Avoidant Ex Will Come Back Trap Keeping You Waiting

I’ve noticed a pattern with many of the clients who come to coaching after a breakup with an avoidant.

They have been waiting for months for their avoidant ex to reach out.

Some have been waiting two or three months, while others have been waiting six months or longer. I’ve even had clients who have spent up to eight months waiting because they are genuinely convinced their avoidant ex will eventually reach out.

When I ask what makes them think their avoidnt ex will reach out, I often hear the same answer.

They have been having conversations with AI about their breakup for weeks or months, asking what their ex’s behaviour means, whether their ex still misses them, why they haven’t reached out, whether they are deactivating, whether they are processing the breakup and what signs to look for if their ex still has feelings, misses them and will reach out.

Month after month, AI tells them: Your avoidant ex may be deactivating. They may be suppressing their feelings. They may be experiencing delayed grief. They may be afraid of vulnerability. They may need time to process the relationship. They may be missing you but afraid to reach out. They may be watching from a distance because they don’t want to make themselves vulnerable.

Then there are the social media posts. Their ex posts a sad song, and AI explains how it could indicate they are processing their feelings. They post something about relationships, and it could be a sign that they are thinking about you. They suddenly become more active on social media, and perhaps they are trying to distract themselves from missing you. They view your story, like an old post or share something that reminds you of the relationship, and now you have another possible “sign” to analyse.

AI interprets almost everything as evidence that their ex is still thinking about them and that they will eventually reach out.

The problem is that even when I explain to them that they may be waiting for something that may never happen, it’s hard for them to accept it because AI knows everything, explains everything and makes everything make sense.

How AI makes waiting for an avoidant ex feel justified

I don’t have a problem with people using AI to learn about attachment or to try to understand what happened in their relationship. In fact, having a better understanding of your own patterns can be very useful after a breakup.

What concerns me is when AI starts turning uncertainty into certainty, and makes people think an avoidant coming back is certain, they just have to wait a little longer.

AI does not know your ex. But to be fair, neither does a coach or therapist. I don’t know your ex personally either. I haven’t met them, observed your relationship firsthand or spoken to them directly. No coach or therapist can tell you with certainty what your ex is thinking or whether they will contact you next week, next month or never.

The difference is that a good coach or therapist should be honest about what they don’t know.

We can look at what you tell us, look at the patterns in the relationship, consider what is known about attachment and help you make sense of what may be happening. But we should not turn a possibility into a prediction simply because it fits an attachment theory.

This is where I think AI can become particularly problematic.

It takes the information you give it and compare it with patterns and explanations that exist in the information it has been trained on and give you a very convincing explanation for your ex’s behaviour without having enough information to know whether that explanation is actually true.

Instead of helping you either find out if you really still have a chance or move on, AI gives you an endless supply of explanations for why your ex hasn’t reached out yet.

They’re supposedly:

• Still processing.
• Missing but gathering the courage to reach out
• Getting closer to reaching out.

So you wait. And every few weeks, when nothing happens, AI finds another explanation for why nothing has happened yet.

• Maybe an avoidant needs more time.
• Maybe they are still deactivated.
• Maybe they are afraid of rejection.
• Maybe they are waiting for the right moment.
• Maybe they are testing whether you are really gone.
• Maybe they are struggling with their feelings.

There is always another possibility, and it’s presented in “attachment terminology” that it sounds very convincing, even when an ex is already in a new relationship that is going strong.

Most anxious people don’t realize that this is feeds into an anxious attachment’s tendency to look for reassurance and certainty, and the need to keep searching for something that tells you the relationship is not over.

Every new explanation gives you another reason to keep waiting, another possibility to consider, and another reason to believe that something is happening behind the scenes even when there is no actual movement from your avoidant ex.

What are you actually waiting for?

If they haven’t contacted you for six or eight months, the most important piece of information you have is not what an AI thinks they might be feeling. It is the fact that they have not contacted you.

It’s entirely possible that your ex misses you, thinks about you, regrets regret the breakup, looks at your social media because they’re curious about you and wondering what you are doing.

All of those things are possible. But this still doesn’t tell you what they will do, if they want to reopen lines of communication, let alone come back.

Attachment theory can only help you understand why an avoidant may respond to relationships in certain ways and why you may respond in certain ways yourself. But what no one can tell you with certainity is when exactly an avoidant will reach out.

My point is: Avoidant or not, I don’t think anyone should spend eight months, let alone three months of their life waiting for an ex because an AI conversation convinced them that their ex is probably deactivating and will eventually reach out.

You can leave the future unknown without putting your life on hold for it

If months have passed and your ex still hasn’t reached out, you need more than another explanation for why they haven’t. You need to know whether there is actually something you can do to create an opportunity for reconnection, or whether it is time to stop waiting and move on with your life.

You don’t need to convince yourself that your ex will never come back. You also don’t need to convince yourself that they definitely will. You can leave the possibility open while continuing to live your life, make decisions based on what is actually happening and respond if your ex does eventually reach out.

This is what I call leave the door open but don’t stand there holding it open, waiting for your ex to come back.

If your avoidant ex reaches, then you something real to work with. Until then, you don’t need to spend your days analysing songs, posts, story views and attachment terminology trying to figure out whether your ex is secretly missing you.

And if you want to reach out, make that decision based on the reality of your particular relationship rather putting your life on hold based on what AI says your ex may do.

Sometimes reaching out can create an opportunity for reconnection that would not happen if you simply sat back and waited. Sometimes it also gives you the information you need to start moving on.

Either way, you are dealing with something real rather than spending months analysing their social media activity, looking for hidden meanings in their posts, checking whether they’ve viewed your stories, asking AI to interpret every little sign, and waiting for the next indication that they might be missing you.

There has to be a point where you realize: This is ridiculous. I’ve stopped living my life because I am waiting for someone who may or may not reach out.