There are few loves as great as the avoidant anxious love, that is if you can call it love. Perhaps better coined as a trap, the cycle begins when the anxious “I need you, don’t leave me” type meets the avoidant, “I want you, go away” type. It is a cycle that can last for weeks, months, and even years without ever truly progressing into love, though it very much simulates the feeling of love. In fact, that is what is so appealing about this relationship.

The anxious attachment partner is typically characterized by:

• low impulse control
• frequent outward emotional communication
• need for regular verbal validation
• hypervigilance and oversensitivity
• need for closeness typically understood in terms of proximity
• anxiety and panic attacks
• need to know what partner is thinking about them
• low self-worth
• chasing when hurt

The core wounds generally associated with an anxious attachment individual are:

• I am not enough
• I will be abandoned
• I am a burden

How this attachment style is formed?

Anxious attachment individuals typically had caregivers who were critical, cold, and inconsistent. They may have received mixed messages from various caregivers, creating distress and distrust in their ability to create consistency in their relationship with their caregiver. Caregivers may not have been consistent in responding to distress in the child, never having properly taught how to self-soothe. Therefore, anxious attachment individuals are in constant search of someone to validate their emotional needs, but the inconsistency they expect leads to anxiety and a need to do everything possible to avoid the pain of abandonment. Without the assurance that their caregiver will return, does love them, the child developed an insecure view of love, feeling the need to control it at every step or consequences could be dire.

The avoidant attachment partner is typically characterized by:

• ruminating without action
• difficulty identifying feelings at the moment
• tendency to pull away when becoming emotionally involved
• feelings of discomfort when they are cared for
• need for control
• fear of intimacy
• self-sufficient and hyper independence
• retreating when hurt
• private and possessive of their own space and time

The core wounds associated with an avoidant attachment individual are:

• I am defective
• I am trapped
• I am bad
• I am unsafe

How this attachment style is formed?

Avoidant individuals typically lacked an emotional bond with the primary caregivers as a child, remaining in a constant fight and flight mode, never truly trusting whether the care they were receiving was trustworthy or not. This can often be the result of emotionally neglectful caregivers who sent a message to the child that love was unsafe, preparing them to flee at any moment, and yet remain powerless as they were dependent on caregivers. This often unintentional neglect sent the message to the child that love is unsafe, and as adults, that message was only reinforced thanks to the lack of ability to properly feel or express these fears.

When the Two Attachment Styles Meet

In the first stage of the relationship, both the anxious and the avoidant have their guards down, practicing healthy vulnerability but very soon both learn they do not speak the same love language. The anxious quickly needs validation and tends to move much faster than the avoidant, wanting to know immediately where they stand. In other words, they want assurance that they will not be abandoned. Unwilling to give answers or promises, the avoidant quickly feels overwhelmed and trapped, with a knee-jerk reaction to flee, feeling the situation (and love) is unsafe. The anxious reacts on impulse. The avoidant retreats in fear. The first feels guilty and the latter feels shame, that is until enough time has passed and both naively feel the desire and newfound strength to once again “try to love” one another as best they can.

The Cycle

The core wounds are the precise obstacles that doom these two to a life of unrequited love and cyclical pain and shame. Though both may believe they are motivated by a need to connect, in actual fact they are being motivated by a subconscious drive to heal their core wounds. But they can’t. Without the tools necessary to dig deep into the origins and source of these wounds, they simply will never succeed at breaking the pattern of recreating the only attachment dynamic they have ever known, and ironically though it is painful and destructive, the only attachment dynamic they feel safe re-creating time and time again. This is the dynamic they know how to maneuver. This is the pain and failure they know to expect.

The Solution

Until both attachment styles work on healing their core wounds, they will continue to seek the very thing they fear in the other. It is no coincidence these two attachment styles are attracted to each other – the magnetic-like attraction is an activated subconscious need to heal in order to love.