Hi SereneWolf,

I’ve watched another video by the same psychologist (Heidi Priebe), where she goes into a great detail explaining the main features of the fearful avoidant style. The video is 1 hr long, and it’s called 10 Signs You May Have A Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style. She herself used to be fearful avoidant, so that’s her specialty and she knows a lot about it.

Anyway, I watched it and recognized similar features that you shared about your own behavior in relationships. Here are two signs of the fearful avoidant style that she described, which I think you’ve expressed too (her bullets are expressed in the “you” form, so I am keeping that form):

1. You crave intimacy but fear commitment
2. You want other people to be vulnerable before you are

In the following, I’ll paraphrase what she said about each of these signs:

1. You crave intimacy but fear commitment

The false belief (based on their childhood experiences): to be in a relationship means to give up my independence and my sense of self to give endlessly of myself to the other person.

Fearful avoidants like people and intimate connections, but they are afraid of losing their sense of self in the relationship. So they make a deal with themselves: “I’ll go into the relationship, I’ll get that hit of intimacy and a sense of connectedness, but then I am going to pull back and I’m not going to enter this relationship long term, because to be in a relationship long term means to lose my sense of self. So I’ll sacrifice my sense of self for a while, to get the intimacy I need and crave, but then I pull back because I can’t bear to lose myself on the long run”.

They don’t realize that one can keep their sense of self and still be deeply emotionally connected to another person. They engage is merging with the other person, but at the expense of losing themselves, which is painful. So the fearful avoidant only feels comfortable in relationships when there is an expiry date. The idea of a long-term commitment, even to someone they really love, is terrifying.

(end of paraphrase)

You too expressed this same notion of losing yourself in the relationship, and completely focusing on the other person and their needs and wants:

Sometimes I can’t say No to a person even though I’d like to say No. … I really fear disappointing them.

In relationship I care too much and even if they’re little careless about their health or things that affect them or make them worry it makes me worry 3x times more and I can’t focus on my things.

In relationships I just loose myself in the process because over caring and overthinking about partner. And it affects my mood and even the sleep…

If I even notice even a little that what I suggested made them uncomfortable I wouldn’t hesitate to change my plans just to see them not disappointed.

The above are the examples where you lost yourself in the relationship and started caring not to disappoint your partner, not to want anything for yourself. You also started overly caring about her physical and emotional well-being, to the point of getting enmeshed and not being able to focus on your own stuff, and even losing sleep over it. That was happening in both of your LDRs, if I remember well.

So that’s the “hard” love that you want to avoid. The enmeshed, self-denying love, which is I guess the anxious part of your personality.

No wonder you don’t want it. You get exhausted in such relationships. And then you go back to being alone and restoring your independence:

I don’t like being even partially “dependent” on someone or affected by them. It could be because I like to control (It’s lot better than before but still) but not being controlled. Because I prefer some things should be my way. And It should be without judgements.

Like I know I’m in touch with my inner child and I still do lot of things that an adult actually doesn’t do like I turned into a kid when I’m with kids, Different kind of bicycling, Singing and dancing for no reason (Lot of times while cooking, Watching Anime and Cartoons and lot of things like that). And I kind of fear they would judge me for that and not actually understand.

When I asked you what you wouldn’t compromise, you said:

I think my freedom and ability to do whatever I want.

Also ability to go wherever I go. It’s like a parent would be like don’t go to hike there it’s dangerous out there and then even after she said no and I’d go I feel guilty.

But the problem is when this independence turns into total self-reliance, which is the opposite extreme of enmeshment. Which again isn’t a healthy state. And so the goal, according to this psychologist, and I agree with her, is integration.

Whereas now you might be prone to suppressing your emotional, overly reactive and needy part (the one that goes into enmeshment), you’d need to acknowledge it and give it more room for expression. For example, dare to speak up if something bothers you about the person’s behavior. Don’t suppress your frustration and pretend that you are so very tolerant and understanding (which you used to do in your LDRs, if I remember well). Set boundaries. Express your likes and dislikes. I don’t want to go into details in this post, but setting boundaries and expressing your dislikes would be the way to integrate your emotional, reactive part.

The second feature of the fearful avoidant style, which I think also applies to you is:

2. You want other people to be vulnerable before you are

This is what Heidi Priebe says about it:

People with fearful avoidant style do want emotional intimacy, but they also fear getting hurt. They are quite guarded, even if they are warm, empathic and engaging. They ask a lot of questions, but they don’t share too much about themselves (specially not the vulnerable parts). They are good listeners – they make other people comfortable and safe to express themselves and talk about deeper things. But they don’t want to share similarly deep about themselves until they are sure that the power dynamic is tipped in their favor.

That’s because they believe that people are naturally inclined to hurt and betray each other. They don’t trust people. So the only way they are willing to open up and share vulnerable information about themselves is if they are sure that the other person is “worse off” than them, i.e. has bigger weaknesses than them. Or that the other person is more in love with them than they are with the person, and so the other person has more to lose than them.

The fearful avoidant is always evaluating: what’s the likelihood that this person is safe for me to open up to. But their indicators of safety are not that the person is warm and kind and comforting, but it’s more likely to be something like: “this person has already shown me all of their cards, so now I can flip over mine, knowing that their issues are bigger than mine”.

People with fearful avoidant style usually don’t pursue, but wait to be pursued. Because pursuing/chasing someone requires vulnerability, which fearful avoidants don’t want to show.

(end of paraphrase)

You talked about not wanting to be too vulnerable with your partner (in your LDRs). You also mentioned feeling inferior (at least in the beginning) with the doctor. And you were attracted to troubled people, whom you perhaps unconsciously saw as weaker, or with more problems, than yourself.

So perhaps the tendency to get attracted to problematic girls is a part of this need to not feel judged by your partner, because you kind of feel “better” than them, and thus safer from their criticism and their ability to hurt you (which would be a defense against the wound your father inflicted upon you, criticizing you for your “weaknesses” and your “imperfections”). I am not claiming this, but it is a possibility.

Anyway, it seems to me you do fit some of the features of the fearful avoidant style. And the good news is that it can be healed – via integration. Integration of the emotionally reactive, angry and needy part (which you are perhaps ashamed of and want to keep hidden from people) into your main personality. By allowing yourself to say No and have boundaries, basically.

Let me know how all of this sounds?