Sticking with it, when you’re the “avoidant”.

Dear You,

There’s a particular kind of shame that can come with realizing you’re the avoidant one.

Much of the attachment literature names patterns well, but it does not always hold nuance. Avoidant partners are often portrayed as emotionally unavailable, commitment-phobic, or incapable of intimacy. The anxious partner is described as longing and wounded; the avoidant partner is described as withholding.

It can feel demonizing.

As if you are the problem.
As if your protection is a character flaw.

Avoidance, however, is not a moral failure. It is an adaptation.

I have been in many, MANY toxic relationships. (Too many.) For a long time, I not only tolerated chaos but also unconsciously sought it out. Then something shifted. It came in like one of those summer storms where everything is quiet, and then the ground begins to shake with every lightning bolt. My body decided it could no longer comfortably continue the cycle.

That shift was growth. It was discernment.

But the same nervous system that protects you from toxicity can also interpret discomfort as danger. Conflict can feel like a threat. Vulnerability can feel like a loss of autonomy—leading to a sense of loss of control. When activation rises, leaving can feel urgent, necessary.

The work is learning to distinguish between what is a true misalignment and old wiring.

If you lean avoidant, growth often looks like staying in moments that are uncomfortable but not unsafe:

• Staying for repair

• Staying in hard conversations

• Staying present when you feel exposed

• Staying long enough to assess clearly

Not staying in abuse. Not staying in disrespect. But not fleeing at every rupture either.

Here is what I believe deeply: you cannot heal attachment wounds entirely on your own.

Insight helps. Journaling helps. Therapy helps.

But attachment patterns were formed in relationships, and many are reshaped in relationships. Romantic or platonic. The nervous system changes through lived relational experience:

• Expressing a need and having it received

• Naming hurt and witnessing repair

• Feeling the urge to withdraw and choosing connection instead

Personal growth in relationships cannot be done all by yourself.

If you are avoidant, you may have a history of leaving others. Beneath that, there is often a history of leaving yourself. Silencing needs, tolerating too much, then exiting abruptly when it becomes unbearable.

Sticking with it, when it is healthy to do so, is not self-abandonment. It is staying connected to yourself while remaining in the relationship.

Maturity in avoidance is not eliminating distance; it is developing flexibility. It is knowing when to step back and when to remain engaged. That discernment is built through practice, not theory.

So if you feel shame when you read about avoidant attachment or run from one more relationship, consider this: your nervous system learned to protect you for a reason.

Protection is not pathology.

But if you desire deeper intimacy, you will likely need to tolerate moments where you resist the reflex to retreat. Where you pause long enough to ask, “Am I unsafe — or just uncomfortable?”

Sometimes you will stay and grow.
Sometimes you will leave with clarity.

Both can be healthy.

If you are the avoidant one, you are not incapable of love. Your healing simply requires relational courage and the willingness to remain present long enough to gather new evidence.

And over time, that practice becomes steadiness and trust — not just with another person, but within yourself.