If your fearful avoidant ex doesn't respond to a check-in, respect that they need a few days of space and reach out again 5 – 7 days later. The maximum times to reach out with no response is 3 over several weeks. After that, don't reach out again out of respect for yourself.
Give them the space you think they need, and then give them some more. They are highly sensitive to feeling smothered in relationships, and space and time to decompress is essential to their personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of your relationship.
At this point, you may be wondering: will an avoidant miss you? The thing is, when you're patient enough to give them a lot of time and space, they will initially get back to their everyday life. They will neither miss you nor demand time or attention from you.
Less engagement means a dismissive avoidant ex needs more space, and more engagement means they need less space and you should therefore reach out more. As things pick up and there's flow of communication, dismissive avoidants start to feel the emotions that they'd numbed down, and reach out more.
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.
They're always looking for the red flags, and they will find them, so when you go no contact with the dismissive avoidant, don't expect them to reach out to you.
If your fearful avoidant ex doesn't respond to a check-in, respect that they need a few days of space and reach out again 5 – 7 days later. The maximum times to reach out with no response is 3 over several weeks. After that, don't reach out again out of respect for yourself.
A fearful avoidant during no contact acts slightly differently from other attachment styles. Going no contact with them can become extremely distracting and often requires a lot of discipline. The fearful-avoidant does not express remorse or sadness over heartbreak in the initial weeks of the breakup.
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.
Pitfalls of the Avoidant Style
Their insecurity is more about how relationships will be too demanding and that they won't have enough “space” in the relationship. Out of their history, they don't have the expectation that their wishes, needs, feelings, etc. will be recognized and important.
An avoidant may also deactivate longer if you act needy, upset and angry when they need space away from you to feel safe again. Since fearful avoidants usually reach out after deactivating for 2 – 5 days, wait up to 3 days to see if they'll reach out before reaching out.
Yes, the dismissive avoidant misses you, but they miss you later on. In the beginning they're going to be relieved that they have their freedom. They can get their independence back and they get to go and do what they want to do without having to answer any questions to anybody.
As a result of turning off their emotions, avoidant attachers are not likely to over-reflect on why a relationship didn't work out. Yet, interestingly, this reaction means that avoidant attachers may struggle to move on from previous relationships as quickly as they could if they had dealt with their emotions head-on.
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.
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, ...
The avoidant person is excited by the openness and directness of the anxious person, having not yet met their threshold for emotional exposure, and so appear open and available. The avoidant attacher also feels free to be who they are as control is not yet present from the side of the anxious attacher.
Avoidants mostly see such texts as needy, distracting and disrespectful and think/feel “what do you want?”, “don't you have something better to do?” or “why do I have to make you feel better”.
Double texts may turn them off. “Relationships are usually surface-level as they do not know how to be vulnerable with others,” Luther says, “and double texting could come off as 'needy' and not something [to which] the avoidant person is comfortable committing.”
Rejection, for those who are fearful-avoidant, can also feel terrifying. In fact, many times this fearful style can lead them to perceive threat and rejection all around them. They have often not developed the mechanisms to deal with loss earlier in their lives and therefore struggle to make sense of things.
It's not that they don't want loving relationships – it's just that it's difficult for them to give themselves over to love. To protect themselves from feelings of rejection, an avoidant attacher will create strict physical and emotional boundaries.
The avoidant attachment style
This is known as avoidant attachment. It also manifests itself in the inability to maintain eye contact during the most emotional conversations. This is because they don't know how to handle these situations. Therefore, they try to avoid, escape, or distance themselves from them.
In a Love Avoidants mind, intimacy with another person is equivalent to being engulfed, suffocated, and controlled. Too much closeness can literally cause them to feel like they are losing themselves, and yes, it can even feel like dying. (that is how intense their fears can be).
A person with an avoidant attachment style is going to crave the feeling of being loved and supported, just like anyone else. The key difference is that they'll also feel a compulsion to distance themselves from those they're getting close to.
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.