---
title: "What I Learned Dating an Avoidant Partner"
date: 2026-11-08T10:40
author: Julien Reszka
description: "When I asked to get closer, she often got angry and shut down. What research says about avoidant partners, why asking backfires and what helps."
keywords: ["relationships", "communication", "mental health", "social dynamics"]
canonical: https://julienreszka.com/blog/what-i-learned-dating-an-avoidant-partner/
---

# What I Learned Dating an Avoidant Partner

When I asked to get closer, she often got angry and shut down. What research says about avoidant partners, why asking backfires and what helps.

For more than a year, the same thing kept happening. I would bring up getting closer: more time together, more openness, where we were going. Not always, but often, she would get angry, and then she would shut down. The conversation ended before it started.

We almost never argued, because I was always patient. It never turned into a fight. It just stopped.

What made it confusing was that she was the one who suggested we move in together. That is why I felt safe asking to get closer. I thought we wanted the same thing. So when she shut down, it felt like a betrayal.

She was also a workaholic. Even on our dates, she was on her phone or her tablet.

I call her avoidant in this post. She never took a test, and I am not a psychologist, so read that word as my best explanation, not a diagnosis. This is what I learned, and what research says about it.

## Why I missed the signs

I am a very confident person. Most of the time, when she pulled away, I did not panic or think she was about to leave. I assumed she was busy, tired or stressed, and that things would settle.

Once, I did notice. She was pulling away a lot, and it was really tough. I joked that she was cold, but that I could get myself a scarf. The joke kept things light, but I let the moment pass instead of taking it seriously.

Research suggests that is typical of secure people. In a [study by Nancy Collins](https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/collins/nancy/UCSB_Close_Relationships_Lab/Publications_files/Collins,%201996.pdf), people read about a partner who did not respond to a cuddle, did not comfort them when they were down, or wanted an evening alone. Then they explained why the partner did it. Anxious people gave more negative explanations. Secure people's explanations showed more confidence that their partner cared about them.

That confidence is mostly a strength. It keeps you calm and kind. But it has a blind spot. Someone more anxious would have raised the alarm in the first month. I gave her the benefit of the doubt for more than a year.

## What avoidant means

Researchers measure attachment on two scales: anxiety, the fear of being left, and avoidance, the discomfort with being close. Everyone sits somewhere on both. When researchers [tested this directly](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25559192/), attachment fit continuous scales better than separate types. Avoidant is a position on a scale, not a box you are stuck in.

People high on avoidance tend to handle closeness by turning it down. They keep feelings to themselves, rely on themselves and keep some distance. From the outside, they can look calm, even indifferent.

That calm may not go very deep. In a [study of 50 students](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1446563/), researchers measured skin conductance, a sign of stress, while students answered questions about their parents. Students who played down their attachment experiences showed sharp rises when asked about separation, rejection and threat. They looked fine. Their bodies did not.

That changed how I saw her anger. It was probably not about me or what I was asking for. To her, the topic itself was a threat.

## Where it may come from

I know two things about her childhood: she was an only child, and her mother had depression while she was growing up. Beyond that, this is a theory, not her story. But the more I read, the more one chain made sense:

1. A child's feelings are not met, so they learn to keep them to themselves.
2. They grow up fiercely independent, relying on no one.
3. Emotional closeness feels unsafe, because it means needing someone.
4. Work becomes the safe place. It brings praise without asking you to be vulnerable.

The first steps have good support. Researchers [followed 707 people from birth to age 18](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3885143/) and found that their adult attachment could be traced to the quality of care they got as children, their social skills and their best friendships. Temperament and most genes they tested were not linked to it. A [review of 211 studies with 82,376 people](https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380261455767) found that childhood maltreatment went with more avoidance as adults, most strongly when it was emotional. The link is modest, though. Many neglected children do not become avoidant, and many avoidant adults were not neglected.

Her mother's depression fits the first step, though it does not prove it. A [review of 46 observational studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10860167/) found that depressed mothers were more often negative with their children and, to a lesser degree, more disengaged: withdrawn, ignoring, less involved. Another [review of 35 studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11098398/) found a small but real link between a mother's depression and her child's attachment security. A depressed parent is usually not unloving, just unavailable. A child in that home may learn that needing someone does not get an answer, and that it is safer to handle things alone.

Being an only child may have made that harder. A brother or sister can soften a hard childhood. In a [British study that followed families over time](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17300555/), children with an affectionate sibling showed fewer signs of anxiety and sadness after stressful events, even when their relationship with their mother was poor. With a depressed mother and no siblings, she may have had no one at home to turn to.

Siblings are also practice partners. You learn to share, fight, lose and make up with someone you cannot walk away from. In a [national study of more than 20,000 American kindergartners](https://news.osu.edu/siblings-help-children-get-along-with-others-in-kindergarten/), teachers rated children with at least one sibling as better at making friends, comforting others and expressing their feelings in a positive way. Among adults who married, [each extra sibling](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5098899/) went with a 3% lower chance of divorce.

Do not overread this. By the teenage years, [only children were picked as friends](https://news.osu.edu/growing-up-without-sibs-doesnt-hurt-social-skills/) by classmates as often as anyone else. And in [experiments in Beijing](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130110142131.htm) with more than 400 people born just before and after China's one-child policy, those who grew up without siblings because of the policy were less trusting, but also less competitive, not more. So being an only child does not explain her sore losing. It may help explain why trusting someone enough to let them in felt so unfamiliar.

The last step is less certain. In a [study of 414 employees](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.024), people with lower self-esteem were more likely to be workaholics. Work gives you a score: deadlines met, results, praise. For someone who finds closeness risky, that is a way to feel valued without letting anyone in.

Games showed me the same side of her. We played a few together. I let her win some of the time, to be a gentleman, but not always. She played ruthlessly, and she was a sore loser.

That fits the chain. When your self-worth rests on something, setbacks there hit hard. In a [small study of 32 students](https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672022812012) applying to graduate school, self-esteem dropped more on days they got a rejection the more they based their worth on being good at school. If your worth depends on winning, a board game is not just a game.

## Why asking made it worse

The worst part was that the more I asked, the more she pulled away.

Psychologists have filmed this. In a [study of 180 couples](https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/buffering-attachment-related-avoidance-softening-emotional-and-be/), one partner asked the other to change something. Avoidant people who were being asked got angrier and withdrew more, and those talks were less successful. But their anger and withdrawal dropped at the moments when their partner softened the request: respecting their independence and showing that they were valued.

Without knowing it, I was doing the opposite. "We need to talk about us" sounds caring to me. To someone avoidant, it can sound like pressure.

## The loop we were stuck in

This has a name: the demand-withdraw pattern. One partner pushes for change and the other goes silent. A [review of 74 studies](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804122903.htm) with more than 14,000 people found it went with lower satisfaction, less intimacy and worse communication. It is hard to break because each partner sees the other as the cause. I thought she was closed off. She probably thought I would not let it go.

Both of us were right, and that is the trap. My asking made her withdraw, and her withdrawing made me ask again.

The strangest proof came when I stopped. The closest I ever got to her was when I was physically tired and shutting down emotionally myself. Then she came closer. Once I wanted nothing from her, there was no pressure to defend against. It fits the study above: her defenses dropped when the demand did. But it also showed me the limit. She could come close only when I was not asking her to. And that meant the relationship was likely to stagnate. If closeness only happens when one person stops wanting more, it can never grow.

## The phone on the table

The phone at dinner hurt more than I admitted.

Researchers call it phubbing, short for phone snubbing. In [two surveys of 453 American adults](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150929142034.htm), people who felt their partner phubbed them had more conflict about phones and lower relationship satisfaction.

Looking back, the screen was always there when things might get personal. If the chain above is right, that makes sense. Work was where she felt safe, and it gave her a respectable reason to be somewhere else, even when she was sitting in front of me.

Safe did not mean happy. She was not happy at work. She worked like a slave, like a lab rat. Researchers treat working compulsively and enjoying your work as different things: in a [study of 587 managers](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2007.00285.x), workaholism and real engagement with work turned out to be separate patterns. You can be unable to stop doing something you do not even like.

I recognized it because I used to be a workaholic myself, and I eventually hated that about myself. I know how good work feels as a hiding place, and how much it costs the people around you. I wrote about [why telling a workaholic to slow down rarely works](https://julienreszka.com/blog/how-to-help-a-workaholic-who-won-t-listen/) in another post.

## What actually helps

The most useful study I found was hopeful. Sarah Stanton and her colleagues [randomly assigned 70 couples](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/594641bbe3df28301b1a0493/t/5b3e41976d2a7346faf5caed/1530806681364/2017_Stanton%2C+Campbell%2C+%26+Pink_JPSP_Positive+relationships+and+attachment+avoidance.pdf) to one of two lab sessions. Half spent 30 minutes asking each other personal questions. The other half read texts and played word games.

People who were more avoidant did not enjoy the personal questions as much. But they rated their relationship higher right after it, shared more with their partner over the next 10 days, and were less avoidant a month later.

So the closeness came from doing things together, not from talking about the relationship. A structured game or a shared activity let them get close without being asked to.

## When to stop trying

You can make it easier for someone to get close. You cannot do it for them. In a [review of 73 studies](https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1842) with more than 21,000 people, avoidance was more strongly linked than anxiety to lower satisfaction, less closeness and less support.

So if you give it real time, take the pressure off and still get anger again and again when you come near, that tells you something. A year is long enough to see a pattern.

## Would I recommend it?

No. Not because she was avoidant. Avoidance is a scale, and the studies above show it can soften with time and good experiences. What made our relationship impossible to repair was the combination: avoidant, and also ruthless and a sore loser.

Repair needs both people to give ground: admit a mistake, apologize, let the other one be right sometimes. For someone whose worth depends on winning, giving ground feels like losing. In [two studies](https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1901), people who refused to apologize for something they had done wrong ended up with higher self-esteem and felt more in control than people who apologized. Refusing to back down feels good in the moment, even when it costs the relationship.

So watch how someone loses. We almost never argued, so games were where I saw it. If someone cannot handle losing a game, ask yourself how they will handle losing an argument.

## In practice

If you are with someone who pulls away when you get close:

- Notice the pattern early, even if you feel secure. Distance that never changes is information.
- Ask for less at once. Respect their need for independence, and say what you value about them.
- Build closeness through shared activities, not talks about the relationship.
- Agree on time without screens, like dinner with phones in another room.
- If losing is hard for them, pick games where you play on the same team.
- Watch how they lose. Someone who cannot stand losing may never give ground in a fight.
- Watch your side of the loop. If you push harder each time they withdraw, you are part of it.
- Set a time limit. If nothing moves after months of real effort, leave. Tell them plainly that they make the relationship unsustainable. Blame yourself only for staying too long.

## The dopamine trap

Part of why I stayed was love and patience. Part of it was a trap: random hot and cold.

She was not distant all the time. Some days she was warm, and I never knew which version I would get. Sometimes she came close, like when I was too tired to ask for anything. Then, without warning, she was cold again. I could not predict it, and I could not earn it.

That is what makes it a trap. Steady warmth is pleasant. Steady coldness is easy to leave. Warmth that shows up at random keeps you waiting for the next time, the way a slot machine keeps you pulling because the next one might pay.

Dopamine is not the whole story, but research backs up each part of the pattern.

**Random rewards are the hardest to give up.** In learning research, behavior that is rewarded only some of the time keeps going longer after the rewards stop than behavior that was rewarded every time. Psychologists call it the [partial reinforcement extinction effect](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3335979/). If she had been warm every day, I would have noticed the change at once. Because warmth came at random, every cold day looked like it might be followed by a warm one.

**The brain tracks uncertainty.** [Dopamine neurons in monkeys](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12649484/) showed a slow build of activity while they waited, and it was strongest when a reward was least certain, a 50-50 chance.

**Not knowing makes you think about them more.** In a [study of 47 women](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110207142623.htm) looking at the profiles of men who had supposedly seen theirs, the women were most attracted when they were not sure whether a man liked them a lot or only an average amount. They liked those men even more than men they were told liked them a lot, and they thought about them the most.

**Letting go can feel like withdrawal.** Researchers [scanned the brains of 15 people](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706150611.htm) who had recently been rejected but were still in love. Looking at a photo of their ex activated reward and craving areas, including ones linked to cocaine addiction. They said they spent more than 85% of their waking hours thinking about that person.

So I do blame myself for something. Not for loving her, but for treating the rare good moments as proof that more were coming.

## What it did to me

Not being able to say I needed closeness felt like abuse. The one thing I wanted most was the one thing I could not bring up without getting anger or silence back. Keeping quiet about what you need, month after month, wears you down.

It also built resentment. She wanted me to be loyal, but her want for intimacy was inconsistent. I was expected to give my full commitment to someone who let me close only when it suited her. That imbalance is hard to forgive, and it grows every time you swallow it.

The signals about the future were mixed. Sometimes she joked that we could get married so she could stop working. I was not against it. I was seriously considering it. I was not scared to commit. But even though I was deeply in love, my reason helped me see more clearly: she was inconsistent, and she let her emotions make her decisions. She was a slave to her emotions. And if your emotions are that irrational and they make your decisions, you are unreliable as a person. And when I asked for clearer plans about our future, she stayed vague. No details, nothing I could hold on to, and I could tell she was lying. Vague answers about the future are what you would expect from low commitment, which is exactly what the research below links to avoidance.

All of this made me suspect she would eventually be comfortable with cheating. I have no proof of that, and I am not saying she cheated. But the worry has some basis. Across [eight studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21967006/), people higher in avoidance had more permissive attitudes toward infidelity, paid more attention to attractive alternatives and cheated more over time. The link ran through lower commitment. That is a tendency across many people, not a prediction about one person. But a partner who keeps you at a distance has less holding them to you.

## What it might have looked like from her side

Only she can tell this part. But the research above allows some educated guesses, and they make the story fairer.

To me, "let's spend more time together" was an invitation. To her, it may have felt like pressure. The avoidant partners in the study of 180 couples reacted to requests like that as a threat to their independence. She may have felt cornered when the topic came up.

She was probably less calm than she looked. People who play down closeness can look fine while their bodies are stressed. Shutting down may have been the only way she knew to handle a feeling that was too strong, not a sign that she did not care.

She likely saw me as the problem. In the demand-withdraw pattern, each partner blames the other. I saw someone closed off. She may have seen someone who kept bringing up the same subject, however patiently I did it.

Work and her phone were where she felt safe. If her worth came from results, work was the one place she knew she was good enough. Being fully present with me at dinner may have felt more exposed than answering emails. And if her worth depended on winning, losing a game was not play. Being ruthless was protecting something.

My patience may have been what she valued most. That fits the moment she came closer when I was tired and wanted nothing. A partner who stayed calm for a year and a half, with almost no arguments, may have been the safest relationship she had known. That could explain why she stayed despite her discomfort.

Then the ending may have confirmed her fears. After a year and a half of calm, she saw me grow angrier, and then I left after she shut down again. She may have read it as proof that closeness ends in conflict and loss, the very belief that kept her distant. Or she may have felt relief.

She probably would not call herself avoidant. She would more likely say she was independent and busy, and that I wanted more than she could give.

None of this changes my answer. Understanding why someone keeps you at a distance does not make the distance easier to live with.

## How it ended

For more than a year and a half, I did everything I could. I was in love, and I am patient, understanding and empathetic. I think few people stay that long with an avoidant partner. I have no study to prove it, but I know how much patience it took.

Then I started losing it. I was also doing extreme training at the time, and it made me less tolerant of her excuses and angrier in general.

Training hard again took me back to my years as a competitive swimmer, when I was obsessed with winning too. For a while, there were two of us in the relationship who hated to lose.

That was new for me. I usually hold my anger in. It feels like self-control, but it has a cost. In [two experiments](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12899316/) where people discussed an upsetting topic, those told to hide their emotions communicated worse, built less rapport and raised the blood pressure of both people in the conversation. Holding anger in does not make it go away. It builds up, and in my case it came out when I was already worn down.

The training part is not only in my head. In a [ten-year study of 400 competitive swimmers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3676635/), people like the one I used to be, mood problems rose as training got harder and went back to normal when the load came down. Hard training does not cause a breakup, but it can use up the patience a difficult relationship needs.

The last stretch was the hardest. A month before the breakup, we got very close. Then came a month without intimacy, right up to the end. After that closeness, it felt like torture. It was the hot and cold pattern at its worst: the higher the high, the harder the drop.

In the end, I asked for something simple: more time together. She shut down again, and I broke up with her.

Even though I was the one who left, it felt like a heartbreak. For the first month, I felt numb. I could not feel anything. The month after that, it all came at once. I felt deeply hurt and angry, and ashamed of the anger I had managed to hold in for so long. Held-in anger does not go away. It waits.

It did not help that she would not communicate after the breakup. I think that was the ruthless sore loser in her again: once the game was lost, she left the table. Her silence made it even harder to keep my cool.

It was not about one bad conversation. It was the same conversation for more than a year, too often ending the same way. Being confident kept me calm, but it also kept me waiting. I thought patience was enough. It was not, because waiting does not change a pattern.

Her anger was probably fear. That explains it, but it does not excuse it. Wanting to be close was never the problem. She made the relationship unsustainable, and my mistake was taking so long to see it.


---

**Actionable insight:** If your partner pulls away when you ask for closeness, ask for less and build closeness through shared activities. Watch how they lose, too: someone who cannot stand losing may never give ground, and a relationship cannot be repaired without it.

## Key figure

**180** — Couples filmed while one partner asked the other to change; avoidant partners grew angrier and withdrew, unless the request was softened

*Source: Overall, Simpson and Struthers, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013*

## Myth vs reality

**Myth:** The way to get closer to a distant partner is to keep talking about the relationship.

**Reality:** When asked to change, avoidant partners got angrier and withdrew more. Softer requests that respected their independence reduced both.

*Source: Overall, Simpson and Struthers, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013*

## Quote

> "Every situation we meet with in life is constructed in terms of the representational models we have of the world about us and of ourselves."
>
> — John Bowlby, On how past relationships shape the way we read new ones

*Source: Loss: Sadness and Depression, 1980*

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