Conor Beaton here and today we're going to be diving into how do you fix, how do you end the anxious avoidant dynamic, right?

So maybe you're an anxious person or you're an avoidant person and you found yourself in a relationship with the opposing attachment style, which is probably what has brought you here.

And I hope that you've enjoyed the series that I've been doing because I've been doing this A Man's Guide To where I've dove into or dug into how to end codependency, how to resolve your avoidant attachment style or your anxious attachment style or your fearful avoidant attachment style.

So if you're watching this and you haven't watched those, those are going to be incredibly helpful to doing a deep dive into how you as an individual can move closer towards secure attachment.

So this video is going to talk specifically about the relationship, how it happens, why it happens and how do you resolve it.

And I'm going to give you some very specific things that you as an individual can do and then some specific things that you as a couple can tackle.

So let's dive in and talk a little bit first about what characterizes the anxious avoidant dance.

The first thing is this push-pull dynamic where one person seems to be pulling away and the other one seems to be a stage five clear.

No, just kidding anxious people, just kidding.

But you can tell which one I was in the relationship.

I was clearly an avoidant person with that joke, right?

But one person pulls away and one person pushes forward.

And generally you have one person that is moving towards an over-indexing of self-reliance or self-protection and that's the avoidant person as a relational strategy, right?

So their relational strategy is I rely on me more than I rely on us to a really detrimental degree to the relationship.

And then the other person has a relational strategy of I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay.

Or I need to know that you're okay in order for me to feel okay.

Or I need you to tell me that I'm okay so that I can be okay.

Whereas the avoidant is I don't need you to be okay, I don't need this relationship to be okay.

I can only rely on me in order to be okay.

So that's just a quick little summary of what it can look like.

One of the things that I wanted to try and do was condense down why this happens.

And I looked at a lot of content on the internet.

I watched a bunch of YouTube videos.

I looked at some of the articles that have been written.

And first off, they all come from a very feminine perspective so that was quite interesting to read.

Like I couldn't find a lot of men talking about attachment styles and talking about attachment in general.

So it was kind of fascinating on that one part.

But there seems to be this notion out there.

First off, one of the things that I noticed was that anxious people seem to have less of a rap than avoidant people.

Like avoidant people are sort of positioned on some of these blogs and some of these videos as like the villain and the anxious person is the victim.

And that's not the case.

I want to just dissolve this notion that there's a villain and a victim.

There's just a pursuer and the pursued.

There's the person pushing and the person pulling away.

It's not a moral thing, right?

These are both behavioral patterns and relational patterns that were birthed quite early in your life.

And so I say that because I know many of you guys that are watching this, whether you're the anxious one or the avoidant one, have oftentimes a very detrimental story internally of like, God, there's something wrong with me that's causing this.

And there's not something that's wrong with you that's causing this.

It's that something has gone on in your life that has caused you to either pull away or actively needed to pursue.

So I wrote down this phrase that I think summarizes why the avoidant and anxious dance is so strong.

Because so many anxious people find themselves in a relationship with avoidant and vice versa.

It's quite common.

So here's what I wrote down.

I said, sometimes you're not in love or even drawn to the person themselves.

You're drawn to the qualities that you think they possess that you know you lack, right?

So sometimes we're not drawn to the person.

We're drawn to the qualities that they possess that we know we lack, right?

And so this is the ultimate version of a shadow-oriented relationship where your anxiety is doing the choosing of who you date or your avoidance is doing the choosing of who you date.

And so this part of you can be quite strong in choosing partners and choosing relationships that allow you to stay in this anxious pattern or this avoidant pattern.

And the reason why these two are attracted to one another is not just because they're complementary opposites.

They're attracted to one another because the anxious sees a part of themselves that they feel is lacking in the avoidant.

And the avoidance sees and admires parts of themselves in the other person that they know they're lacking, right?

So the avoidant person generally will, when you ask them, what do you admire about your partner?

And they'll talk about the anxious person and they'll say, I love their passion.

I love how open they are.

I love their availability.

I love their expression.

I love how willing they are to say what they want or say what they need.

And usually those are all things that are missing inside of that avoidant person, right?

Not that they're lacking in passion necessarily, but they're not open.

They're not necessarily available.

They aren't as expressive as they would ultimately like to be and they don't have any reliance on other people.

And then if you talk to the anxious person, you say, what do you really love about your partner?

And they'll talk about the avoidant person.

They'll say, I'm attracted to how solid they are.

I'm attracted to how independent they are.

I'm attracted to how okay with being alone and having solitude they are.

And they'll talk about those qualities and they'll say, I love how much they're able to recognize themselves or validate themselves or deal with hard things.

And again, those are all things that generally the anxious feels like either in a conscious or deeply unconscious way they are lacking.

And so this in a way is a relationship of, and this might sound harsh, but it's a relationship of insecurities.

And it's why the anxious avoidant dance is so hard.

It's because the thing that has brought the two of you together are these sort of deeper insecurities.

And those insecurities can be conscious.

They can be things that you are very aware of and you know the insecurity, you know the insecure behavior, you know the insecure pattern.

Or there are things that are more hidden from you.

And that's more the case with the avoidant.

Oftentimes the avoidant isn't fully aware of maybe at first of the deep fear of closeness, the deep fear of relying on another person, the deep fear and insecurity of expressing themselves.

And so that when those two things come together, it's our insecurities choosing a partner in an effort to try and resolve the insecurities, right?

We don't, our insecurities don't want to stay necessarily in place and be there forever.

Our insecurities, just like your anxiousness or your depression, it's looking for some type of resolution.

It doesn't want to just stay put and stay in place.

It might feel like that sometimes, but our insecurities are always looking for some type of evolution or resolution.

So, just keep that in mind as we continue to talk about how to end this anxious avoidant dance.

So, next I'm going to give you some examples of an anxious avoidant dynamic and then I'm going to give you, you know, how can it succeed, when do you know to leave or that it's not going to work.

And then what do you specifically need to do in order to heal this type of dynamic?

So, examples of the anxious avoidant dynamic is the chase and withdraw pattern that I've been talking about.

This is the push and pull pattern where the anxious person will press for more intimacy, more reassurance, more validation, more soothing, those types of things, more reassurance.

And this will push the avoidant partner further and further away because they will feel a pressure to caretake the other person, to be responsible for the other person, to be close to and intimate with the other person.

All of which might reactivate either some trauma in their past or some fear of closeness or some physical and emotional reminder that intimacy isn't safe.

Next is conflict over closeness and space, conflict over closeness and space.

So, the anxious partner might initiate conversations about the future, about when are we moving in together or how do you feel like this relationship is going or, you know, should we be in a committed relationship and not date anybody else or is it time for us to get engaged?

And this type of bid for connection, and it might not even be that big, it might be like, hey, on Friday night, I really would love for us to go out to a date, you know, go out for a date, go out for dinner, like whatever it is.

And that can cause the avoidant person to feel trapped, to feel enclosed on, to feel like they have to make some level of commitment that's maybe uncomfortable for them or commit to some level of intimacy and closeness that's uncomfortable for them.

And this can create the conflict.

So, it's very often one of the biggest hallmarks, okay, and I really want you to like write this one down, keep this in mind because this is so important to undoing, undoing the anxious avoidant dance.

So often, a hallmark of the anxious avoidant dynamic is that when there are bids for closeness and intimacy and connection, when there are moments that closeness, intimacy and connection are possible or intimacy, closeness and connection is requested.

Or demanded.

Conflict ensues.

All right.

So, intimacy and closeness and connection, when that starts to arise in the relationship, this is usually the inflection point for some type of conflict.

And this is where, you know, it might be that avoidant person starts to criticize the anxious one or the anxious one starts to criticize the avoidant one.

You never want to spend time with me.

How come you don't want to go out to dinner or like spend time with my friends or my family?

And this will create conflict.

So, a lot of the conflict that you experience in this type of relationship revolves around just being close, just being connected, staying intimate.

And then last, this is another big one, is misinterpretation of signals, okay, misinterpretation of signals.

Very simply put, you will have either partner, the anxious or the avoidant, misrepresenting or misinterpreting the signals from the other person, right?

So, the anxious person might see the avoidant asking for some space or saying, hey, you know what, tonight I just want to kind of like do my own thing.

I'm going to, you know, go into the shop and do my woodworking or I'm going to watch my own show.

I'm going to go to gym or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or like a dance class or whatever it is.

And then the anxious person misinterprets that as you don't love me, you don't want to be with me, you're leaving me, etc., etc.

And vice versa, right?

The avoidant person might hear the anxious person saying, hey, you know what, we haven't been on a date in a few weeks.

I would love to just go out with you on Friday night and like go have a beer or, you know, go out and have a good meal.

And the avoidant person might misinterpret that as like, oh, you're wanting, you know, some level of commitment.

You're trying to push something or you're being so needy right now or whatever it is, even though it's just a bid for a connection.

So, again, a lot of the conflict will come out of bids for connection and bids for solitude.

Okay, can these types of relationships work?

This is one of the biggest questions that I get from people when they're talking about attachment styles.

The answer is unequivocally, yes, they do take a decent amount of work and they take some time for that work to set in.

There are some key ingredients to making this relationship work, okay?

The main one is that both of you have to be willing participants in doing what I'm outlining in this episode.

And that might mean that you go and work with somebody as a couple.

That might be a part of it.

But at the very least, you have to both be willing participants to recognizing that this is an issue that's getting in the way and wanting to work on it to better the relationship.

Without that, without that agreement, there's nothing that you can do.

All right.

It's not going to move forward.

So, that brings me to the next piece, which is how do you know that it's not going to work?

Because that's another question that I get, which is like, should we break up?

Should we not stay together?

Number one, if your partner, after months or however long, is still not willing to work on this dynamic, then that might be a sign that it's time to go, right?

If you've both acknowledged that there's a big issue and disconnect between the two of you, and maybe you've even acknowledged that you two are in this avoidant and anxious dance and they're not willing to work on it.

Whether they're the avoidant or the anxious partner, then that might be a sign that it's not going to work.

And individually, a couple things need to happen.

Number one, the avoidant has to be willing to lean in, communicate their needs, prioritize staying in connection when shit gets hard, and they have to be willing to start to lean into opening themselves and expressing themselves specifically around help and support.

All right.

Second, for the anxious person, you have to be willing to begin to self-soothe, to start to self-regulate, self-validate, and to build a deeper level of safety and worth within yourself.

So those are sort of like the two missions.

How do you end the dance?

Well, let's talk about this, where I thought a lot about where I wanted to start with this part of the episode, and what I'm actually going to start with might be different than what you expected.

I'm going to talk about how you end the punishment cycle that shows up in an anxious avoidant relationship.

So every anxious avoidant relationship has some type of punishment cycle, and usually it's one person starting at the anxious or the avoidant, and then there's very specific behaviors that roll out after that.

And so the dynamic looks something like this.

The anxious partner will implement protest behaviors, and the avoidant partner will try and exert some level of control through detachment.

Okay.

And again, we can get stuck in judging or criticizing our partner's behavior, right, whether it's protest behavior or detachment.

But the reality is, and I want you to remember this because it's so important, your partner learned this behavior as a protection mechanism when they were young, right?