Stop Accepting The Bare Minimum From Avoidant Exes

Question: Do I just accept what I can get from my avoidant ex?

I recently discovered attachment theory, took the test and I tested anxious preoccupied and my ex fearful avoidant leaning anxious. We were in love and he told me he never felt so comfortable and happy with anyone before me. One day we had an argument about him wanting to spend more time with his friends than with me. I told him I’d like to spend a bit more time with him and he said he had enough and broke up with me.

Two days later he reached out, very apologetic and saying he acted impulsively and regretted breaking up. I told him I had been unhappy for a while and was a bit relieved when he ended things, which made him very anxious. He promised to do better and we agreed to take things slow but because of what happened, I’m suppressing my needs and emotions for fear of triggering him. I’m working on my security and I’ve been reading your website and practicing to express my needs more directly, but I still feel like I’m mostly taking whatever I get and struggle to feel completely safe. I’m wondering if this is a me-thing I have to work on or something I have to accept.

Yangki’s Answer: It’s both. It’s something you need to work on and also something you have to learn to accept. Let’s start with something you have to accept as this is more straightforward.

1. Avoidants need more space and anxiously attached need more connection

What you have to learn to accept is not breadcrumbs and “whatever you can get” but that you have different attachment styles therefore different attachment needs. Someone anxiously attached will always want more contact, connection and closeness than an avoidant, and this means that most of the time, contact, connection and closeness will seem or be one-sided.

Trying to make an avoidant want as much contact, connection and closeness as you do is futile and will only end up creating more pressure for an avoidant and more frustration for you.

Find ways to get both of your needs can be met. His need for more space and your need for me connection. For example, if you’re talking everyday for a few days and an avoidant is responsive and engaged, this meets an anxiously attached person’s needs more than an avoidants needs. And that’s a good thing. When an avoidant starts to take longer to respond and engages less, it means that they’ve reached the limit of how much contact and connection their emotional bandwidth can allow.

Don’t try to force them to keep talking everyday to meet your anxious attachment needs. Observe and figure out their pattern, then use that pattern to pace connection to what is safe for both of you; they get the space they need to feel safe and you get the connection you need to feel safe. Both people feel safe.

2. Work on taking responsibility for your own emotional safety

Can an avoidant make you feel completely safe?

• No, because an avoidant attachment style prioritizes their own safety over a relationship partner’s safety.
• No, because most avoidants don’t know how and don’t have the tools for creating emotional safety for someone else.
• And no, because someone else can’t make you feel completely safe, not even a secure attached.

Feeling safe is an internal state created by your own attachment system, not something another person can give you from the outside.

In other words, it’s okay to want your ex to make you feel safe and okay to as ask that they make you feel safe, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for your own safety. Making others – more specifically an avoidant responsible for your safety is what makes you need constant reassurance, feel powerless, and too afraid of losing them.

Losing them can feel like losing safety. So you compromise. But that very compromise makes you even less safe. The worst part… you will lose them anyways.

Boundaries as I discuss in my articles is the ONLY way you can take responsibility for your own emotional safety and mental well-being. You can also of course walk away, but if you are not ready to walk away, boundaries are your only answer.

It’s important when setting a boundary to keep in mind that a boundary is not about bending the other person to your will or expectations, a boundary is about your safety, your self-respect and you communicating how you need to be treated while also respecting the other person’s needs and their need to feel safe.

It’s also important when setting a boundary to make sure you reinforce or follow through on your boundaries. If you say, I will do XY if my boundary is violated, do XY. When you don’t enforce your boundary, you disrespect yourself, and that’s on you and not on an avoidant. Don’t disrespect yourself and expect the other person to respect you.

If you’re not ready to follow through and enforce your own boundary, don’t set the boundary. A boundary you’re not ready to enforce is not a boundary but an insecure person’s threat or ultimatum. It’s useless at best and exposes you as unsafe at worst.

The two key take aways from this are:

1. Don’t accept the bare minimum from an avoidant. Avoidants will give you what you are willing to accept or think you deserve based on how much you respect yourself. But they will also push back if your needs exceed theirs or if you become pushy and demanding. The compromise is not on your needs, the compromise is on where you meet each other.

2. Don’t ever accept behaviours that make you feel unsafe then complain about feeling unsafe. Each time you compromise on your safety and your needs, you make yourself smaller, less attractive and less safe.

RELATED:

Why You Keep Over-Sacrificing for Your Avoidant Ex

How Avoidants React When You Set Secure Boundaries