They listen to you. For avoidants, getting close to a romantic partner—or anyone, for that matter—can be a scary thing. They tend to…well, avoid it. If your partner actively listens to you when you speak and is curious about you, it's a sign they're attached to you and they care deeply for you.
Avoidants tend to not want to give anything or anybody their time or their energy. If it doesn't serve them any purpose, they won't do it. So if they are with you and they are giving you their time, that is a really good indication that they care about you and they are putting you as a priority.
They make an effort to bond with you
For an avoidant person, bonding is quite tricky. But, if they are making an effort to bond with you through the things you like, it is a good sign. This effort displays that they trust you and are ready to commit to you.
On the other hand, people with an avoidant attachment may be attracted to anxious partners because their pursuit and need for closeness reinforce the avoidant person's need for independence and self-reliance. Anxious and avoidant partners may also seek their partner's traits due to wanting those traits in themselves.
Avoidant individuals may gravitate towards Acts of Service or Quality Time as their primary love languages, as these gestures offer connection without excessive emotional vulnerability.
Avoidantly attached people are prone to “shutting down, numbing, rigid compartmentalizing, and pushing away,” Mary Chen, LFMT, tells SELF. And these suppression techniques can feel “exactly like rejection” to their partners, making it hard to approach—and therefore understand—avoidants!
Adults with the dismissive / avoidant attachment style seem to be pretty happy about who they are and where they are. They might be very social, easy-going, and fun to be around. In addition, these individuals might have a lot of friends and/or sexual partners. Generally speaking, they are not alone or lonely.
Because people with an avoidant attachment style fear not being lovable or good enough, feeling criticized or judged by loved ones can be particularly painful. Especially when it comes to things that they are not so comfortable with, such as their emotions and feelings.
If an avoidant starts pulling away, let them know that you care but do not chase them. It may be very painful to do this, but pursuing them is likely to make it take longer for them to come back. They need breathing space, to feel safe with their own thoughts and unengulfed.
So, they are more at a loss when you stop chasing them. They are miserable, sad, and broken. The worst part is that some avoidants may never differentiate their own emotions. They think 'being aloof' is the only way they can be safe and away from the emotional desert.
According to Schumann and Orehek, avoidant individuals were less likely to offer a comprehensive apology. Instead, they were defensive, prone to justify their behavior, blame the other person and make excuses. The authors' results for the anxiously attached individuals were less consistent.
Anxious-Avoidant Attachment
You don't come to people too readily. But it doesn't mean inside you don't yearn for a happy relationship. You will fall in love when it's been proven to you that your partner is someone who's accepting, forgiving and non-judgmental.
Avoidant people prefer (whether consciously or not) to be non-committal, and often a partner never feels like they're totally in the relationship. This doesn't mean they don't want to stay in a long term relationship and often they may, as long as it can be with no noticeable signs of real commitment.
Once again, people with a dismissive-avoidant style showed that they did care about relationships. Dismissive avoidant students reported higher self-esteem and positive mood than non-dismissives—but only when told that surgency predicts future interpersonal success.
Partners with an avoidant-dismissive attachment style may struggle to express feelings and connect deeply with their mates. They might not talk about how they feel or turn down their partner's attempts to do so. This can make their partner feel alone and unsupported.
Slow to text back
Dismissive avoidants don't like instant back-and-forth texting unless it's urgent or they're really interested. Their typical response is to take their time when texting back. To them, it doesn't matter when you text back as long as you do text back.
However, regardless of whether they are the instigator of a breakup or not, avoidant attachers tend to repress or avoid expression of their intense emotions in the aftermath. This response isn't to suggest that avoidant attachers don't feel the pain of a breakup – they do.
Some studies showed that differences in attachment styles seem to influence both the frequency and the patterns of jealousy expression: individuals with the preoccupied or fearful-avoidant attachment styles more often become jealous and consider rivals as more threatening than those with the secure attachment style [9, ...
Fearful avoidants both want and fear intimacy. So they seek closeness. But once they do, their fear of intimacy and attachment kicks in and they suddenly feel the need to escape, and this is when they need you to chase them.
For the emotionally avoidant person, love becomes an obligation. When their partner expresses distress over the lack of emotional intimacy in the relationship, a love avoidant person may become overwhelmed, turning to pornography, substance abuse, or workaholism as a distraction from their frustration.
After intimacy deepens, the avoidant partner loses interest in being sexual, in hugging, kissing, and perhaps even holding hands. Some avoidant partners will seem to actively limit physical proximity, such as sitting closely together on a couch where contact may be possible.
Avoidant attachment style is an insecure attachment style. Avoidantly attached people generally have a dismissive attitude towards close relationships*. They are often uncomfortable with intimacy and may seem emotionally distant. They may also have difficulty trusting others and may be hesitant to get too close.