Navigating Anxious-Avoidant Relationships

all right team welcome back to the man talk show Connor Beaton here and today we're going to be diving into how do you fix how do you end the anxious avoidant Dynamic right so maybe you're an anxious person or you're an avoidant person and you found yourself in a relationship with the opposing attachment style which is probably what has brought you here and I hope that you've enjoyed the series that I've been doing because I've been doing this a Man's Guide too where I've dove into or dug into how to end codependency how to resolve your avoidant attachment style or your anxious attachment style or your fearful avoidant attachment style so if you're watching this and you haven't watched those those are going to be incredibly helpful to doing a deep dive into how you as an individual can move closer towards secure attachment so this video is going to talk specifically about the relationship how it happens why it happens and how do you resolve it and I'm going to give you some very specific things that you as an in individual can do and then some specific things that you as a couple can tackle so let's dive in and talk a little bit first about what characterizes the anxious avoidant dance the first thing is is this Push Pull Dynamic where one person seems to be pulling away and the other one seems to be uh a stage five clearance no just kidding anxious people just kidding um but you can tell which one I was in the relationship I was clearly an avoidant person with that joke right uh but one person pulls away and one p person pushes forward and generally you have one person that is moving towards an over indexing of self-reliance or self- protection and that's the avoidant person as a relational strategy right so their relational strategy is I rely on me more than I rely on us um to a really detrimental degree to the relationship and then the other person has a relation relational strategy of I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay or I need to know that you're okay in order for me to feel okay or I need you to tell me that I'm okay so that I can be okay whereas the avoidant is I don't need you to be okay I don't need this relationship to be okay I can only rely on me in order to be okay so that's just a a quick little summary of what it can look like one of the things that I wanted to try and do was condense down why this happens and I looked at a lot of content on the internet I watched a bunch of YouTube videos I looked at some of the articles that have been written and first off they they all come from a very feminine perspective so that was quite interesting to read like I couldn't find a lot of men talking about attachment Styles um and talking about attachment in general so it was kind of fascinating on that one part but but there seems to be this notion out there first off one of the things that I noticed was that anxious people seem to have less of a rap than avoidant people like avoidant people are sort of positioned on some of these blogs and some of these videos as like the villain and the anxious person is the victim and that's not the case I want to just dissolve this notion that there's a villain and a victim there's just a pursuer and the pursue there's the person pushing and the person pulling away it's not a moral thing right these are both behavioral patterns and relational patterns that were birthed quite early in your life and so I say that because I know many of you guys that are watching this whether you're the anxious one or the avoidant one have a often times a very detrimental story internally of like God there's something wrong with me that's causing this and there's not something that's wrong with you that's caus cusing this is that something has gone on in your life that has caused you to either pull away or actively needed to pursue so I I wrote down this phrase that I think summarizes why the avoidant and anxious dance is so strong because so many anxious people find themselves in a relationship with avoidant and vice versa it's quite common uh so here's what I wrote down I said sometimes you're not in love or even drawn to the person themselves you're drawn to the qualities that you think they possess that you know you lack right so sometimes we're not drawn to the person we're drawn to the qualities that they possess that we know we lack right and so this is the ultimate version of a shadow oriented relationship where your anxiety is doing the choosing of who you date or your avoidance is doing the choosing of who you date and so this part of you can be quite strong in choosing partners and choosing relationships that allow you to stay in this anxious pattern or this avoidant pattern and the reason why these two are attracted to one another is not just because they're complimentary opposites they're attracted to one another because the an sees a part of themselves that they feel is lacking in the avoidant and the avoidant sees and admires parts of themselves in the other person that they know they're lacking right so the avoidant person generally will when you ask them what do you admire about your partner and they'll talk about the anxious person and they'll say I love their passion I love how open they are I love their availability I I love their expression I love how willing they are to you know know like say what they want or say what they need and usually those are all things that are missing inside of that avoidant person right they they are not that they're lacking in passion necessarily but they're not open they're not necessarily available um they aren't as expressive as they would ultimately like to be and they don't have any Reliance on other people and then if you talk to the anxious person you say what do you really love about your partner and they'll talk about the avoidant person they'll say I'm attracted to how solid they are I'm attracted to how independent they are uh I'm attracted to how okay with being alone and and having Solitude they are and they'll talk about those qualities and they'll say you know I'm I love how much they're able to recognize themselves or validate themselves or you know deal with hard things and again those are all things that generally the anxious feels like either a conscious or deeply unconscious way they are lacking and so this in a in a way is a relationship of and this might sound harsh but it's a relationship of insecurities and it's why the anxious avoidant Dan is so hard it's because the thing that has brought the two of you together are these sort of deeper insecurities and those insecurities can be conscious they can be things that you are very aware of and you you know the insecurity you know the insec Behavior you know the insecure pattern uh or there are things that are more hidden from you and that's more the case with the avoidant often times the avoidant isn't fully aware of maybe at first of the deep fear of closeness the Deep fear of relying on another person the Deep fear and and insecurity of expressing themselves and so that when those two things come together it's our insecurities choosing a partner in an effort to try and resolve the insecurities right we don't our insecurities don't want to stay necessarily in place and be there forever our insecurities just like your anxiousness or your depression it's looking for some type of resolution it doesn't want to just stay put and stay in place it might feel like that sometimes but our insecurities are always looking for some type of evolution or resolution so just keep that in mind as we continue to talk uh about how to end this anxious avoidant dance so next I'm going to give you some examples of an anxious avoidant Dynamic and then I'm going to give you you know how can it succeed when do you know to leave or that it's not going to work and then what do you specifically need to do in order to heal this type of dynamic so examples of the anxious avoiding Dynamic is the Chase and withdraw pattern that I've been talking about this is the push and pull pattern where the anxious person will press for more intimacy more reassurance more validation uh more soothing those types of things uh more reassurance and this will push the avoidant partner further and further away because they will feel a pressure to caretake the other person uh to be responsible for the other person to be close to and intimate with the other person all of which might reactivate either some trauma in their past or some fear of closeness or some physical and emotional reminder that intimacy isn't safe next is conflict over closeness and space conflict over closeness and space so the anxious partner might initiate conversations about the future about when are we moving in together or how do you feel like this relationship is going or you know should we um should we com be in a committed relation ship and not date anybody else or is it time for us to get engaged and this type of uh bid for connection and it might even not even be that big it might be like hey on Friday night I really would love for us to go out to a date you know go out for a date grow up for dinner like whatever it is and that can cause the avoidant person to feel trapped to feel inclosed on to to feel like they have to make some level of commitment that's maybe uncomfortable for them or commit to some level of intimacy and closeness that's uncomfortable for them and this can create the conflict so it's very often one of the biggest Hallmarks okay and I really want you to like write this one down keep this in mind because this is so important to undoing undoing the anxious avoidant dance so often a Hallmark of the anxious avoidant Dynamic is that when there are bids for closeness and intimacy and connection when there are moments that closeness intimacy and connection are possible or intimacy closeness and connection is requested or demanded conflict ensues all right so intimacy and closeness and connection when that starts to arise in the relationship this is usually the inflection point for some type of conflict and this is where you know it might be that the avoidant person starts to criticize the anxious one or the anx one starts to criticize the avoidant one you never want to spend time with me how come you don't want to go out to dinner or like spend time with my friends or my family and this will create conflict so a lot of the conflict that you experience in this type of relationship revolves around just being close just being connected um staying intimate and then last uh this is another big one is misinterpretation of signals okay misinterpretation of signals very simply put you will have either partner the anxious or the avoidant um misrepresenting or misinterpreting the signals from the other person right so the anxious person might see the avoidant asking for some space or saying hey you know what uh tonight I just want to kind of like do my own thing I'm gonna you know go into the shop and do my woodworking or I'm going to watch my own show or I'm going to go to gym or Brazilian jiu-jitsu um or like a dance class or whatever is and then the anxious person misinterprets that as you don't love me you don't want to be with me you're leaving me uh etc etc and vice versa right the avoidant person might hear the anxious person saying hey you know what we haven't been on a date in a few weeks um I would love to just go out with you on Friday night and like go have a beer or you know go out and have a good meal and the avoidant person might misinterpret that as like oh you're wanting you know some level of commitment you're trying to push something or you're being so needy right now or whatever it is even though it's just a bid for connection so again a lot of the conflict will come out of bids for connection and bids for Solitude okay can these types of relationships work this is one of the biggest questions that I get um from people when they're talking about attachment Styles the answer is unequivocally yes they do take uh a decent amount of work and they take some time for that work to set in there are some key ingredients to making this relationship work okay the main one is that both of you have to be willing participants in doing what I'm outlining in this uh episode um and that might mean that you go and work with somebody as a couple um that might be be a part of it but at the very least you have to both be willing participants to recognize that this is an issue that's getting in the way and wanting to work on it to better the relationship without that without that agreement there's nothing that you can do all right it's it's not going to move forward so that brings me to the next piece which is how do you know that it's not going to work because that's another question that I get which is like should we break up should we not stay together um number one if your partner after months or you know however long is still not willing to work on this Dynamic then that might be a sign that it's time to go right if you've both acknowledged that there's a a big issue and disconnect between the two of you and maybe you've even acknowledged that you two are in this avoidant and anxious dance and they're not willing to work on it whether the they're the avoidant or the anxious partner um then that might be a sign that it's not going to work and individually a couple things need to happen number one the avoidant has to be willing to to lean in communicate their needs prioritize staying in connection when [ __ ] gets hard and they have to be willing to start to lean into opening themselves and expressing themselves specifically around help and support all right second for the anxious person you have to be willing to begin to self soothe to start to self-regulate self- validate and to build a deeper level of safety and work within yourself so those are sort of like the two missions how do you end the dance well let's talk about this where I I thought a lot about where I wanted to start with this part of the episode and what I'm actually going to start with might be different than what you expected I'm going to talk about how you end the punishment cycle that shows up in an anxious avoidant relationship so every anxious avoidant relationship has some type of punishment cycle and usually it's you know one person starting at the anxious or the avoidant and then there's very specific behaviors that roll out after that and so the dynamic looks something like this the anxious Partners uh the anxious partner will Implement protest behaviors and the avoidant partner will try and exert some level of control through Detachment okay and again we can can get stuck in judging or criticizing our partner's Behavior right whether it's protest Behavior or Detachment but the reality is and I want you to remember this because it's so important your partner learned this Behavior as a protection mechanism when they were young right so you have to try and contextualize that your partner's doing this not because in that moment they're an adult you know choosing to punish you choosing to protest choosing to detach they're doing that because there's a younger part of them that is afraid of intimacy there's a younger part of them that's afraid of being abandoned or neglected and so we have to have some level of empathy without letting that empathy overrun you know Common Sense uh within the relationship but that's the general cycle so here's what happens the anxious person will Implement some type of protest Behavior to try and establish or reestablish connection so instead of saying hey this is what I would like there's some type of behavior that they enact which uh creates the insecurity that continues to build the insecurity in the relationship and so some signs of that protest behavior for you as the anxious person and I want to make it clear what I'm about to give both of you anxious and avoidant person is not to be weaponized against your partner this isn't information be like oh you're using protest behaviors like shame on you or you're using detach behaviors what's wrong with you this is for you as the anxious person and the avoidant person to self-identify when you're in this mode of trying to punish to get connection or trying to punish to create distance okay so for the anxious person excessive contact followed by punitive withdraw this is a very common cycle what does it mean excessive contact over texting over communicating emailing calling a bunch of times um you know talking at your partner even though they've said hey like I I'm done right now or I can't talk right now leaving tons of voice memos messaging them endless times on social media but excessive contact followed by some type of punitive withdrawal meaning you contact contact contact contact contact you you might dump emotionally on them and then you withdraw entirely and you disconnect and it's a ploy that's kind of like come get me and it might sound something like I love you so much and how come you don't and I just want to love you and I just want to be with you and that kind of uh response next is scorekeeping anxious people are notorious for scorekeeping in the relationship and again this isn't to shame you this is for you to develop the awareness to catch yourself doing this [ __ ] and to stop to catch yourself be like oh man I am scorekeeping again and sometimes how you catch yourself in the cycle is by becoming aware of it and then calling it out and actually saying to your partner out loud or texting a friend a buddy and saying like H I'm catching myself I'm scorekeeping right now and I don't want to do that so instead I'm going to give my partner some recognition some praise some validation for what they've been doing in the relationship next is acting hostile in some capacity what does that mean it means you might threaten it means that you might try and manipulate it means that you might try and use coercion um but you are acting hostile in some ways because you're disregulated internally and you are trying to get the other person to give you what you want and so your anxiety has sort of taken over and the again this isn't to excuse your behavior um but your anxiety takes over and you follow through on it and so you might threaten the person that you're going to leave you might threaten to disclose information about them um you might become hostile and threaten them in in a different way but that hostility is a an unhealthy bid for connection we'll just put it that way um and then lastly as an anxious person you might use some type of emotional manipulation um as the punishment so again this is coming out of a place of you as the anxious partner don't feel like your needs are being met you don't feel close to their person you're scared of being rejected you're scared of being abandoned you're scared of the moving away and then you start to try and use emotional manipulation or coercion to get what you want and that can look like a whole bunch of different ways breaking somebody's privacy going through their phone going through their messages going through their emails um you know using things that they said in the past against them uh using times this is a really big one if you're the anxious person using times when you're avoidant partner has opened up to uh to leverage against them in the future that's a really damaging one so those are the behaviors you want to start to look for to end the punishment cycle you want to catch yourself in those and you might want even want to listen to this part of the episode with your partner to say you know which one of these do I do uh what does it look like what does it sound like when does it show up and and then you can make a little bit of a plan to catch yourself in the moment and have some resources and accountability so that you can move away from that type of behavior all right avoidant Partners let's talk to you on the other hand an avoidant partner in punishment mode is going to try and exert some level of control through Detachment and and what's called deactivation strategies and so just in a simple way it's really about disconnecting from the other person and you might be doing it because they are you know pressing you for something you might be doing it because all of a sudden the two of you are in a good place and that feels frightening things are too easy things are normal and so you start to drift away uh you might be doing that because there's some needs that you don't feel like are being met in the relationship and so you you suddenly disconnect or you slowly disconnect and some of these behaviors look like this for the avoidant person in punishment cycle it can look like your words not matching your actions so for example you could verbally Express um an avoidant an avoidance of commitment I don't want to do that Friday night or I don't want to watch that show with you but then you follow through with it right then you like you watch the show that you said you don't want to watch or you go and do the thing on Friday night that you said that you don't want to do and so that type of mismatching words and behaviors words and choices can be a strategy that creates confusion on the other side and that detaches and disconnects because the other person never really knows where you stand it's a more it's not even a subtle one it's just a a hard to pin down one so it creates disorientation within your your girlfriend within your wife Etc and that can be incredibly challenging uh or your boyfriend or your husband depending on if you're you know watch whoever you are that's watching this the next one for the avoiding person is Hy hper criticism and focusing predominantly on flaws uh this is very common for the guys that grew up with a mom or a dad who was hypercritical who didn't give love and attention or or who only gave love and affection and attention um in per performance-based ways right so when you did the right thing when you said the right thing then you got love then you got affection then you got the good job and so that shows up in your relationship as an avoidance so you can you can focus heavily on your partner's flaws next uh of the avoidant one is a fixation for The One That Got Away and rather than being fully present in the relationship and this this can come up in a bunch of different ways I'm going to give you a couple different examples but the big one is like oh that one person that I was with that I really screwed up my life would be so much better if I was just with that one person another version of this that I've seen with a lot of guys is a a sort of like fixation on beauty or the body right so it's like well I'm really I really love her and I'm really attracted to her but like you know there's this thing about her aesthetically that I don't really like and that becomes something that that gets hyper fixated on when you're having sex when you're trying to be intimate and it creates this space and separation between you and your part partner because you are fixated on this perceived flaw or imperfection that you can't uh seem to let in it's like I think there was I mean this is kind of a funny version but there's an episode of Seinfeld I think it's George that's dating this woman that has manh hands and the whole episode the whole episode is about you know having Man Hands and I'm not saying you know if you're dating somebody and there's like genuinely something about them they're like I just can't get on board with that thing whether it's a behavior or a characteristic or a trait or even even something physical if you're like if you just can't get on board with it you can't get on board with it but George was sort of like your classic avoidant you know he wanted love he wanted relationships but there was always something you know there was always something that he was hyper fixated on that he could never get over and the episode with manh hands was just such a good example um next is avoiding emotional Intimacy in the present day current relationship and uh that can come out in a number of different ways you might not want to label the relationship you might not uh want to share the relationship online for fear of judgment you might not want to tell your buddies about it um and you might not talk about it or you know share your relationship with your family uh even though it's been two years or you know something excessive like that so you avoid emotional Intimacy in the relationship you don't open up maybe you don't talk to your partner about you know how things are going at work or you know how you felt after the death of a parent or you don't open up to them about what you've been experiencing in terms of this big life transition but in some ways you avoid emotional intimacy and so this is very common that when your partner's checking in on you hey how are you doing how you feeling after this thing has gone on that you are just like I'm fine no I'm okay none of's wrong and there's just a closed offness that happens lastly is hyper or hyposexuality um this means that for the avoidant person you can move into a space of almost entirely disconnecting from your sexuality or it becomes such a dominant force in the relationship that it's really the only conduit the only door for any type of closeness and connection or intimacy that you'll allow to happen um so that is another part for the avoidant all right what do both of you indiv ually need to do in order to move through this avoidant and anxious dance that so many people get caught in I'm going to break it down into anxious and then avoidant and then relationships so anxious you need to learn to self-regulate and self soothe it is so common that the anxious person is inadvertently or indirectly demanding that through choices through actions through behaviors through communication demanding that the other person help the anxious person soothe and regulate what they're feeling okay and so you have to start to prioritize learning to be okay learning to be safe in your body in yourself uh when you are feeling discomfort when you have a fear that's coming up with your partner when you have an anxiety about where the future of the relationship is going now this doesn't mean that you can't have direct clear conversations about hey where are things going you know it's been six months uh or it's been a year and I I want to know where we stand it doesn't mean that you can't have those conversations it simply means that your work is to learn to ground yourself in the face of discomfort hard conversations your uh sometimes your your deep insecurities that might be coming up what if I'm not good enough what if I'm not smart enough what if I'm not attractive enough to the other person I need them to reassure me that I'm enough so what you do is every time that this starts to come up right this anxiousness starts to come up am I enough are they going to leave me yada y y you have some type of tool a meditation practice a breath work practice a journaling practice where you can start to ground yourself soothe yourself regulate yourself and then reinforce course your own level of self-worth okay super super important and this next one is going to help with this which is end the validation trap the the Trap that anxious Partners get into especially with avoidance which causes a lot of conflict and chaos is that you are constantly seeking validation from the other person right you're looking to them to reaffirm that you're smart enough good enough valuable have worth are lovable all of those types of pieces and it's not something that they can give you ever they might be able to reinforce they might be able to reassure they might be able to comfort you for a period of time but that will always dissipate and so part of your mission is to go on a journey of self-recognition to actually develop an inner infrastructure an inner um behavioral pattern of being able to recognize yourself validate yourself appreciate yourself and you might have to practice that four months it might be something that you keep a gratitude Journal about and you have a very specific practice for yourself uh it might be a a way of being a way of living that you start to do that every time you operate in a way that reinforces that you've made a good decision that you have value that you offered something of value that you contribute something of value that you actually take a moment to recognize yourself for doing those things so that you can reinforce yeah you know what I am doing a good job I do have value I do bring something to the table I do contribute something in this marriage or this relationship next is create boundaries with your anxious behavior and get accountable it's almost like for anxious people you I was going to what I was going to say is you know when when we lack impulse control it can look a bunch of different ways you know you might lack impulse control with porn or ice cream or popcorn where just like the thought of having it all of a sudden takes you over and you can't stop yourself right you can't stop yourself from like going out and buying ice cream or getting you know making the popcorn at home or whatever it is and for the anxious person it's having no boundaries having very poor boundaries with the anxious Behavior the overtexting the needing the validation the why won't you just tell me that I'm good enough the that type of stuff and so having a am men's group having an accountability group having an accountability person that when those anxious behaviors start to surface you can get some support and say hey I'm feeling this or I'm about to text bomb them like can can you just talk me off off the ledge because I know this isn't the right choice um starting to stand up and confront those anxious behaviors within yourself that when it starts to come up and says I got to text bomb them um instead confronting that part and be like no I'm going to just pause I'm not I'm gonna I know I don't want to text him I shouldn't text him right now pause for an hour for two hours for three hours before you actually communicate anything and then lastly be very clear and direct about what you want and what you need in the relationship and this can be challenging for an anxious person because the anxious person in some ways is almost always hoping that the avoidant partner or even the secure partner figures out what they're feeling and that they can somehow magically solve what they're feeling internally which is as we all know impossible okay that's the anxious for the AO avoidant person um there's a couple really key things that need to be practiced number one is practice what I call relational Reliance practice relational Reliance what does this mean it means asking your partner for help opening yourself up to getting support with something that you'd normally do on your own or that you would normally try and deal with in isolation whether it's asking for feedback on something whether it's asking for help doing something uh around your house or you know dealing with your car or uh your family asking for some advice on things that normally you would just try and mle over on your own but practicing relational Reliance again the the Hallmark of the avoidant is I don't need you to be okay because it's only safe for me to rely on me right it's only safe for me to rely on me whereas with the anxious it's I can't rely on me I can only rely on you and so as the avoidant you have to practice relying on your partner to contribute to your life to help you to support you and to slowly over time build trust and faith and the understanding that it's safe for you as the avoidant person to rely on another person and that they will continue to show up for you that they can add value to you that they can support you and that you're not going to be burned because of it next is practice what I call racing to resolve racing to resolve so it's very common that as an avoidant partner when conflict happens it's like you're you just get to like sit back and you're like you most avoidance get a case of what I call the fuckets right it's just like ah [ __ ] it like they'll deal with it whenever they come back to me whenever they try and repair from this conflict is when it repairs and so you can go days sometimes even weeks you don't talk about it maybe you never even talk about it and as the avoidant you're probably okay with that and so you have to be the one that practices initiating practices initiating repairing after some type of a disconnection and that doesn't have to be some big blowup or some big conflict it can be that you create uh structure for reconnecting after the two of you have been aart right so if you're an avoidant and you go away on a work trip and you're gone for three days maybe there's a specific way that you practice reconnecting when you come back um and and actually re-engaging the relationship instead of walking in the door and being like hey what's up and going and sitting down and turning the TV on uh or playing video games or whatever it is that you do so you have to practice racing to resolve and racing to reconnect because for the avoidant person it's not a natural tendency because again the there's an over Reliance on self and an under Reliance on other and relationship and so again after conflict you can be the one that initiates the repair after some type of disconnection you can be the one that initiates the reconnection after being separated or apart um for a couple days you can be the one that initiates the reconnection so practice these types of pieces and the great the a good one an easy one is when you are a part be the one to initiate checking in be the one to initiate uh calling like this is something that I had to actively practice because I was very much like out of sight out of mind you know uh when I'd be away from a partner uh a girlfriend I just like you know for the most part I wouldn't text or call unless they texted or called me and so I had to practice being like hey how are you how's your day how are things going or you know I'm around tonight from 7il 8: do you have time to connect I'd love to call you so those are types of things that you can do actively to create connection and lean in and then lastly is to practice expression practice expression so for the avoidant person expressing your needs expressing your wants uh expressing when you are feeling disconnected is a very very hard and uncomfortable thing so this is the expression that you need to practice hey I would love more of X in our relationship or you know I've been actually feeling a little disconnected lately or you know what I would love some space for the next 24 hours and then I will reconnect with you again if you want this this to work with your anxious partner you have to create some type of structure that lets them know when you're going to reconnect because what most avoidants do is they ask for space and they pull away with no reassurance or no real communication about when they're going to come back and for the anxious person that's like hell you know that's just like you're putting me in purgatory I can't do anything uh from this place all right so that's the individual work that the anxious and the avoidant person need to do together there's a couple pieces that I want to talk about okay um obviously communication is a big part of this and if you if the two of you don't feel like you are in a place where you have great communication together find a third party to help you translate for one another all right um but very clear direct communication is important next consistent connection practice consistent connection and what I'm going to say about this is as the avoidant you will want to practice consistent connection that's a little uncomfortable for you so it's pushing an edge it might feel like uh it's just a little too much it's not too much in the sense that you want to bounce out of life in the relationship but it's like oh this feels a little uncomfortable for me and then for the anxious person you want to practice consistent Connection in a way that is actually dialed down and so so you want to temper the amount of connection that you might expect and when I talk about consistent connection for the anxious person I'm talking about con consistent connection with you within yourself prioritizing being consistently connected within yourself so do I feel connected to me do I feel connected with uh you know my routines my habits my plan for the day do I feel con connected to my own sense of joy and meaning in life do I feel connected to my own sense of purpose and mission in life and so that's the consistent connection that you require as the anxious and for the avoiding person it's leaning into the consistent connection of the relationship of actually being the one that prioritizes uh connecting with the other person and that can be you know daily physical contact you know hugging the other person having some type of like you know exercise where for a couple weeks whenever you come home from work like you give them a hug and maybe you make out for a little bit but you find some type of uh structure or or uh consistency in maintaining contact lastly is prioritizing safety in the self and safety in togetherness okay so again the avoidance in the anxious are just inverse of one another and the anxious doesn't feel safe within the M themselves and the avoidant doesn't feel safe in togetherness and so what the two of you have to start to talk about and negotiate okay and I really mean that word you have to start to negotiate this is what you as an anxious person need to start to feel safe within yourself and what you as an avoidant person need in order to start to feel safe in the togetherness and I really want you to mle over that question okay write it down if you're the anxious person what do I think I need to do to feel in order to be safe Within Myself and then as the avoidant person ask yourself the question what do I think I need in order to feel safe in the togetherness in the relationship and that has to be more about you and maybe a little bit about the other person but it has to be more about like what do you actually need to feel safe in the togetherness what do you need to practice what do you need to prioritize what maybe do you need from the other person uh Etc so just go down the list a little bit create a list talk about these things if you are in a relationship with somebody um that is willing to do this work with you so as always thank you so much for tuning in to this episode I hope that this serves you and your life and your relationships and as always don't forget to man It Forward share this with just one person in your life that you know will benefit from it and don't forget to leave me a comment if you're watching on YouTube I'd love to hear your thoughts or DM me on Instagram @ manant talks all right team be well see you next time [Music]

all right team welcome back to the man talk show Connor Beaton here and today we&#39;re going to be diving into how do you fix how do you end the anxious avoidant Dynamic right so maybe you&#39;re an anxious person or you&#39;re an avoidant person and you found yourself in a relationship with the opposing attachment style which is probably what has brought you here and I hope that you&#39;ve enjoyed the series that I&#39;ve been doing because I&#39;ve been doing this a Man&#39;s Guide too where I&#39;ve dove into or dug into how to end codependency how to resolve your avoidant attachment style or your anxious attachment style or your fearful avoidant attachment style so if you&#39;re watching this and you haven&#39;t watched those those are going to be incredibly helpful to doing a deep dive into how you as an individual can move closer towards secure attachment so this video is going to talk specifically about the relationship how it happens why it happens and how do you resolve it and I&#39;m going to give you some very specific things that you as an in individual can do and then some specific things that you as a couple can tackle so let&#39;s dive in and talk a little bit first about what characterizes the anxious avoidant dance the first thing is is this Push Pull Dynamic where one person seems to be pulling away and the other one seems to be uh a stage five clearance no just kidding anxious people just kidding um but you can tell which one I was in the relationship I was clearly an avoidant person with that joke right uh but one person pulls away and one p person pushes forward and generally you have one person that is moving towards an over indexing of self-reliance or self- protection and that&#39;s the avoidant person as a relational strategy right so their relational strategy is I rely on me more than I rely on us um to a really detrimental degree to the relationship and then the other person has a relation relational strategy of I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay or I need to know that you&#39;re okay in order for me to feel okay or I need you to tell me that I&#39;m okay so that I can be okay whereas the avoidant is I don&#39;t need you to be okay I don&#39;t need this relationship to be okay I can only rely on me in order to be okay so that&#39;s just a a quick little summary of what it can look like one of the things that I wanted to try and do was condense down why this happens and I looked at a lot of content on the internet I watched a bunch of YouTube videos I looked at some of the articles that have been written and first off they they all come from a very feminine perspective so that was quite interesting to read like I couldn&#39;t find a lot of men talking about attachment Styles um and talking about attachment in general so it was kind of fascinating on that one part but but there seems to be this notion out there first off one of the things that I noticed was that anxious people seem to have less of a rap than avoidant people like avoidant people are sort of positioned on some of these blogs and some of these videos as like the villain and the anxious person is the victim and that&#39;s not the case I want to just dissolve this notion that there&#39;s a villain and a victim there&#39;s just a pursuer and the pursue there&#39;s the person pushing and the person pulling away it&#39;s not a moral thing right these are both behavioral patterns and relational patterns that were birthed quite early in your life and so I say that because I know many of you guys that are watching this whether you&#39;re the anxious one or the avoidant one have a often times a very detrimental story internally of like God there&#39;s something wrong with me that&#39;s causing this and there&#39;s not something that&#39;s wrong with you that&#39;s caus cusing this is that something has gone on in your life that has caused you to either pull away or actively needed to pursue so I I wrote down this phrase that I think summarizes why the avoidant and anxious dance is so strong because so many anxious people find themselves in a relationship with avoidant and vice versa it&#39;s quite common uh so here&#39;s what I wrote down I said sometimes you&#39;re not in love or even drawn to the person themselves you&#39;re drawn to the qualities that you think they possess that you know you lack right so sometimes we&#39;re not drawn to the person we&#39;re drawn to the qualities that they possess that we know we lack right and so this is the ultimate version of a shadow oriented relationship where your anxiety is doing the choosing of who you date or your avoidance is doing the choosing of who you date and so this part of you can be quite strong in choosing partners and choosing relationships that allow you to stay in this anxious pattern or this avoidant pattern and the reason why these two are attracted to one another is not just because they&#39;re complimentary opposites they&#39;re attracted to one another because the an sees a part of themselves that they feel is lacking in the avoidant and the avoidant sees and admires parts of themselves in the other person that they know they&#39;re lacking right so the avoidant person generally will when you ask them what do you admire about your partner and they&#39;ll talk about the anxious person and they&#39;ll say I love their passion I love how open they are I love their availability I I love their expression I love how willing they are to you know know like say what they want or say what they need and usually those are all things that are missing inside of that avoidant person right they they are not that they&#39;re lacking in passion necessarily but they&#39;re not open they&#39;re not necessarily available um they aren&#39;t as expressive as they would ultimately like to be and they don&#39;t have any Reliance on other people and then if you talk to the anxious person you say what do you really love about your partner and they&#39;ll talk about the avoidant person they&#39;ll say I&#39;m attracted to how solid they are I&#39;m attracted to how independent they are uh I&#39;m attracted to how okay with being alone and and having Solitude they are and they&#39;ll talk about those qualities and they&#39;ll say you know I&#39;m I love how much they&#39;re able to recognize themselves or validate themselves or you know deal with hard things and again those are all things that generally the anxious feels like either a conscious or deeply unconscious way they are lacking and so this in a in a way is a relationship of and this might sound harsh but it&#39;s a relationship of insecurities and it&#39;s why the anxious avoidant Dan is so hard it&#39;s because the thing that has brought the two of you together are these sort of deeper insecurities and those insecurities can be conscious they can be things that you are very aware of and you you know the insecurity you know the insec Behavior you know the insecure pattern uh or there are things that are more hidden from you and that&#39;s more the case with the avoidant often times the avoidant isn&#39;t fully aware of maybe at first of the deep fear of closeness the Deep fear of relying on another person the Deep fear and and insecurity of expressing themselves and so that when those two things come together it&#39;s our insecurities choosing a partner in an effort to try and resolve the insecurities right we don&#39;t our insecurities don&#39;t want to stay necessarily in place and be there forever our insecurities just like your anxiousness or your depression it&#39;s looking for some type of resolution it doesn&#39;t want to just stay put and stay in place it might feel like that sometimes but our insecurities are always looking for some type of evolution or resolution so just keep that in mind as we continue to talk uh about how to end this anxious avoidant dance so next I&#39;m going to give you some examples of an anxious avoidant Dynamic and then I&#39;m going to give you you know how can it succeed when do you know to leave or that it&#39;s not going to work and then what do you specifically need to do in order to heal this type of dynamic so examples of the anxious avoiding Dynamic is the Chase and withdraw pattern that I&#39;ve been talking about this is the push and pull pattern where the anxious person will press for more intimacy more reassurance more validation uh more soothing those types of things uh more reassurance and this will push the avoidant partner further and further away because they will feel a pressure to caretake the other person uh to be responsible for the other person to be close to and intimate with the other person all of which might reactivate either some trauma in their past or some fear of closeness or some physical and emotional reminder that intimacy isn&#39;t safe next is conflict over closeness and space conflict over closeness and space so the anxious partner might initiate conversations about the future about when are we moving in together or how do you feel like this relationship is going or you know should we um should we com be in a committed relation ship and not date anybody else or is it time for us to get engaged and this type of uh bid for connection and it might even not even be that big it might be like hey on Friday night I really would love for us to go out to a date you know go out for a date grow up for dinner like whatever it is and that can cause the avoidant person to feel trapped to feel inclosed on to to feel like they have to make some level of commitment that&#39;s maybe uncomfortable for them or commit to some level of intimacy and closeness that&#39;s uncomfortable for them and this can create the conflict so it&#39;s very often one of the biggest Hallmarks okay and I really want you to like write this one down keep this in mind because this is so important to undoing undoing the anxious avoidant dance so often a Hallmark of the anxious avoidant Dynamic is that when there are bids for closeness and intimacy and connection when there are moments that closeness intimacy and connection are possible or intimacy closeness and connection is requested or demanded conflict ensues all right so intimacy and closeness and connection when that starts to arise in the relationship this is usually the inflection point for some type of conflict and this is where you know it might be that the avoidant person starts to criticize the anxious one or the anx one starts to criticize the avoidant one you never want to spend time with me how come you don&#39;t want to go out to dinner or like spend time with my friends or my family and this will create conflict so a lot of the conflict that you experience in this type of relationship revolves around just being close just being connected um staying intimate and then last uh this is another big one is misinterpretation of signals okay misinterpretation of signals very simply put you will have either partner the anxious or the avoidant um misrepresenting or misinterpreting the signals from the other person right so the anxious person might see the avoidant asking for some space or saying hey you know what uh tonight I just want to kind of like do my own thing I&#39;m gonna you know go into the shop and do my woodworking or I&#39;m going to watch my own show or I&#39;m going to go to gym or Brazilian jiu-jitsu um or like a dance class or whatever is and then the anxious person misinterprets that as you don&#39;t love me you don&#39;t want to be with me you&#39;re leaving me uh etc etc and vice versa right the avoidant person might hear the anxious person saying hey you know what we haven&#39;t been on a date in a few weeks um I would love to just go out with you on Friday night and like go have a beer or you know go out and have a good meal and the avoidant person might misinterpret that as like oh you&#39;re wanting you know some level of commitment you&#39;re trying to push something or you&#39;re being so needy right now or whatever it is even though it&#39;s just a bid for connection so again a lot of the conflict will come out of bids for connection and bids for Solitude okay can these types of relationships work this is one of the biggest questions that I get um from people when they&#39;re talking about attachment Styles the answer is unequivocally yes they do take uh a decent amount of work and they take some time for that work to set in there are some key ingredients to making this relationship work okay the main one is that both of you have to be willing participants in doing what I&#39;m outlining in this uh episode um and that might mean that you go and work with somebody as a couple um that might be be a part of it but at the very least you have to both be willing participants to recognize that this is an issue that&#39;s getting in the way and wanting to work on it to better the relationship without that without that agreement there&#39;s nothing that you can do all right it&#39;s it&#39;s not going to move forward so that brings me to the next piece which is how do you know that it&#39;s not going to work because that&#39;s another question that I get which is like should we break up should we not stay together um number one if your partner after months or you know however long is still not willing to work on this Dynamic then that might be a sign that it&#39;s time to go right if you&#39;ve both acknowledged that there&#39;s a a big issue and disconnect between the two of you and maybe you&#39;ve even acknowledged that you two are in this avoidant and anxious dance and they&#39;re not willing to work on it whether the they&#39;re the avoidant or the anxious partner um then that might be a sign that it&#39;s not going to work and individually a couple things need to happen number one the avoidant has to be willing to to lean in communicate their needs prioritize staying in connection when [ __ ] gets hard and they have to be willing to start to lean into opening themselves and expressing themselves specifically around help and support all right second for the anxious person you have to be willing to begin to self soothe to start to self-regulate self- validate and to build a deeper level of safety and work within yourself so those are sort of like the two missions how do you end the dance well let&#39;s talk about this where I I thought a lot about where I wanted to start with this part of the episode and what I&#39;m actually going to start with might be different than what you expected I&#39;m going to talk about how you end the punishment cycle that shows up in an anxious avoidant relationship so every anxious avoidant relationship has some type of punishment cycle and usually it&#39;s you know one person starting at the anxious or the avoidant and then there&#39;s very specific behaviors that roll out after that and so the dynamic looks something like this the anxious Partners uh the anxious partner will Implement protest behaviors and the avoidant partner will try and exert some level of control through Detachment okay and again we can can get stuck in judging or criticizing our partner&#39;s Behavior right whether it&#39;s protest Behavior or Detachment but the reality is and I want you to remember this because it&#39;s so important your partner learned this Behavior as a protection mechanism when they were young right so you have to try and contextualize that your partner&#39;s doing this not because in that moment they&#39;re an adult you know choosing to punish you choosing to protest choosing to detach they&#39;re doing that because there&#39;s a younger part of them that is afraid of intimacy there&#39;s a younger part of them that&#39;s afraid of being abandoned or neglected and so we have to have some level of empathy without letting that empathy overrun you know Common Sense uh within the relationship but that&#39;s the general cycle so here&#39;s what happens the anxious person will Implement some type of protest Behavior to try and establish or reestablish connection so instead of saying hey this is what I would like there&#39;s some type of behavior that they enact which uh creates the insecurity that continues to build the insecurity in the relationship and so some signs of that protest behavior for you as the anxious person and I want to make it clear what I&#39;m about to give both of you anxious and avoidant person is not to be weaponized against your partner this isn&#39;t information be like oh you&#39;re using protest behaviors like shame on you or you&#39;re using detach behaviors what&#39;s wrong with you this is for you as the anxious person and the avoidant person to self-identify when you&#39;re in this mode of trying to punish to get connection or trying to punish to create distance okay so for the anxious person excessive contact followed by punitive withdraw this is a very common cycle what does it mean excessive contact over texting over communicating emailing calling a bunch of times um you know talking at your partner even though they&#39;ve said hey like I I&#39;m done right now or I can&#39;t talk right now leaving tons of voice memos messaging them endless times on social media but excessive contact followed by some type of punitive withdrawal meaning you contact contact contact contact contact you you might dump emotionally on them and then you withdraw entirely and you disconnect and it&#39;s a ploy that&#39;s kind of like come get me and it might sound something like I love you so much and how come you don&#39;t and I just want to love you and I just want to be with you and that kind of uh response next is scorekeeping anxious people are notorious for scorekeeping in the relationship and again this isn&#39;t to shame you this is for you to develop the awareness to catch yourself doing this [ __ ] and to stop to catch yourself be like oh man I am scorekeeping again and sometimes how you catch yourself in the cycle is by becoming aware of it and then calling it out and actually saying to your partner out loud or texting a friend a buddy and saying like H I&#39;m catching myself I&#39;m scorekeeping right now and I don&#39;t want to do that so instead I&#39;m going to give my partner some recognition some praise some validation for what they&#39;ve been doing in the relationship next is acting hostile in some capacity what does that mean it means you might threaten it means that you might try and manipulate it means that you might try and use coercion um but you are acting hostile in some ways because you&#39;re disregulated internally and you are trying to get the other person to give you what you want and so your anxiety has sort of taken over and the again this isn&#39;t to excuse your behavior um but your anxiety takes over and you follow through on it and so you might threaten the person that you&#39;re going to leave you might threaten to disclose information about them um you might become hostile and threaten them in in a different way but that hostility is a an unhealthy bid for connection we&#39;ll just put it that way um and then lastly as an anxious person you might use some type of emotional manipulation um as the punishment so again this is coming out of a place of you as the anxious partner don&#39;t feel like your needs are being met you don&#39;t feel close to their person you&#39;re scared of being rejected you&#39;re scared of being abandoned you&#39;re scared of the moving away and then you start to try and use emotional manipulation or coercion to get what you want and that can look like a whole bunch of different ways breaking somebody&#39;s privacy going through their phone going through their messages going through their emails um you know using things that they said in the past against them uh using times this is a really big one if you&#39;re the anxious person using times when you&#39;re avoidant partner has opened up to uh to leverage against them in the future that&#39;s a really damaging one so those are the behaviors you want to start to look for to end the punishment cycle you want to catch yourself in those and you might want even want to listen to this part of the episode with your partner to say you know which one of these do I do uh what does it look like what does it sound like when does it show up and and then you can make a little bit of a plan to catch yourself in the moment and have some resources and accountability so that you can move away from that type of behavior all right avoidant Partners let&#39;s talk to you on the other hand an avoidant partner in punishment mode is going to try and exert some level of control through Detachment and and what&#39;s called deactivation strategies and so just in a simple way it&#39;s really about disconnecting from the other person and you might be doing it because they are you know pressing you for something you might be doing it because all of a sudden the two of you are in a good place and that feels frightening things are too easy things are normal and so you start to drift away uh you might be doing that because there&#39;s some needs that you don&#39;t feel like are being met in the relationship and so you you suddenly disconnect or you slowly disconnect and some of these behaviors look like this for the avoidant person in punishment cycle it can look like your words not matching your actions so for example you could verbally Express um an avoidant an avoidance of commitment I don&#39;t want to do that Friday night or I don&#39;t want to watch that show with you but then you follow through with it right then you like you watch the show that you said you don&#39;t want to watch or you go and do the thing on Friday night that you said that you don&#39;t want to do and so that type of mismatching words and behaviors words and choices can be a strategy that creates confusion on the other side and that detaches and disconnects because the other person never really knows where you stand it&#39;s a more it&#39;s not even a subtle one it&#39;s just a a hard to pin down one so it creates disorientation within your your girlfriend within your wife Etc and that can be incredibly challenging uh or your boyfriend or your husband depending on if you&#39;re you know watch whoever you are that&#39;s watching this the next one for the avoiding person is Hy hper criticism and focusing predominantly on flaws uh this is very common for the guys that grew up with a mom or a dad who was hypercritical who didn&#39;t give love and attention or or who only gave love and affection and attention um in per performance-based ways right so when you did the right thing when you said the right thing then you got love then you got affection then you got the good job and so that shows up in your relationship as an avoidance so you can you can focus heavily on your partner&#39;s flaws next uh of the avoidant one is a fixation for The One That Got Away and rather than being fully present in the relationship and this this can come up in a bunch of different ways I&#39;m going to give you a couple different examples but the big one is like oh that one person that I was with that I really screwed up my life would be so much better if I was just with that one person another version of this that I&#39;ve seen with a lot of guys is a a sort of like fixation on beauty or the body right so it&#39;s like well I&#39;m really I really love her and I&#39;m really attracted to her but like you know there&#39;s this thing about her aesthetically that I don&#39;t really like and that becomes something that that gets hyper fixated on when you&#39;re having sex when you&#39;re trying to be intimate and it creates this space and separation between you and your part partner because you are fixated on this perceived flaw or imperfection that you can&#39;t uh seem to let in it&#39;s like I think there was I mean this is kind of a funny version but there&#39;s an episode of Seinfeld I think it&#39;s George that&#39;s dating this woman that has manh hands and the whole episode the whole episode is about you know having Man Hands and I&#39;m not saying you know if you&#39;re dating somebody and there&#39;s like genuinely something about them they&#39;re like I just can&#39;t get on board with that thing whether it&#39;s a behavior or a characteristic or a trait or even even something physical if you&#39;re like if you just can&#39;t get on board with it you can&#39;t get on board with it but George was sort of like your classic avoidant you know he wanted love he wanted relationships but there was always something you know there was always something that he was hyper fixated on that he could never get over and the episode with manh hands was just such a good example um next is avoiding emotional Intimacy in the present day current relationship and uh that can come out in a number of different ways you might not want to label the relationship you might not uh want to share the relationship online for fear of judgment you might not want to tell your buddies about it um and you might not talk about it or you know share your relationship with your family uh even though it&#39;s been two years or you know something excessive like that so you avoid emotional Intimacy in the relationship you don&#39;t open up maybe you don&#39;t talk to your partner about you know how things are going at work or you know how you felt after the death of a parent or you don&#39;t open up to them about what you&#39;ve been experiencing in terms of this big life transition but in some ways you avoid emotional intimacy and so this is very common that when your partner&#39;s checking in on you hey how are you doing how you feeling after this thing has gone on that you are just like I&#39;m fine no I&#39;m okay none of&#39;s wrong and there&#39;s just a closed offness that happens lastly is hyper or hyposexuality um this means that for the avoidant person you can move into a space of almost entirely disconnecting from your sexuality or it becomes such a dominant force in the relationship that it&#39;s really the only conduit the only door for any type of closeness and connection or intimacy that you&#39;ll allow to happen um so that is another part for the avoidant all right what do both of you indiv ually need to do in order to move through this avoidant and anxious dance that so many people get caught in I&#39;m going to break it down into anxious and then avoidant and then relationships so anxious you need to learn to self-regulate and self soothe it is so common that the anxious person is inadvertently or indirectly demanding that through choices through actions through behaviors through communication demanding that the other person help the anxious person soothe and regulate what they&#39;re feeling okay and so you have to start to prioritize learning to be okay learning to be safe in your body in yourself uh when you are feeling discomfort when you have a fear that&#39;s coming up with your partner when you have an anxiety about where the future of the relationship is going now this doesn&#39;t mean that you can&#39;t have direct clear conversations about hey where are things going you know it&#39;s been six months uh or it&#39;s been a year and I I want to know where we stand it doesn&#39;t mean that you can&#39;t have those conversations it simply means that your work is to learn to ground yourself in the face of discomfort hard conversations your uh sometimes your your deep insecurities that might be coming up what if I&#39;m not good enough what if I&#39;m not smart enough what if I&#39;m not attractive enough to the other person I need them to reassure me that I&#39;m enough so what you do is every time that this starts to come up right this anxiousness starts to come up am I enough are they going to leave me yada y y you have some type of tool a meditation practice a breath work practice a journaling practice where you can start to ground yourself soothe yourself regulate yourself and then reinforce course your own level of self-worth okay super super important and this next one is going to help with this which is end the validation trap the the Trap that anxious Partners get into especially with avoidance which causes a lot of conflict and chaos is that you are constantly seeking validation from the other person right you&#39;re looking to them to reaffirm that you&#39;re smart enough good enough valuable have worth are lovable all of those types of pieces and it&#39;s not something that they can give you ever they might be able to reinforce they might be able to reassure they might be able to comfort you for a period of time but that will always dissipate and so part of your mission is to go on a journey of self-recognition to actually develop an inner infrastructure an inner um behavioral pattern of being able to recognize yourself validate yourself appreciate yourself and you might have to practice that four months it might be something that you keep a gratitude Journal about and you have a very specific practice for yourself uh it might be a a way of being a way of living that you start to do that every time you operate in a way that reinforces that you&#39;ve made a good decision that you have value that you offered something of value that you contribute something of value that you actually take a moment to recognize yourself for doing those things so that you can reinforce yeah you know what I am doing a good job I do have value I do bring something to the table I do contribute something in this marriage or this relationship next is create boundaries with your anxious behavior and get accountable it&#39;s almost like for anxious people you I was going to what I was going to say is you know when when we lack impulse control it can look a bunch of different ways you know you might lack impulse control with porn or ice cream or popcorn where just like the thought of having it all of a sudden takes you over and you can&#39;t stop yourself right you can&#39;t stop yourself from like going out and buying ice cream or getting you know making the popcorn at home or whatever it is and for the anxious person it&#39;s having no boundaries having very poor boundaries with the anxious Behavior the overtexting the needing the validation the why won&#39;t you just tell me that I&#39;m good enough the that type of stuff and so having a am men&#39;s group having an accountability group having an accountability person that when those anxious behaviors start to surface you can get some support and say hey I&#39;m feeling this or I&#39;m about to text bomb them like can can you just talk me off off the ledge because I know this isn&#39;t the right choice um starting to stand up and confront those anxious behaviors within yourself that when it starts to come up and says I got to text bomb them um instead confronting that part and be like no I&#39;m going to just pause I&#39;m not I&#39;m gonna I know I don&#39;t want to text him I shouldn&#39;t text him right now pause for an hour for two hours for three hours before you actually communicate anything and then lastly be very clear and direct about what you want and what you need in the relationship and this can be challenging for an anxious person because the anxious person in some ways is almost always hoping that the avoidant partner or even the secure partner figures out what they&#39;re feeling and that they can somehow magically solve what they&#39;re feeling internally which is as we all know impossible okay that&#39;s the anxious for the AO avoidant person um there&#39;s a couple really key things that need to be practiced number one is practice what I call relational Reliance practice relational Reliance what does this mean it means asking your partner for help opening yourself up to getting support with something that you&#39;d normally do on your own or that you would normally try and deal with in isolation whether it&#39;s asking for feedback on something whether it&#39;s asking for help doing something uh around your house or you know dealing with your car or uh your family asking for some advice on things that normally you would just try and mle over on your own but practicing relational Reliance again the the Hallmark of the avoidant is I don&#39;t need you to be okay because it&#39;s only safe for me to rely on me right it&#39;s only safe for me to rely on me whereas with the anxious it&#39;s I can&#39;t rely on me I can only rely on you and so as the avoidant you have to practice relying on your partner to contribute to your life to help you to support you and to slowly over time build trust and faith and the understanding that it&#39;s safe for you as the avoidant person to rely on another person and that they will continue to show up for you that they can add value to you that they can support you and that you&#39;re not going to be burned because of it next is practice what I call racing to resolve racing to resolve so it&#39;s very common that as an avoidant partner when conflict happens it&#39;s like you&#39;re you just get to like sit back and you&#39;re like you most avoidance get a case of what I call the fuckets right it&#39;s just like ah [ __ ] it like they&#39;ll deal with it whenever they come back to me whenever they try and repair from this conflict is when it repairs and so you can go days sometimes even weeks you don&#39;t talk about it maybe you never even talk about it and as the avoidant you&#39;re probably okay with that and so you have to be the one that practices initiating practices initiating repairing after some type of a disconnection and that doesn&#39;t have to be some big blowup or some big conflict it can be that you create uh structure for reconnecting after the two of you have been aart right so if you&#39;re an avoidant and you go away on a work trip and you&#39;re gone for three days maybe there&#39;s a specific way that you practice reconnecting when you come back um and and actually re-engaging the relationship instead of walking in the door and being like hey what&#39;s up and going and sitting down and turning the TV on uh or playing video games or whatever it is that you do so you have to practice racing to resolve and racing to reconnect because for the avoidant person it&#39;s not a natural tendency because again the there&#39;s an over Reliance on self and an under Reliance on other and relationship and so again after conflict you can be the one that initiates the repair after some type of disconnection you can be the one that initiates the reconnection after being separated or apart um for a couple days you can be the one that initiates the reconnection so practice these types of pieces and the great the a good one an easy one is when you are a part be the one to initiate checking in be the one to initiate uh calling like this is something that I had to actively practice because I was very much like out of sight out of mind you know uh when I&#39;d be away from a partner uh a girlfriend I just like you know for the most part I wouldn&#39;t text or call unless they texted or called me and so I had to practice being like hey how are you how&#39;s your day how are things going or you know I&#39;m around tonight from 7il 8: do you have time to connect I&#39;d love to call you so those are types of things that you can do actively to create connection and lean in and then lastly is to practice expression practice expression so for the avoidant person expressing your needs expressing your wants uh expressing when you are feeling disconnected is a very very hard and uncomfortable thing so this is the expression that you need to practice hey I would love more of X in our relationship or you know I&#39;ve been actually feeling a little disconnected lately or you know what I would love some space for the next 24 hours and then I will reconnect with you again if you want this this to work with your anxious partner you have to create some type of structure that lets them know when you&#39;re going to reconnect because what most avoidants do is they ask for space and they pull away with no reassurance or no real communication about when they&#39;re going to come back and for the anxious person that&#39;s like hell you know that&#39;s just like you&#39;re putting me in purgatory I can&#39;t do anything uh from this place all right so that&#39;s the individual work that the anxious and the avoidant person need to do together there&#39;s a couple pieces that I want to talk about okay um obviously communication is a big part of this and if you if the two of you don&#39;t feel like you are in a place where you have great communication together find a third party to help you translate for one another all right um but very clear direct communication is important next consistent connection practice consistent connection and what I&#39;m going to say about this is as the avoidant you will want to practice consistent connection that&#39;s a little uncomfortable for you so it&#39;s pushing an edge it might feel like uh it&#39;s just a little too much it&#39;s not too much in the sense that you want to bounce out of life in the relationship but it&#39;s like oh this feels a little uncomfortable for me and then for the anxious person you want to practice consistent Connection in a way that is actually dialed down and so so you want to temper the amount of connection that you might expect and when I talk about consistent connection for the anxious person I&#39;m talking about con consistent connection with you within yourself prioritizing being consistently connected within yourself so do I feel connected to me do I feel connected with uh you know my routines my habits my plan for the day do I feel con connected to my own sense of joy and meaning in life do I feel connected to my own sense of purpose and mission in life and so that&#39;s the consistent connection that you require as the anxious and for the avoiding person it&#39;s leaning into the consistent connection of the relationship of actually being the one that prioritizes uh connecting with the other person and that can be you know daily physical contact you know hugging the other person having some type of like you know exercise where for a couple weeks whenever you come home from work like you give them a hug and maybe you make out for a little bit but you find some type of uh structure or or uh consistency in maintaining contact lastly is prioritizing safety in the self and safety in togetherness okay so again the avoidance in the anxious are just inverse of one another and the anxious doesn&#39;t feel safe within the M themselves and the avoidant doesn&#39;t feel safe in togetherness and so what the two of you have to start to talk about and negotiate okay and I really mean that word you have to start to negotiate this is what you as an anxious person need to start to feel safe within yourself and what you as an avoidant person need in order to start to feel safe in the togetherness and I really want you to mle over that question okay write it down if you&#39;re the anxious person what do I think I need to do to feel in order to be safe Within Myself and then as the avoidant person ask yourself the question what do I think I need in order to feel safe in the togetherness in the relationship and that has to be more about you and maybe a little bit about the other person but it has to be more about like what do you actually need to feel safe in the togetherness what do you need to practice what do you need to prioritize what maybe do you need from the other person uh Etc so just go down the list a little bit create a list talk about these things if you are in a relationship with somebody um that is willing to do this work with you so as always thank you so much for tuning in to this episode I hope that this serves you and your life and your relationships and as always don&#39;t forget to man It Forward share this with just one person in your life that you know will benefit from it and don&#39;t forget to leave me a comment if you&#39;re watching on YouTube I&#39;d love to hear your thoughts or DM me on Instagram @ manant talks all right team be well see you next time [Music]

Transcript for:Navigating Anxious-Avoidant Relationships

Transcript for:
Navigating Anxious-Avoidant Relationships