Why Did My Fearful Avoidant Ex Cry and Say They Loved Me?

“They were crying. I was crying. We were both crying” is how some of my clients describe their breakup with a fearful avoidant.

To them this is significant because it raises the question: How could someone be uncertain and even disconnected during the relationship – and feel so devastated when the relationship ends.

In this article, I discuss how a fearful avoidant’s emotional experience often doesn’t match the strength of love they actually have for someone — and why understanding what they’re actually feeling during the breakup can help you understand their behaviour afterwards

Love and feelings can move in opposite directions

For many of us, feelings indicate the strength of love. When we love someone, we expect to feel close, safe, excited, and certain. The stronger the feelings, the stronger the love.

If those feelings fade, we assume love is fading too. If we miss someone intensely after a breakup, we take it as proof that our love for them was very strong.

But for many people with a fearful avoidant attachment, feelings don’t work this way, and this is why loving a fearful avoidant is very confusing.

Fearful avoidants want closeness, connection, and lasting love. They often dream of finding “their person” but they are also terrified of being loved because it increases the risk of rejection, which then activates attachment trauma — often rooted in childhood experiences where love was inconsistent, unpredictable, frightening, or emotionally unavailable.

As a result, love feels both good and risky at the same time. This shapes the emotional experience of the relationship.

When their feelings are strongest, love feels most riskiest

Their attachment system begins searching for threats:

• What if I get hurt?
• What if they leave?
• What if I disappoint them?
• What if I’m making a mistake?
• What if there is someone better?
• What if I lose myself?

But when love start to fade — or more accurately, when they believe it is fading — it lowers the perceived risk, which then makes love feel less risky. This is also when a fearful avoidant is most afraid of losing it.

The mismatch between feelings and love during the breakup

This mismatch between feelings and love is one of the reasons fearful avoidants cry during the breakup — and end up confusing not only an ex, but themselves.

As I’ve mentioned in several of my articles, fearful avoidants often don’t breakup because they stopped loving you. The love is still there but their experience of the relationship increased the risk tremendously.

Deep inside they want the relationship to work but also understand that trying to make it work means taking a risk that they feel they can’t afford to take at the moment – and this is why they cry.

For many of us for whom feelings indicate the strength of love. This can seem contradictory and very confusing.

Fearful avoidant breakups often fall into four patterns

1. Stone cold and emotionless: No tears, no heartfelt words, no nothing — just cold distance. You might wonder if they ever loved you at all.

2. Hesitant and confused: They act like they don’t want to breakup and sometimes even say you forced them to breakup with you

3. Chaotic, mean, and angry: They explode in anger, lash out, say hurtful things, or act like a child throwing a tantrum.

4. Cry and say they love you: This is often the one that hurts the most: tears, shaking voices, “I love you.” They look like they’re breaking apart inside, torn between leaving and staying.

The crying is genuine. The tears are real, raw and yes, messy. And the “I love you” is honest — even if their actions contradict their words.

Understanding why a fearful avoidant cried matters for reconnection

I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for someone who is breaking up with you, I’m explaining that fearful avoidants grieve the relationship too. It hurts them too, even if it looks like they’re the one leaving you behind.

For most fearful avoidants, it’s “I don’t love you anymore”, it’s choosing the discomfort they feel with the relationship over the love they feel for an ex. And crying and saying they love you while breaking up, is probably the most honest admission of their intense conflicting emotions you’ll ever get from a fearful avoidant.

So when they say “I love you” while leaving, it’s them acknowledging the truth of their feelings, even as fear drives their actions. Even if they don’t cry but say “I don’t know what I feel”, they often genuinely mean it.

Their attachment system isn’t saying: “I don’t love this person.” It’s often saying: “The risk is too high.”

They’re caught between love for you and their fears, — and almost always, their fear wins because it comes from a much deeper place that precedes you.

How you react either lowers the risk or increases it even more

This is where things become especially confusing. You’d think, the relationship is over. What was creating the risk is gone. Now love can feel good.

Uh-uh. Not for a fearful avoidant. Their attachment system immediately begins searching for another threat:

• Are they going to disappear?
• Will they cut off contact?
• Will I be quickly replaced?
• Will they move on faster than me?
• Did I make a mistake I can’t undo?

The breakup may have removed the risks that came with the relationship, but it has created new risks around abandonment and loss. And these risks can feel just as threatening — sometimes even more so.

This is why how you react after the breakup matters so much.

• If you become angry, cold, vindictive, or rush to prove how easily you’ve moved on, you confirm their deepest fears: that love is risky and dangerous.
• If you suddenly cut off contact in a way that they perceive that it’s about them and not for your own emotional regulation, the risk skyrockets. Some fearful avoidants respond to this heightened risk by reaching out but the majority shut down emotionally because even thoughts of you feel threatening.
• If, instead, you remain calm, respectful, and emotionally consistent, you lower the perceived risk. You create safety where they expect danger.

And safety is the one thing a fearful avoidant’s attachment system is constantly searching for —— more than it’s searching for threat — even if they don’t realize it.

The irony is that the ex who reacts the least threatening is often the easiest to miss.

RELATED:

Why Does My Avoidant Ex Say They Still Care About Me?

Self-Aware Fearful Avoidants Think No Contact Helps You Both