Trouble showing or feeling their emotions. Discomfort with physical closeness and touch. Accusing their partner of being too clingy or overly attached. Refusing help or emotional support from others.
People with avoidant personality disorder have chronic feelings of inadequacy and are highly sensitive to being negatively judged by others. Though they would like to interact with others, they tend to avoid social interaction due to the intense fear of being rejected by others.
Though avoidant partners might not seem as emotionally available or connected as others, their emotions and need for connection are often the same as anyone else. With some understanding and support, it's possible for avoidant partners to open up and create greater emotional intimacy.
Identifying Avoidant Behaviors in Your Partner
Not saying “I love you” or other expressions of love. Deflecting conversations about further commitment, such as monogamy, engagement, or marriage. Dismissing or mocking a partner's attempts to be closer, or to engage on a deeper level.
Abuse at the hands of someone with an avoidant personality disorder often includes psychological and emotional abuse. Don't be afraid to reach out for help, pursue support groups for loved ones, seek your own therapy, separate, or leave the relationship completely.
People with an avoidant attachment style may have had parents who made them feel neglected. This attachment style can also develop if parents were emotionally unavailable or withdrawn. People with avoidant attachment styles might have difficulty asking for help or expressing emotion.
Love Avoidants recognize and are attracted to the Love Addict's strong fear of being left because Love Avoidants know that all they have to do to trigger their partner's fear is threaten to leave.
Emotional Intelligence and Avoidant Attachment
People with the avoidant attachment style are more likely than secure attachers to have low levels of emotional intelligence. This is especially the case when it comes to other peoples' emotions.
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.
Whoopi Goldberg, Donny Osmond and Kim Basinger have something in common other than fame — it is avoidant personality disorder, or simply, AvPD. This disorder is estimated to affect around two percent of the general adult population.
They may use repression to manage unpleasant feelings. They tend not to seek support from their loved ones when they need it. Might sulk or complain instead of directly asking for support. Pre-emptive strategies such as breaking up with their partner, to cope with their feelings.
A dismissive-avoidant person cannot form supportive relationships. They are not comfortable providing support to friends or romantic partners and they feel less obligated to do so. Their view of those who seek support is that they are dependent, weak, emotionally unstable, and immature.
Examples of Love Avoidant Behavior
Pushing other people away using single word responses, avoiding social outings, or being vague about their needs and intentions. Creating emotional walls rather than healthy boundaries in relationships. Using their energies on their interests and hobbies while isolating their partner.
In general, avoidant adults tend to be emotionally unavailable. They put distance between themselves and their partner, because of discomfort with too much closeness.
People with avoidant personality disorder behave as though the pain they feel in certain circumstances gives them license to act without consideration for other people. This lack of empathy is common in the avoidant personality. And it is a classic sign of narcissistic personality disorder.
Fearful Avoidant
These individuals frequently find themselves bouncing between highs and lows in both relationships and friendships. They fear being isolated from others, but also push people away and are inherently suspicious. They may start fights or create conflict, but fear rejection. They have few close friends.
For this reason, and the fact that they find emotional closeness difficult, avoidant adults may be more likely to have a lot of friends rather than a few close ones. Avoidant attachers are often the life and soul of the party due to their elevated confidence and high self-esteem.
Avoidant Personality Disorder Causes and Risk Factors
A family history of depression, anxiety, or personality disorders. Childhood abuse, trauma, or neglect. Trauma including suffering an extreme incident of ridicule or rejection in childhood.
As an adult, a person with an avoidant attachment style may experience the following: avoiding emotional closeness in relationships. feeling as though their partners are being clingy when they simply want to get emotionally closer.
Avoidant attachers may be prone to sabotaging their healthy relationships. Their mistrust of their partners' intentions, combined with their fear of intimacy, can sometimes lead to them subconsciously behave in a way that pushes their partners away.
A fearful/avoidant attachment style usually develops when one's caregiver is also the perpetrator of abuse. As a child, this person has likely experienced abuse in the home, in the form of physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or a chaotic family dynamic.
This response isn't to suggest that avoidant attachers don't feel the pain of a breakup – they do. They're just prone to pushing down their heartbreak and attempting to carry on with life as normal.
Because of this emotional distancing, they tend to be less empathic toward people in need (Joireman, Needham, & Cummings, 2001; Wayment, 2006). Further, avoidant people tend to respond negatively to their partner's emotions because those emotions can signal that they need more attention and intimacy.