In today's blog I am going to talk about some of the reasons why the fearful avoidant won't reach out first. This is whether you're going through a breakup or if you just had some type of disagreement or argument.
The first reason that they won't reach out is because they mirror your actions. If you're somebody that feels a little bit of discontentment with them, or if you're not happy with something that's going on within a relationship, and you start to pull back yourself, they're able to pick up on those little nuances. They are very good at sensing a person's vibe and sensing whether or not somebody is still in this or not. This is because the fearful avoidant has the activating and deactivating strategies. They have the activating of the anxious and the deactivating of the dismissive which makes them able to they already have a sense of inner turmoil going on. So if they start to pick up on somebody looking like they're about to abandon them, they will do the hurting first. They'll pull back first.
The next reason that they won't reach out is because they feel like they're not worthy of genuine love. They have this belief that they're broken inside and nobody would truly love them. Because they have such different levels of trauma than any other attachment style, they really internalize and personalize those things and those stories that they were told coming up. They continue to tell those stories themselves. They're perfectly capable of recognizing when they are the problem in a relationship, so usually it's not a surprise if a person decides to not deal with them anymore or completely cut them off. When you are getting upset with them they kind of see that coming and when they start to sense the signs of that being the case they feel like “another one bites the dust.”
Once they start to see that you're in this, and as soon as you start to show up consistently, that's when they start to get the most scared. They want a good, healthy, and thriving relationship, but the instant that they get it it’s uncomfortable to them. What I'm actually starting to question about them is do they kind of like that toxic behavior in relationships? Does the normalcy and the stability that comes with a healthy relationship feel boring to them?
From questioning different people that have identified themselves as having a fearful avoidant attachment style, they are sometimes scared to reach out because they know that that person might reject them. The person is, in their opinion, most likely sick of them and doesn't want to deal with them. They're scared to reach out first because they don't want to be met with rejection and they don't want to have their ego damaged any more than what it already is. They already feel like they're not able to have fulfilling, loving relationships which is why they are always cautiously optimistic about whether or not something is real.
That leads me to my next reason why they won't reach out to you. They feel as if people are upset with them for being the way that they are. They feel that their hot and coldness causes people to get upset and to become impatient. The relationship starts to turn toxic because they know that when a relationship is so volatile the other person is going to say they are done no matter how much of the history they had with that person. No matter how many reassurances they are given by somebody they always have those red flags up about that person leaving them and about that person going back on the promise that they are going to stick around.