Avoidant men don't choose to shut down. They don't choose to resist closeness and be emotionally unavailable. They don't choose to keep you at arm's length.
Their withdrawal isn't about you at all. This has nothing to do with how lovable you are. It's not about how much effort you put in. It's his attachment system and how it's been working against him since childhood. His brain chemistry is blocking his ability to connect and preventing you from developing the secure relationship you have always wanted.
Because for avoidant men, intimacy doesn't feel safe. It feels like a threat. And their entire life has been built around avoiding that threat at all costs. I'm Adam Lane Smith, Attachment Specialist, and in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to disarm his avoidant defenses in a way that he's actually going to appreciate, to build real emotional connection with an approach that will make sense to him and to make true emotional intimacy feel desirable to him, maybe for the first time in his life.
And if you want to go even deeper into this topic after this video, I am hosting a live Q&A masterclass on exactly how to talk to an avoidant man without pushing him away very soon. But I'll tell you more about that at the end of this video. For now, let's get into it.
Because an avoidant man can become secure. The problem is that most people go about it. the very, very long way.
They push, they beg, they demand, or worse, they shrink themselves down, hoping that less will make him love them more. None of that works. Why?
Because they're trying to solve a neurochemical problem with purely emotional solutions. If you're in a relationship with an avoidant man, you know the frustration. He pulls away just when things get close.
He seems allergic to vulnerability. And every conversation about emotions feels like pulling teeth. But here's what nobody tells you.
Avoidant men aren't just being difficult. They cannot imagine secure attachment. It's like asking somebody who has only ever seen in black and white for their entire life to describe the color red. They've never seen healthy relationships.
They've never seen them modeled. They've never experienced healthy connection themselves. They have no data for secure attachment, so it does not make sense to them.
A trusting, intimate relationship where a person will not let them down or betray them, and if anything goes wrong, that person will work in good faith with them. They've never felt that. So they don't have a frame of reference for an unshakable trust.
Everything is dangerous. Every relationship is doomed. Again. If they've only seen like that, they can't imagine a world where that's not the case. Now, before I share the following five transformational strategies that will help, let me explain first what's really happening beneath the surface of your avoidant man.
Now, let's be very, very clear here one more time. Avoidant attachment is not a choice. It's a trauma response that develops in early childhood. It's based purely on survival, not logic. As an infant, this person experienced such deep social pain or emotional neglect that their brain made a decision.
I will never feel this pain again. And just like that, their system closed the door on transparent communication and the possibility of any secure connection. Their oxytocin receptors, the very structures in the brain responsible for close, intimate bonding, are physically blocked by their sympathetic nervous system. When you ask them to connect deeply, you're asking them to do something their biology is actively fighting against.
It's not that they don't love you. It's that they don't know what real, secure love even feels like. And this is not their fault.
And it's not your fault either. Their system is so far in a permanent state of sympathetic nervous system activation. The fight or flight mode. The system is not designed to keep them happy. It's designed to keep them protected.
When you say, just open up and trust me, to them it sounds like you're saying, just jump off this cliff. It'll be fun. Their entire system is screaming danger.
This person is encouraging you to get hurt. But here's the good news. With the right approach, these patterns can and do change.
The brain's neuroplasticity allows for new connections to form when we provide consistent, safe exposure. to healthy attachment behaviors. Now, most avoidant men are very clear here.
Most avoidant men are only receptive to this change when their survival strategy starts making them miserable. They hit a breaking point, loneliness, failed relationships, the realization that their old patterns don't work anymore, or even losing somebody that they come to realize may have been the love of their life. But even when they want to change, they still don't know how. This is where you come in. Now, again, I want to be very clear.
Your job is not to fix him or heal him. It's to create the right conditions for his attachment system to reset so that he can choose closeness himself. And the way to do that is to show him step by step that closeness does not equal danger.
So here's what you're going to do. I've got five strategies that can turn your avoidant man secure. Each strategy builds on the last strategy.
So to systemically rewire his attachment system, you've got to go through these in order. Okay. This is not about manipulation. I want to be very clear.
This is not behavioral modification that he's simply going to sit there and be partied to. This is not you leveraging things against him and controlling him. None of this, none of this is dehumanizing him.
All of these strategies. are going to show him what an honest, transparent, loving, peaceful relationship looks like. So everybody watching this, take a breath. You do not have to manipulate or change anybody. And doing these five strategies will give you a much better relationship as well.
So this is not about catering endlessly to him. I want to make that very clear as well. This is about building a relationship that is great for both of you.