Why Secure Exes Are More Successful With Avoidant Exes

When you’re trying to get back with an avoidant, it can feel like you have very little influence over what happens. But you have more influence than you think. And this is why I want you to start looking at getting back with your avoidant ex through the lens of, “What would a secure person do?”

There is a reason securely attached tend to be far more successful, even with avoidant exes, and it’s not because they follow the traditional go no contact, make them miss you, show them you’re moving on, make them realize what they’ve lost  approach to getting an ex back.

It’s because they understand that you cannot control how your ex feels, if, when and how they respond, what they decide, or when they are ready to get back together. Your ex is an individual with their own thoughts, feelings and decisions. You don’t get to decide what something means to them or how they should feel about it.

What you can do is show up in a way that creates a dynamic that helps them gradually adjust their own behaviour and the way they interact with you.

Secure people do this naturally because they are more focused on:

• Creating a healthy dynamic than getting a particular response
• Balanced effort and mutual responsibility than trying to control the outcome
• Emotional stability than reacting to every change in the relationship

This reduces pursue-withdraw dynamics and gives reconnection a real chance to grow naturally.

You can learn to do this too, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you yet.

Your ex has control over their side of the connection

When you’re trying to reconnect with an avoidant ex, it can feel like they have all the power.

• They decide when they talk to you.
• They decide whether they respond.
• They decide when they pull away.
• They decide whether they want to see you.

And you’re left waiting or trying to work out what you can possibly do to make them talk to you, respond, not pull away or want to meet.

This can leave you feeling completely helpless because you can’t make them do any of those things.

And sometimes, it can feel like your entire future with them depends on making them want to talk to you, respond, not pull away or want to meet. So you start looking for ways to influence them directly. You think about what to say, when to say it, whether to give them space, whether to reach out, whether to pull back.

You have control over your side of the connection

Your avoidant ex has control over their side of the connection. They don’t have control over yours.

• You decide when you reach out and what you say.
• You decide how you respond when they pull away.
• You decide whether you push to get back together or allow the connection to develop naturally.
• You decide what you accept and where you draw a line.
• You also decide how much of the connection you’re going to carry on your own.
• You decide went to walk away.

These choices don’t give you control over your ex’s feelings or behaviour, but they give you more control of the reconnection process than you realize, and can completely change the dynamic between the two of you.

Reconnecting is about what happens between the two of you

While neither you can control the other’s side of the dynamic, one person can influence the dynamic by changing their side of the dynamic.

Think of your dynamic as a dance or a system. If one dancer completely changes their steps, the other person cannot continue doing the exact same choreography without tripping.

By changing your side, you fundamentally disrupt the old relational “script”; creating space for a new dynamic.

Your ex may not immediately realize that they are no longer participating in the old relational “script” and may continue with their usual behaviour. But over time, as they realize that you are not reacting in the same way you used to, they slowly begin adjusting their own behaviour and the way they interact with you.

So how do you actually change the dynamic?

It starts with how you show up.

If you tell an avoidant, “I want things to be different,” “I want a different dynamic,” or “I want us to start afresh,” but continue responding to them in exactly the same way you did before, you’re likely to recreate much of the same dynamic.

To change your dynamic, you have to show up differently.

• If you became anxious whenever they pulled away, what happens when they pull away this time?
• If you needed constant reassurance, how do you handle that uncertainty now?
• If you used to push for conversations when they weren’t ready, what do you do when something feels unresolved?
• If you became frustrated and shut down whenever you didn’t get the response you wanted, what happens now?

The moments when you show up differently from how you did in the relatioship are when the dynamic starts to feel different, for both of you.

This doesn’t mean you’ll show up perfectly all the time. You might still feel anxious when your ex becomes distant. You might still wonder what they’re thinking. You might still want reassurance. The difference is what you do with those feelings or when you become anxious.

• Instead of immediately acting on the anxiety, you slow down and give yourself time to work out whether something actually needs to be addressed.
• Instead of assuming their distance means they are leaving again, you allow them to have some space without immediately trying to pull them closer.
• Instead of turning uncertainty into a relationship conversation, you let the connection develop long enough to see what happens first.

You’re still you. You’re just responding differently.

1. Become more intentional

This is where having a structured approach to reconnection matters.

Your dynamic will not change when you do things randomly hoping your ex responds differently.

The dynamic changes when you become intentional about how you connect, how you communicate, how much space you give, how you respond to their level of engagement, what needs to change, what boundaries to set and when to move things forward.

Instead of waking up every day asking:

• Should I text them?
• Should I wait?
• Are they pulling away?
• Should I give them space?
• What does this mean?

You have a framework for deciding what makes sense based on the reconnection stage the two of you actually are, and adjust as the dynamic changes.

2. Stop trying to manage their experience

If you are constantly thinking about what will stop an avoidant from pulling away, or what will make them feel closer to you, you’re still trying to manage their side of the connection.

Changing the dynamic means you can care about how your ex experiences you without taking responsibility for controlling that experience.

• You can be considerate without constantly adjusting yourself around their every reaction.
• You can give space without disappearing.
• You can be interested without pursuing.
• You can communicate your needs without turning them into demands.
• You can be understanding of their avoidant tendencies without making excuses for everything they do.

When you stop trying to manage your avoidant ex’s experience, you stop constantly adjusting your behaviour to prevent them from feeling uncomfortable, pulling away, or becoming overwhelmed.

Instead of thinking, “What do I need to do so they don’t pull away?”, you focus on “What is the healthiest way for me to show up here?”

That creates a different dynamic because your ex is no longer reacting to your attempts to manage their feelings or reactions. They have more room to have their own feelings, make their own choices, and participate in the reconnection process without you trying to anticipate or micromanage every outcome.

3. Be more consistent

Avoidants need consistency. Fearful avoidant who are the most inconsistent attachment style need even more consistency.

Consistency means your avoidant ex doesn’t have to guess which version of you they’re going to get.

• You don’t become warm one day and angry the next because they didn’t respond the way you wanted.
• You don’t tell them “I am enjoying talking to you” then complain about how they choosing what to respond to and what not to.
• You don’t become extremely chatty when you want to ask them to meet and become cold and distant when they say no.
• You don’t shower them with affection when you’re getting the response you want, then withdraw it to make a point when they don’t.
• You don’t act like everything is fine when they’re giving you attention, then suddenly question their effort when they become less available.
• You don’t threaten to go no contact or walk away every time you don’t get your way, only to reverse your decision a few hours, days or weeks later.

That is inconsistency.

Consistency is what makes the dynamic feel more stable and emotionally safe. Your avoidant ex shouldn’t have to constantly wonder what your reaction will be if they don’t respond or behave the way you want.

4. Pay attention to your own needs

One of the easiest ways to recreate the old dynamic is to become so focused on getting your ex back that you stop paying attention to what you actually need.

When you’re constantly pursuing, fixing, explaining and trying to keep everything moving, you may not notice how much of the connection you’re carrying.

And because you’re doing so much, it can look like things are moving forward when, in reality, you’re doing most of the moving.

For the dynamic to actually change, you have to start paying attention to what you actually need.

You don’t have to stop being open or interested. You simply stop putting your needs aside to keep the connection going, and start noticing whether the connection is meeting your needs too.

Instead of constantly asking, “What can I do to make my ex come back?”, start asking: “What can I do differently so that the dynamic meets both of our needs?”

5. Create room for them to step up

This is where reconnection starts becoming real.

If you’re constantly overfunctioning and basically doing the work for two, your avoidant ex doesn’t have much reason to step up or show up.

• Stop rushing in to fill every silence or gap in connection. Space when you reach out to allow them to sometimes reach out first.
• Stop trying to resolve every issue the moment it comes up. Not every uncomfortable moment needs to be fixed immediately. Allow both of you time to process and intentionally chose connection.
• Stop filling in the gaps in their lack of effort. For example, saying “good morning” every day to remind them that you exist even when they never mirror you, or saying “goodnight” every night even when the don’t respond

This is not about pulling back to make them chase you or withholding contact to get a reaction. It’s about not compensating for things they aren’t doing themselves, and creating opportunities for them to do their part.

6. Don’t rush reconnection

This is where how you show up can have the most influence on the dynamic.

When you are reconnecting, you are not starting from a clean slate. You want to start from a clean state, but you have a history together.

Both of you enter reconnection with memories of the old dynamic.

Your avoidant ex remembers how things felt between you before:

• They remember pressure and overwhelm.
• They remember the arguments and conflict.
• They remember feeling like they couldn’t get enough space.
• They remember feeling like nothing they did was ever enough.

You can’t talk them out of those memories, but you can give them new experiences.

• If you handle something differently, they experience something different.
• If you respond to distance differently, they experience something different.
• If you communicate differently, they experience something different.
• If you can stay connected without making every interaction emotionally loaded, they experience something different.

Over time, those experiences can change the dynamic between you. But if you try to jump from “we’re talking again” to “are we getting back together?” you skip over the very experiences that allow the dynamic between you to change.

There is a lot that happens in between to change the dynamic

None of these things give you control over your avoidant ex. What they do is create the conditions and a safer environment for a different dynamic to develop. What they also so is let their choices tell you whether they want to be part of it.

You don’t want to spend months trying to create a relationship that your ex isn’t actually participating in. You want to know whether there is something there that both of you can build.

There’s an important catch…

You can’t fake “secure”, at least not long enough.

For the dynamic to change, you have to actually do the work to become secure enough to show up differently when it matters, and secure enough even when your ex isn’t responding the way you want.

If you’re only acting secure to get a particular response from your ex, the old dynamic is still running the show.

It’s easy to act calm when everything is going your way. But when your avoidant ex doesn’t respond the way you hoped or doesn’t behave the way you think they should, your old reactions can quickly take over because the programming that drives how you operate when the relationship feels threatened or uncertain hasn’t changed.

The changes have to hold up even when your ex doesn’t immediately reward you for them.

RELATED:

How Securely Attached Treat an Avoidant Ex (Game Changing)

The Safe Presence That Changes How an Avoidant Ex Shuts Down

7 Powerful Things Secure Exes Do When Avoidants Pull Back