.
In this comprehensive guide, I’ll cover:
- Manifestations of dismissive and fearful-avoidant attachment styles
- Impacts of dating avoidants while together
- Why avoidants relieve after breakups
- The boomerang effect and post-breakup struggles
- Research-backed tips for healing and having self-compassion
- Setting boundaries if attempting reconciliation
- Visioning your flourishing future ahead
Let’s first demystify what’s behind these frustrating relationship patterns.
Decoding What Drives Avoidant Personality Types
Avoidant attachment derives from adaptations made in early childhood to emotionally unavailable or inconsistent caregivers. Two main avoidant subtypes emerge:
Dismissive-avoidants minimize needing closeness and are pseudo-independent. They highly value autonomy, take pride in not needing others, and suppress vulnerable emotions under a layer of cerebral logic. Criticism and feelings of engulfment are huge triggers.
Fearful-avoidants desperately crave intimacy, but feel unworthy of love due to shame and low self-esteem. They protect against expected rejection by clinging to partners or compulsively pulling away when feeling vulnerable.
Research shows about 25% of the population has an avoidant attachment orientation. It’s an adaptive strategy to cope with unreliable or neglectful childhood environments. Avoidants deeply crave intimacy, but subconsciously mistrust it due to old wounds – so they preemptively distance.
Manifestations When Together In A Relationship
When intimately involved with avoidants, their partners often endure tremendous ambiguity and instability. Avoidants struggle with consistently showing up emotionally or making their partner a priority.
You may have experienced hot-then-cold affection, unreliable follow-through, poor communication,ambiguity about the future, lack of physical touch, feeling unsupported during hard times, hearing “I’m not ready” for milestones, difficulty making joint plans, and pent-up resentment from unmet needs.
It can feel like you’re dating an emotionally unavailable wall, no matter how patient, understanding, or communicative you try to be. All relationships require mutual vulnerability and tenderness to last – but providing this foundation feels nearly impossible with closed-off avoidant personalities.
After years of feeling perpetually disconnected and exhausted from carrying the emotional burden, breakup often provides sad yet necessary relief.
Why Avoidants Initially Feel Relief Post-Breakup
When the non-avoidant partner finally detaches, the avoidant’s reaction is frequently feeling temporary relief about regaining space and pseudo-independence once more. Their defenses relax as the perceived engulfment threat dissipates.
Psychologists emphasize dismissive-avoidants especially have an internal battle between desires for intimacy and needing personal autonomy. Following a breakup, their wiring automatically minimizes attachment needs so they can stay regulated in their comfortable bubble.
According to psychiatrist and attachment theory pioneer Dr. Mario Mikulincer, activating the attachment system triggers pain, anxiety, and feelings of vulnerability for avoidants. So they employ defensive mechanisms to suppresses this, rather than leaning into supports. Breaking up allows avoidants to revert to their detached baseline where they feel safest.
The Boomerang Effect – When Suppressed Emotions Catch Up
Weeks or months later however, avoidant partners often start missing their ex immensely. This “boomerang effect” catches them off guard as defenses lower with time. Appreciation surfaces for the comfort, fun adventures, emotional safety, and physical intimacy the relationship did provide in between periods of chaos.
In longer-term relationships especially, avoidants struggle profoundly with the loneliness, lack of safe haven, and losing their life companion. Mikulincer’s research found marital separation left dismissive husbands overwhelmed, anxiously preoccupied, rumination obsessively about losing their wife, and relying more on substances to cope.
The aftermath of a breakup forces avoidants to confront their difficulty self-soothing and meeting their own intimate needs entirely alone. Painful emotions can come flooding in. They simultaneously long to contact their ex, yet feel terrified of swallowed whole by dependence again.
Navigating these turbulant waves is complex terrain for defendent avoidant types. Rather than direct communication, passive social media lurking or checking on their ex through mutual friends often feels safer. It allows them to stay guarded while vaguely staying updated, without the engulfment of actual reconciliation conversations.
Constructive Ways to Heal After an Avoidant Breakup
Whether avoidants resurface or not post-breakup, prioritizing your own healing and restructuring a hopeful new vision is essential. Implement these methods right away:
- Maintain No Contact, At Least Initially
Don’t linger hoping your avoidant ex will suddenly get in touch or do an about-face into emotional availability. Use no contact in the initial months for your own grieving and meaning-making.
Avoidants need extensive time and space away to sorts through their feelings separately before considering reconciliation. Jumping back into ambiguity and hot/cold affection usually leads backwards. Allow yourself the clarity from distance.
- Release Stories of “Not Being Enough”
The avoidant’s issues with emotional intimacy, fear of engulfment, and childhood wiring are ultimately not about you. Attachment styles stem from early experiences – not anything you did or didn’t do as their partner.
Ruminating on self-blame only stunts your growth. Instead reframe the relationship’s end as bittersweet closure to free you towards more secure bonds ahead.
- Cultivate Your Social Support System
Turn towards loved ones who make you feel safe, seen, and celebrated during this tender time. Attachment needs don’t go away – they simply need redirection towards more available, consistent sources.
Let trusted confidants nurture you through processing sadness, loss, resentment, and stages of grief. Therapists also provide wonderful outside objectivity.
- Explore How This Bond Filled Subconscious Voids
We unconsciously attract partners who help compensate for emotional wounds and attachment gaps from childhood. Sift through what drawn you specifically towards this avoidant person.
Did your empathy help temper their instability? Did you feel valued for your reliability? Did caretaking give you a sense of purpose?
Pinpointing the psychological “payoffs” helps make meaning of this chapter so you can consciously seek healthier dynamics ahead.
- Envision Creating The Relationship You Deserve
Soothe abandonment wounds by connecting to your future self living joyfully in secure bonds where all your needs are met. What would that look and feel like? Who is by your side? What values are embodied?
Construct a vision board, journal, or talk to supportive friends about this next chapter. As clinical psychologist Dr. Harriet Lerner says, “We need to give up hoping for a different past and focus on creating a vision for the future.”
- Set Boundaries If Attempting Reconciliation
If your avoidant ex re-establishes contact suggesting reconciliation, proceed slowly and with caution. Require they seek professional support to unpack their intimacy issues before agreeing to try again. Don’t let yourself get drawn back into merely intermittent reinforcement.
Clearly communicate essential relationship needs upfront and stick to enforcing these boundaries. If no progress towards vulnerability and availability occurs – be ready to walk away for good. You deserve consistency.
- Embrace Constructive Lessons – Then Release Resentment
Reflect on your part in the relational dance so you can carry forward wisdom. Did you accept unacceptable crumbs due to fear of abandonment? Stay stuck wishing for change? Neglect advocating for your needs?
Process resentment fully so it doesn’t haunt your future. Recall the relationship for what it was – an intricate soul lesson – without accusation towards your ex. Release anger to make space for peace.
After an avoidant breakup, the most life-giving choice is nurturing yourself through turbulent grief until you blossom in hopeful new directions again. You will undoubtedly experience difficult setbacks some days where anger or shame resurfaces temporarily. This too shall pass.
Approach inner work with self-compassion – talking gently to yourself as if you were a close friend weathering the storm. You will be surprised how boundless positive potential lives on the other side! In time, space clears for a new partner truly capable of showing up. Wait for nothing less.
Warmly,
Samantha J. Cohen
Love, Intimacy & Attachment Coach