I’m an Avoidant: How I Felt When I Saw My Ex Had Moved On

Question: May be you can help me explain what I felt

I am an anxious-avoidant but I don’t always look like someone who struggles with anxiety. On the outside, I’m composed, logical, independent and nothing touches me too deeply.

Even when we broke and she wanted no contact, I accepted it as “It is what it is.” We didn’t speak or see each other for 4 months.

Last Saturday afternoon, I saw her by accident and she was sitting across from someone new. They looked relaxed and happy. I almost didn’t go into the café. I hesitated at the door for no real reason, just a feeling. I walked in but I didn’t approach her, I didn’t feel I needed to. I ordered my coffee, stood off to the side, and pretended to check my phone. Standing there, I felt something unfamiliar, not exactly sadness, not exactly regret or jealousy. I have read many of your articles, so I guess you would call it a version of myself I never fully let myself experience.

I picked up my coffee and left without looking back. Later that night, I caught myself wondering what I would have done if she had been alone. And that’s when it hit me: She had clearly moved on. I just hadn’t expected to feel anything at all, whatever the heck it was that I felt.

Yangki’s Answer: I’ll try to explain. But first, let’s make something clear. Being avoidant doesn’t mean “nothing touches you too deeply” — it just means you feel things in ways that are harder to name and easier to suppress. And maybe, in a strange way, running into your ex with someone new was an opportunity to understand yourself a little more clearly.

Over the years, I’ve worked with many avoidants who say an ex moving on can bring up questions they had been avoiding:

• Did I hold back too much?
• Did I leave too soon?
• Was I protecting myself… or just running?

Before it actually hits you that they moved on, it feels like you don’t care. Of course they’ll move on. People do that. It makes sense. You might even feel a strange sense of relief because there will be no awkward possibilities of running into each other and wondering what if.

But then when there is real evidence that they actually moved, it suddenly feels real. They’re really gone — and moved on.

Why it suddenly hits you is because: When an ex is chasing you or looks like they still want you back, you’re in control of how you distance. But when they move on, it removes your control over that and that loss of control is uncomfortable – especially for someone who describes themselves as “composed, logical, independent and nothing touches me too deeply.”

For dismissive avoidants and anxious avoidants who lean dismissive — which is what your description of yourself suggests – loss of control doesn’t create a “freaking out” feeling like it does in an anxiously attached. It’s more like a  numbness feeling:

• Watching the situation like an outsider rather than being in it
• Indifference that feels unfamiliar or confusing
• Difficulty accessing or naming any emotion at all
• Underlying tension, even though nothing obvious is felt
• An emptiness (instead of sadness, anger, regret, happiness, or jealousy)

This is the unfamiliar feeling you had: loss of control.

But there is also an ego layer that most avoidants don’t like to admit: If they’re happy with someone else, what does that say about you? Were you easier to move on from than you expected? For an aoidant leaning dismissive, these questions often don’t triggers jealousy, instead they feel uncomofrtable because you’r enot used to self-reflection.

These are all internal questions that you have to start processing instead of avoiding or supressing.

I hope for your sake this is just the beginning of understanding yourself more.

If you can stay with that discomfort instead of avoiding it, you will start to see your avoidant attachment patterns more clearly — what you feel, what you protect, what you fear, and what you actually need. And that awareness, even if it’s uncomfortable at first, is where real change begins.

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