10 Reasons You Lost Momentum With Your Avoidant Ex

The reason you’re struggling to hold your avoidant ex’s attention or interest, why things aren’t moving forward, or why you feel like you take one step forward and two steps backwards is because you don’t have momentum.

Relationship momentum is when everything is going in the right direction and you can feel that things are moving forward at a steady pace. Connection is growing stronger and deeper, there’s enough communication, mutual understanding, acceptance, appreciation, warmth and affection for you to feel confident about your chances. Even when you hit an obstacle or say/do something that in any other situation would derail progress, you quickly recover from it and things keep getting better and better.

How important is relationship momentum in getting an avoidant back?

Very important. Momentum gives you a fairly accurate idea of how fast or how slow to take things and/or make a move.

When you have momentum, things seem to happen naturally and with less effort. You feel like you’re “on a roll” and if things keep moving forward at the same pace, it’s only a matter of time before you get back together.

When you don’t have momentum, everything feels hard. You’re putting in effort but things don’t seem to be moving forward. And even when there’s a positive development, it’s hard to be excited about it because the chances of getting back together don’t look good. And if you had momentum then lost it, it’s easy to feel discouraged when you see things have slowed down. You feel the pressure to get things to where everything was going in the right direction and your chances looked good.

Here are the top 10 reasons why you don’t have momentum or lost momentum.

1. Inconsistent communication 

Inconsistency is the number one killer of momentum. You can’t build momentum with no communication for long periods of time or when you reach out, connect then there is no contact for days or weeks, then reach out again, connect and then no contact for days or weeks. Even if you have some momentum, you’ll quickly lose it because momentum requires proactive engagement. Every time connection is lost, you lose momentum and have to rebuild it back up to the level you had for things to keep moving forward. This not only prolongs the process, it can also completely sabotage it.

2. Intense and aggressive approach

Because of their fear of connection (fearful avoidants) and their downplaying connection (dismissive avoidants), avoidant exes need a gentler, less aggressive take-it-slow approach. When things feel forced or the timing of a move is off, avoidants pull back and even emotionally shut down, and every time they pull back, you lose momentum.

3. Inability to hold attention or interest

Engaging your avoidant ex and keeping them interested is crucial for building connection and also for building momentum. If you can’t hold an avoidant’s attention for longer than a few conversations, you can’t build momentum, and if you can’t hold their interest beyond when the initial excitement of re-establishing contact starts to fade, you will lose momentum.

4. No follow up

Follow ups set off a chain reaction that leads to increased engagement which leads to momentum. But if like many people, you ask a question or start a conversation topic, then next time you reach out ask another question or start another conversation topic on a completely different conversation topic with no follow-ups, you are missing the opportunity to build momentum. The best you can get is fluctuating momentum.

5. Few moments of meaningful connection

Moments of meaningful interaction or connection whether planned or unplanned stay with an avoidant ex long after the connecting event. For avoidants, such moments are rare and when you have many of them, they feel connected to you even when you’re not actively interacting. This fuels momentum and even motivates desired actions. When you have none or very few of them, it’ll be a struggle to get any traction or get an avoidant to act on anything.

6. Limited ways to connect

I can tell right from the start that a client is going to give up trying to get an avoidant ex back if they’re just focused on trying to get an avoidant to meet and ignoring all the other ways to connect because they see it as a waste of time.

Maintaining momentum requires a constant input of energy and effort in all available ways to connect. Relying solely on one channel or medium of communication e.g. only text conversations, only video chats, only sharing videos, only connecting through social media, only trying to meet in person etc., limits the opportunities for increased engagement which leads to failure to build momentum.

7. Fear of taking risks

It’s possible to experience moments of momentum or “small wins” here and there but not see real forward movement because you don’t want to rock the boat or have accepted the status quo.

To generate momentum you need to take risks, and not just any risks but fact-driven and reality-based risks. This means timing your moves, making the most of the success you’ve already had and preparing for different scenarios and outcomes.

8. Complacency/sloppiness

When you don’t expect things to go so well with your ex and they do, it’s easy to get too comfortable, a little sloppy, and/or fall back to old habits and patterns. But as they say, complacency is the enemy of progress, you can’t be comfortable with the bare minimum, just good enough or doing the same things that haven’t worked and expect things to pick up speed or get nearer to getting back together. Just not happening.

9. Failure to adapt

You’re dealing with an avoidant which means that there will be times when things move steadily and times when things slow down. If your ex is a fearful avoidant, there will be times when things accelerate rapidly then slow down. This is predictable and expected. What gets in the way of momentum is failure to adapt to the dips in connection and contact.

10. Self-doubt

It’s normal when trying to get back with an ex to have some self-doubt and even question if you’re progressing fast enough. But when you’re constantly doubting yourself and the decision to get back with your ex, self-doubt undermines confidence and creates a negative feedback loop that prevents you from taking the actions you need to move things forward.

The good news is that you can get back the momentum you lost. It can happen quickly with avoidant exes who are also putting in effort to make the relationship work. On most part, however, it takes time and patience to build back momentum.

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