Everyone thinks that an avoidance's deepest fear is losing their independence. But that's only half right. It's actually way more complicated than that. This is an hourglass and it's the key to understanding why avoidance ghost you. Now, every hourglass has two sides to it. You have the top, which in our case is going to represent the front that the avoidant presents to the world, and then you have the bottom, which will represent the avoidant's deepest fears. Now, notice how the bottom is filled with all these very blown up grains of sand. And each grain of sand has a label. Scared of losing independence. Things get worse when I try to make them better. No vulnerable conversations. You get the idea. Now, each grain represents some deep fear the avoidant has, but as it stands right now, those deep fears are tucked inside. Things change when an avoidant begins connecting with you. They essentially flip the hourglass. Now, at first things feel fine, but over time, as the threat of intimacy with you rises, those grains of sand began to infect the side of the hourglass where they are presenting a front to the world. And with each grain, the new bottom fills with their deepest fears. Now, it's important to note that they don't talk about this. They barely admit it to themselves. But deep down, they're watching the hourglass. And once enough emotional pressure has accumulated, once the bottom fills past their tolerance, they flip the entire thing again by ghosting you. To them, disappearing is a reset. To you, it feels like a betrayal. All right, I'd like to do something a little unique now and pull up my self-proclaimed, world famous avoidant death wheel. Now, believe it or not, the hourglass concept fits remarkably well with the death wheel. So, eight stages to the avoidant death wheel. I want someone to love me. I found someone. My troubles are over. I'm noticing some worrying things. I'm thinking of leaving. I've left the relationship. I'm so happy I left the relationship. I'm starting to feel kind of lonely. Why can't I ever find the right person? And around and around they go. But let's divide the death wheel up into two portions. You have stages 1 through 4, which will be our pre-breakup stage, and stages 5 through 8, which will be our post breakup stage. Now, let's watch what happens to our little hourglass as we go through them. So, we start first at stage one. I want someone to love me. This is when the avoidant flips their hourglass. The clock to ghosting has begun. We move through stages two and three, and those grains of sand keep filling the bottom. By stage four, the avoidant is thinking of leaving. The grains of sand have filled the bottom of the hourglass completely. Now, with stage five, the only relief the avoiding can find is by leaving the relationship and flipping the hourglass back over to allow the deepest fears to go back to where they belong, the hidden world inside of them. And so, you are left the victim. They break up with you. They ghost you. But this isn't where the story ends for the avoidant. In fact, I'd argue it's just beginning. We're only halfway through the death wheel. Okay, with stage six, they go through this separation elation period. A large part of that is the relief they're feeling from the fact that their deepest fears are draining back to where they belong. But the separation stage wears off with stages seven and 8. The deep fears are completely drained back down and they begin to feel depressed at their plight because for an avoidant it's an endless cycle. Sometimes that's with you. They'll ungo you and reach out again. Other times it's with new individuals. Throughout the entire process though, the hourglass remains the same. The moment they move to stage one, the hourglass flips and those deep, dark fears start draining. I want you to read this story from Anna. For whoever remembers my story, ex and I got married just 3 days ago. It's been a hard and long process since then, but we've been back together officially in the beginning of February. We went to therapy for a couple of months and have never been happier since. We moved in together in April and I got my ring on May. we got a puppy together and I'm hoping to start a little family. Anna then goes on to say, I just wanted to thank so much all of you that had been so supportive with your comments and advice in one of the darkest times I had to go through. Now, if you've ever loved an avoidant, you know those dark times are really dark. You feel invisible. You feel powerless, like you're screaming into a void while they go silent. Your friends don't get it. Your family says just move on, but your gut says there's more here. Anna didn't get lucky. She got support. She got the right guidance. And that's what the CER super offer gives you. Real strategies for navigating avoidance, weekly live streams with me, and lifetime access to a community of people who actually get what you're going through. So, if you're stuck in that spiral, don't do it alone. You can get a massive 50% discount on the CER super offer by simply looking in the description below and clicking the link you see there. All right, back to the video. Okay, so now that you get the hourglass concept, there's one more thing I'd like to talk to you about, and that is if you can stop the hourglass from filling with fear or keep them from flipping it when it does. The way I see it is that if you've identified you're in this circumstance with an avoidant, you have three paths before you, and they'll all lead to three wildly different outcomes. Path one is what I like to call the anxious loop. All right, this is the path that most people fall into. Now, I've made it no secret that most of the individuals who end up signing up for coaching sessions or entering into our community have anxious attachment styles. Now, normally that's looked at as a negative, but there is one powerful skill anxious attachers have. They are incredible problem solvers. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense. You're super anxious about something. You think about it from all angles. you're naturally going to have more solutions due to the perhaps unhealthy obsession. Unfortunately though with the hourglass concept, this works against them. All right, so the avoidant has flipped the hourglass. Anxious individuals are incredible at sensing when the hourglass is filling up. All right, you feel them pulling away and your reaction is you panic. You think, you know, if I just say the right thing, they'll stay. Or if I just show them how much I care, they'll finally get it. or if I prove I'm safe, they won't be scared. So, you chase. You initiate more. You overexlain. You walk on eggshells. You try to fix what you didn't break. But again, everything just works against you. Every effort to hold them tighter speeds up the hourglass. You're not slowing the flip. You're actually accelerating it. And when it finally flips, they ghost you anyway. You're left confused, heartbroken. Worst of all, you're blaming yourself. But here's what most people don't realize about this path. It doesn't just end with ghosting. It loops because if they come back, you take them back. Nothing has changed and so the cycle repeats. You keep hoping they'll choose you. But the real tragedy is you never choose yourself. So that's path one. Path two, I'm calling the secure pattern interrupt. Are you familiar with the concept of a pattern interrupt? All right, imagine this. You're walking down a busy street. Every 10 ft, someone hands you a flyer. You don't think, you just take it. Flyer, flyer, flyer. It's automatic. Now, imagine someone walks up, but instead of handing you a flyer, they just stand still. They say nothing. You pause. Your brain hiccups. You're waiting for the flyer, but it never comes. That's a pattern interrupt. It snaps you out of autopilot because the script doesn't play out the way they expected. All right. Now, let's apply this same concept to an avoidant experience inside of a relationship. Avoidants are used to dating anxious individuals. They don't consciously seek them out, but it happens a lot. Why? Well, because anxious and avoidant attachment styles fit together in the most dysfunctional way possible, like two puzzle pieces from different puzzles. So, the avoidant develops this internal rolodex of how relationships go. They already know the steps. They start walking down the street and here comes the flyers. Where is this going? Why haven't you texted me back? Do you even care about me? Just tell me how you feel. Now, each one touches a deep fear. If I engage, I'll get trapped. I'll be responsible. I'll mess it up. And just like before, they take the flyer. Flyer. Flyer. Flyer. Same script, different name. But what if you didn't hand them anything? What if instead of reacting, you paused, you stood still. You didn't chase. You didn't explain. You didn't try to fix it. You just let them sit with the discomfort they usually run from. Well, that's the secure pattern interrupt. You break the rhythm they expect and replace it with one they've never experienced. Now, what does this look like from an avoidant perspective? Well, look no further than this thread from Reddit, which asks fearful avoidance. How do you feel when your significant other gives you space? And it's super interesting to read the responses like this one that says, "Well, I feel relief." And then block them out for as long as they will let me. If they end up giving me more space than I think they will, then I will return extra loving and energized again. Or this one for me, male 32 avoidant, it feels good short term. I can come back with more love to give and feel seen for my needs. You know, I think the challenge for a lot of people in relationships with an avoidant is it's a game of trust. You have to trust that when you give them space, they're going to come back. And for a lot of anxious individuals, that's incredibly hard to do. And there's no guarantee. That's why I personally like path three the most. Now, path three is what I'm calling the hourglass breaker. If path one was about giving into your anxiety, and path two was about approaching avoidance in a more secure way, then path three is about refusing to play the game at all. I did this video a few months back called 100 avoidance came back. Here's what worked. Now, the video didn't do particularly well, but I think the message I talk about in it still resonates. The most successful individuals, the individuals who avoidance were drawn to the most, often took path three. They didn't try to control the hourglass. They walk away when it's midair. All right. Sometimes I feel like I'm on a endless treadmill with these YouTube videos. People want to learn about avoidance. They want to learn what makes them come back. And when I reveal to them that in all of my research, in all of my studies, the thing that works better than anything is simply letting them go, people will naturally rebel. Oh, that can't be true. I've tried that. It didn't work for me. It's hard to reconcile the fact that letting them go is the way for them to come back. It sounds almost too easy. But I want you to consider everything I've talked about in this video. The Reddit thread I quoted, "If they end up giving me more space than I think they will, then I will return extra loving and energized again." Okay, so letting go drew this person in. For me, male 32 avoidant, it feels good shortterm. I can come back with more love to give and feel seen for my needs. Once again, letting go, giving space is what drew this avoidant back in. But what about the hourglass? Oh, right. It's endless. It constantly turns in a loop. And usually it's only after they've ghosted you. After they've created this self-imposed silence do they even begin to remember the good times. Uh look here. One of my most quoted resources. Free to attach. Avoidance are free to long for an ex once that person is unavailable out of the relationship. So letting go makes it more likely that they're longing for you. I think it all really boils down to patience in silence. Patience in being alone without them. But what is patience really? Well, it's about finding something to do with your time while you're waiting. You want to know what worked for those hundred people who got avoidance to come back? They stepped away from the game. They refused to play and instead focused all of their energy on themselves. And yeah, that means giving up. Not in a bitter, hopeless way that most people think of it, but in the powerful way. They gave up trying to control someone else's fear. They gave up explaining themselves to someone who wasn't listening. They gave up hoping for a version of the relationship that never truly existed. They let go, not to get them back, but because holding on was costing too much. And ironically, that's when things began to shift because avoidance don't respond to pressure. They responds to the absence of pressure, to stillness, to the unexpected silence that breaks their endless loop. And when you stop showing up the way they expect, they don't know what to do with it. Sometimes that's when they come back. But by then, you'll finally be in a place where you can ask the question that matters most. Do I even want them back anymore? And that's when the power flips. Now look, if you're somewhere in the middle of all this, stuck watching that hourglass fill up again and again, wondering if they're going to come back or if you'll ever stop hurting, you don't have to figure this out alone. The CER super offer is where people just like you learn how to break the cycle. You'll get weekly live streams with me, lifetime access to our private community, and every strategy we've seen work is backed by real stories, real data. It's everything you need to finally stop watching the hourglass and start flipping your own. So, click the link in the description for 50% off.