When Anxious and Avoidant Couples Spiral

One of the most distressing eventualities in romantic life occurs when an anxiously attached partner and an avoidantly attached one end up – without in any way meaning to, and while there is still a lot of goodwill in the air – generating an unbounded vortex of panic and fear that neither of them understands and from which they cannot pull themselves out before matters collapse in a state of fateful hurt and distrust. Years after the event, after a few more failed relationships, one or both partners may be liable to look back with complete puzzlement (and some regret) on the chaotic episode and wonder how things could ever have spiralled so badly. This is one kind of explanation.

Both anxiously and avoidantly attached people carry a distinctive and exaggerated core fear – typically the result of an unattuned and neglectful childhood – and a hugely unhelpful and outsized response to this fear. For the anxious person, the fear is: ‘I’m going to be abandoned, and I won’t be able to survive the loss in any way. My entire being depends on the person I love.’ And the accompanying response belief is: ‘I must therefore cling, protest and argue until the end in order to avoid losing my adored person.’

For their part, the avoidant person’s core fear is: ‘Other people can’t be relied upon. They hurt you, betray you, blow hot and cold, and don’t have your true interests at heart.’ And their response to this deep fear is: ‘I must therefore put up enormous barriers, say nothing, and disappear – or else I will be overwhelmed and engulfed. I am never really secure until I am alone.’

With these twin psychological mindsets operating beneath the surface, it is only a matter of time before one person manages to unleash the other’s core fear – and neither will notice that they’ve ended up in an insidious pattern of being violently scared and, simultaneously, violently scaring.

We can imagine a situation where the anxious partner contacts the avoidant one, only to find that they are, for whatever reason, especially distant or silent. Perhaps the avoidant partner has gone on a trip, or they are working hard, or they’re exploring a new way of being around their friends. Rather than responding as a secure person might (namely, by thinking: ‘I’d prefer this person to be more available, but I can survive without them being so. My life doesn’t depend on anyone but me.’) The anxious person slips into their most archaic and insidious fear: that they cannot cope without their loved one, and that if there is no answer from them, they must start to grip ever harder. As a result, like the proverbial unskilled motorist who slams on the brakes mid-turn, precisely when they shouldn’t, they keep knocking: they insist, they beg, they leave forty-five messages on the other’s phone. They can no longer regulate themselves.

All of which is, of course, hellish – and truly shocking – for the avoidant person. In the face of such demands, which evoke the boundary violations and betrayals of their childhood, the avoidant person may feel no option but to stonewall. They can appear deeply sadistic as they withhold reassurance precisely when it is most needed, but they are not trying to make the other person suffer. They are just terrified that they will be annihilated by the noise and insistence. Both partners have lost their reason. For the anxious partner, this is probably the first time they’ve ever allowed someone to matter this much. And for the avoidant one, this may be the first time someone has ever needed them this much. It doesn’t feel good for either of them.

What would be required at such moments is, of course, steadiness on both sides. The anxious party should remember that they are, whatever it feels like, no longer a vulnerable child but a resourceful adult. They could survive the loss of this person, were it to come to that. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be eminently OK. They are far stronger than they think. And the avoidant party should similarly remember that they aren’t going to be overwhelmed as they once were. They don’t have to run away and could afford to speak a word or two. They, too, have left childhood behind.

Unfortunately, these two people – who are probably very clever and mature across other areas of their lives (and perhaps very lovely too) – can entirely fail to see what is at play. Both eventually withdraw to nurse their wounds with the help of mistaken ideologies of love. The anxious one concludes: ‘I knew they would abandon me. People can never be trusted.’ And the avoidant one concludes, with equal darkness and suspicion: ‘I knew they were too much, I need to be on my own.’ Both may feel ashamed in ways they cannot quite master: ashamed of their cruelty to their partner on the one hand, ashamed that they were so undignified with their begging on the other.

In the face of such shame, they may fall for the comforting notion that there is someone out there with whom it would all just be easier. They ignore that it would probably be a lot wiser to work through their childhood distortions within their established relationship rather than searching for new difficulties (and trouble) elsewhere. But by the time any insight is reached, it’s likely to be far too late. The avoidant partner may be deep in a state of numbness (it can be impossible for them to process what’s happened), their friends – or perhaps even their therapist – may have got the wrong end of the stick: ‘Find yourself someone less intense.’ While the anxious partner will have fallen prey to similar fantasies around alternatives (someone out there can love me perfectly, someone will spare me any feelings of doubt whatsoever). They might even be vaunting the charms of new love – and believe in them, for now.

A few lucky people can succeed at love on instinct alone. The rest of us – especially those who have come from more troubled places – have no option but to try to reach calm and steadiness through introspection, reading and a lot of inner therapeutic work. We strive, with all our intelligence, to untangle past from present and separate out fears from facts. It may be the achievement of a lifetime.