The Cost Of Making a Fearful Avoidant Ex Fear Losing You

After a breakup, a fearful avoidant can either lean anxious or lean avoidant depending on whether the breakup made them realize what they lost or makes them realize how much of their independence they lost in the relationship.

If the breakup makes them realize how much of their independence they felt they lost during the relationship, they’ll often lean more avoidant because their attachment is focused on restoring autonomy rather than restoring connection. Some fearful avoidants completely detach as a way of coping with the loss.

If the breakup makes them realize what they lost, it can create a sense of panic because it triggers fear of abandonment or fear of being replaced by someone better.

This is the side of a fearful avoidant that many “get your ex back” strategies try to activate.

Strategies such as no contact, making your ex jealous, appearing to move on quickly, becoming mysteriously unavailable, or creating the impression that other people are interested in you are often designed to make your fearful avoidant ex feel that they are losing you. The hope is that this perceived loss will trigger their anxious side and motivate them to come back.

Sometimes these strategies appear to work.

A fearful avoidant may suddenly reach out, become more affectionate, or express a desire to get back together because the fear of losing you feels more urgent.

But while their sudden interest and chasing you feels deeply validating, their fear of abandonment or fear of being replaced is also creating fears and worries:

• “What if I care more than they do?”
• “Can I trust what I’m seeing, or is this about to change?”
• “If I let myself lean in, will I lose control?”
• “Am I missing a sign that this won’t end well?”
• “What if I’m about to get hurt?”

They’re reaching out, talking about missing you, wanting to meet, showing jealousy and even talking about getting back together, and it looks like the strategy to trigger their anxiety worked. But they’re also feeling vulnerable and exposed.

And because they’re part avoidant, soon or later vulnerability becomes difficult to tolerate and starts to feel unsafe — and they shift to protecting themselves.

But shifting to avoidance is not the cost of making a fearful avoidant feel like they’re losing you. The real costs are:

1. You have to keep triggering them to create the same effect

Making a fearful avoidant feel like they’re losing you only works as long as they believe they’re at risk of losing you. Once that feeling fades, so does the anxiety that drove them to reach out more, want to meet, talk about getting back together etc.

So in order to recreate that experience, you’ll have to keep recreating that same fear whenever things begin to settle. And without intending to, you engineered a pull-push pattern that not only feels destabilizing for both people, but is difficult to sustain.

This not only creates pressure for you to keep finding new ways to make them feel they might lose you, but over time the strategy also becomes less effective.

After being triggered repeatedly, they begin to recognize the pattern, become desensitized to it, or simply stop responding to it in the same way.

Eventually, you have to create even more uncertainty to produce the same effect — if it works at all.

2. The pull-push pattern can be very distabilizing

A fearful avoidant afriad of losing you may show intensified interest for a while then pull back or disappear, or they may try to get you back and things will be good for sometime, but after a while you find yourselves getting into unnecessary arguments, avoidable conflicts and the familiar pull-push dynamic.

They may even talk about getting back together and give you the impression that they just need a little more time, but every now and then they say something that reveals that fear of losing you made them feel even more inadequate or not good enough.

They may point to something you said or did that made them feel that you pulled away, were losing interest or weren’t attracted to them anymore.

This is their way fo setting up a total n exit. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve seen what you are capable of and it made them anxious. How can they trust that it won’t happen again?

3. The may become resistant to coming back

I tell my clients excited that a fearful avoidant is leaning anxious that this should concern them not excite them.

Fear of losing you can create resistance that makes getting back together take much longer or not happen at all. Some fearful avoidants who generally lean avoidant never get over leaning anxious and acting needy and clingy. They feel so much shame after leaning anxious that they start avoiding you or cut off all communication. They never reach out or respond when you do because they fear that acting needy and clingy changed how you see them and how you will treat them.

They may even harbour deep resentment towards you for making them feel so confused and alone, and so anxious that they looked weak and unattractive. This can make them wary of a relationship with you, and in others, it can create a fear of relationships in general.

So if you are thinking of using their fear of losing you to trigger anxiety in a fearful avoidant, think again if this is something you really want — and if the cost is worth it.

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10 Signs A Fearful Avoidant Ex Is Anxious About Losing You