Now let me address the elephant in the room.
I’ve defined “secure” as being autonomous.
But isn’t that really being avoidant?
Saying you don’t have needs, and don’t need others at all?
The reason this is not the case, is because what Attachment Theory addresses is a very specific kind of avoidance. It has to do with how you relate to other people emotionally.
As you know with Romantic Friendships?
I encourage you to avoid everything that causes love problems.
To avoid living together or being exclusive with anyone.
To avoid commitment because it adds nothing.
But in doing so, I’m not at all telling you to avoid your partner emotionally. In fact, I’m saying the exact opposite. Because as the statistics show, embracing those other things will cause your emotional connection to eventually end up in the toilet.
So what is avoidance then?
What is Attachment Theory actually addressing?
It is talking about a very specific kind of avoidance.
Fear of intimacy.
What Love Avoidants do is they suppress their feelings and emotions. They seek to avoid connection, because it requires self-exposure and vulnerability.
As a Love Avoidant, for you to heal?
This is what needs changing.
You need to learn to open up.
To let yourself FEEL finally.
Very early on in my long term relationship, I lost all my romantic feelings for my partner. I lived a very stoic life, where feeling and emotion were almost completely absent for me.
I remember weeping at times.
Wishing I could just feel “something.”
I was very aware I wasn’t “right.”
I just didn’t know what to do about it.
Finally that fateful day arrived, when I found out my long term partner was thinking of leaving me. I moved heaven and earth as I “surfed” myself, trying to turn things around for us.
Finally I found my feelings again.
How?
I re-focused on what I valued about my partner
The things that made me fall in love with her in the first place?
I’d lost sight of them for all those years!
How about you? Have you been thinking you’re avoidant just because you’re not “needy” but independent, and do you see now the only thing you need to worry about is becoming open to connection and intimacy?
Like what you’re reading? Sign up!
