The Internal Monologue
Let’s say, for a moment, that you could hear the internal monologue of someone with an avoidant attachment style.
Not the polite one given or in therapy when pressed.
The real one. The one they’ve rehearsed without even knowing it. It would say:
“I am comfortable without close emotional relationships.
It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient.
I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to my partner;
I find it difficult to trust them completely and allow myself to depend on them.
I am nervous when they get too close, and often,
my partner wants more intimacy than I’m comfortable giving.”
Now imagine this person—this avoidantly attached soul—is standing in your kitchen at midnight.
It’s quiet, except for the hum of the fridge and the tick of a wall clock you forgot you owned.
They’re sipping something—tea, maybe, or scotch—and you're across the counter asking a question that's small and devastating in equal measure:
“Do you feel close to me?”
They flinch. They don’t mean to. It’s microsecond stuff. A twitch of the mouth, the smallest shift in the shoulders.
They cover it up with a smile, maybe a joke, maybe silence. You feel it anyway.
That familiar gust of emotional distance. And just like that, they’re not here—not really.
That is avoidant attachment. Not the pop-psychology kind. The real kind.
The kind Mikulincer and Shaver dissected with surgical precision in Attachment in Adulthood—an operating manual for the human heart, if such a thing exists.
This isn’t a personality quirk. It’s not someone who just “likes their space.”
It’s armor. And like all armor, it wasn’t chosen—it was forged.
And the most confounding part? Most people wearing it don’t know they’re doing so.
Avoidant attachment doesn't come with flashing lights or a warning label.
It’s a set of habits so practiced, so refined, it disappears into the fabric of someone’s personality.
They’re not avoiding you. They’re avoiding the emotional chaos they’ve learned to fear. You're just the unlucky proxy.
The Blueprint Beneath the Skin
Let’s back up. There’s something tragic and brilliant at the core of avoidant attachment: it’s efficient.
Emotionally brutal, yes, but efficient.
Avoidant individuals learned early—sometimes so early they can’t even name the moment—that vulnerability was a liability.
You cried and nobody came. Or worse, they came and made you feel stupid for needing them.
That’s not just a bad afternoon. That’s architecture. Your nervous system takes notes. Your brain gets to work.
And the blueprint it drafts goes something like this:
Don’t reach out. Don’t rely. Don’t need.
Because needing leads to disappointment. And disappointment, over time, calcifies into strategy.
This early conditioning is exactly what Bowlby called a “working model”—a blueprint of how relationships work, and where you fit in them.
Avoidantly attached people build models that say, “Others won’t be there when I need them, so I must be completely self-reliant.”
Mikulincer and Shaver call this “deactivating the attachment system.”
It’s the brain’s elegant solution to chronic emotional unpredictability: suppress the need itself.
Imagine a child—three, maybe four—who learns that their emotions are unwelcome.
Crying results in eye-rolls. Seeking comfort earns them a lecture. So they stop.
But not because the need disappears. It goes underground, like a wire rerouted in a wall.
The child learns to soothe alone, to regulate without co-regulation. And eventually, that becomes identity.
Independence is everything. Distance becomes safety. Love becomes… complicated.
But this isn’t just a childhood phase that passes. It becomes a framework.
By adolescence, the avoidant child is the one who shrugs when hurt, who says “whatever” when disappointed, who earns praise for being “mature” or “easygoing.”
No one notices that this ease is actually an exit strategy. Emotions have already been labeled too volatile, too unsafe to share.
So the person becomes a vault. And everyone around them applauds their cool-headedness, not realizing it’s a defense.
Over time, the walls harden. The person inside might go decades without realizing they’ve traded authenticity for autonomy.
Relationships become negotiations of control—how much to give, how much to withhold, how to never need too much.
They don’t stop wanting closeness. They just stop believing it’s safe to want it. And in that quiet calculus, avoidant attachment takes root—not as a choice, but as a brilliant, heartbreaking adaptation to an emotional world that felt unsafe from the start.
What It Looks Like in the Wild
Avoidantly attached people don’t broadcast their history. There’s no sign taped to their chest that says “I learned not to trust closeness.”
They’re more likely to say,
“I’m just not super emotional.”
“I need a lot of space.”
“I don’t trust people.”
They’re not lying. That’s what it feels like on the inside.
But what’s under that independence is often something else entirely: a nervous system trained to expect disappointment and a brain that’s learned to stay one step ahead of pain.
Mikulincer and Shaver describe this as a process of chronic suppression.
These individuals suppress their attachment needs and the emotions that come with them—especially fear, shame, and longing.
They do this not because they lack emotions, but because emotional expression was once punished or ignored.
You’ll see it in their silence during a vulnerable conversation, or the way they suddenly become "too busy" when emotions start surfacing.
They won’t yell or slam doors. They’ll just... exit. Quietly. Emotionally. Sometimes physically.
They value logic, intellect, efficiency. Not because they’re emotionless—but because those are safer bets. Emotions are slippery and volatile. Uncontrolled. Logic is clean.
Take Emma. Thirty-five. Senior architect. Sharp as glass.
Her boyfriend tells her, tearfully, "I feel like I'm the only one trying."
Emma responds with a shrug.
She feels the sting, but her reflex is to shut down, to search for flaws in the relationship, to question whether she's being "manipulated by neediness."
She doesn’t fight—she drifts.
By morning, she’s buried herself in work, her inbox, a new project. Anything but the soft, messy work of closeness.
Or take James. Father of two. Married ten years.
He loves his kids, loves his wife.
But when she says she feels alone in the marriage, he goes mute. He thinks: We're fine. We don't fight.
Emotions are foreign currency. He never learned how to spend them, so he hoards them instead—keeps them close, unused, until they rot.
And here’s the kicker: many avoidant types are attractive.
Not just physically, but emotionally appealing.
Their independence and composure can read as strength. Mystery. Even sex appeal.
It’s only after some time that you begin to notice the emotional vacuum behind the charm.
The way your affection echoes, unanswered. The way they retreat just when it matters most.
The Deactivating Dance
Psychologists call it “deactivating strategies.” Sounds sterile, like defusing a bomb.
In truth, it’s more like quietly leaving the room before the explosion.
Deactivating can look like:
• Not responding to a text for no reason other than the emotional intensity behind it.
• Withdrawing after sex because intimacy feels too exposed.
• Focusing on flaws in a partner to justify emotional retreat.
• Minimizing conflict or dismissing emotional needs as “drama.”
It’s not coldness. It’s caution. They’re not trying to hurt anyone—they’re trying not to get hurt.
Sometimes, they aren’t even aware they’re doing it.
The brain has shortcuts—like mental macros—for dealing with perceived emotional threats.
If things start getting close, the avoidant mind deploys a sequence: withdraw, rationalize, minimize.
It's fast, efficient, and deeply unconscious.
They may tell themselves, “I just need space,” or, “This person is too emotional for me,” when what they really need is to feel safe enough to stay present.
Over time, these strategies can erode a relationship.
The partner of an avoidant person begins to feel invisible, unimportant, or too much.
Causing a negative cycle where a couple starts to fall into a Pursuer-Distancer pattern or an Avoid/Avoid pattern.
And in a cruel twist, the avoidant person often feels guilt or shame about their behavior—so they distance themselves further.
It's a feedback loop where everyone loses, but no one knows how to stop spinning.
The Longing They Won’t Admit
Here’s the twist no one tells you: people with avoidant attachment do want love. Desperately.
But the equation in their heads is love = risk. So they trade intimacy for control.
They keep relationships on a leash—not to dominate, but to prevent chaos.
But control isn’t connection. And over time, even the most self-reliant person feels the ache of loneliness.
They just don’t know what to do with it.
They might cycle through relationships quickly, always finding some reason to leave: too clingy, too boring, too intense.
Or they stay in long-term relationships with one foot perpetually out the door.
They love—but from a safe distance. The kind of love that won’t burn them. The kind that can be packed away if necessary.
And here’s the tragedy: many avoidant people think they’re broken. Deflective. Flawed. Not good enough.
Not in a melodramatic way. In a quiet, resigned way.
They wonder why they can’t love the way others do.
Why they feel numb when their partner cries.
Why they feel smothered by warmth.
And instead of examining the wiring, they assume it's a defect of the soul. It’s not.
It’s a scar. And scars can be softened.
What Now?
Avoidant attachment isn’t a fixed identity.
It’s not “just the way someone is.”
It’s a pattern—a brilliant, tragic pattern—that can be rewired.
But not through force. Not through lectures about “opening up.”
And definitely not through ultimatums.
Change starts with understanding. And then: small, consistent experiences of emotional safety. Over time, these experiences teach the brain a new truth:
Closeness doesn’t always mean danger.
Vulnerability doesn’t always lead to abandonment.
Therapy helps, but only if the person is willing.
And the avoidant person must begin by noticing. That’s step one. Recognizing the dance before you’ve walked off the floor.
The irony is that avoidantly attached individuals often do have emotional depth—they just haven’t had the environment to express it safely.
Once they begin to trust that emotions aren’t weapons, they can experience connection not as a trap, but as a refuge.
Where This Story Goes Next
Avoidant attachment isn’t failure. It’s survival.
It’s what happens when you’re handed silence instead of comfort, space instead of support, and expected to turn that into strength.
And somehow, you did. That’s something to admire.
But survival isn’t the same thing as living.
If any of this sounds familiar—whether it's your story or the person sleeping beside you—know this:
the armor you built has served you, but it may also be keeping you from the very thing you secretly want most.
Real connection. The kind that feels safe and steady, not overwhelming or out of reach.
You’re not broken. You’re wired. And wiring can be rewired.
That’s why we created the Healers Program for those individuals who want to change their attachment style who’ve been unfaithful.
It’ll help you with emotional distance, mismatched needs, the confusion of loving someone you keep at arm’s length.
This program was designed with the science in mind, but also the story—the human messiness of what it feels like to be hurt, to hurt someone else, and to want more even when it feels dangerous.
It walks you through the emotional mechanics of repair, step-by-step.
Not in vague concepts, but in real conversations. Vulnerability that builds something, not breaks it.
So if you’re ready—ready to understand each other differently, ready to stop guessing what’s going on behind the silence, ready to take the risk of closeness without falling apart—we invite you to start with us.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
You were never meant to.
Begin your healing journey today by clicking here if you’ve been unfaithful.
Because your story isn't over—it’s just about to get honest.
References:
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. The Guilford Press.
