Anxious vs Avoidant Attachment: How to Tell the Difference

Anxious and avoidant attachment are driven by the same deep desire, to feel safe in love.

Their strategies are OPPOSITE. That’s why, when the two find each other, it can feel so dramatic.

In this post I’ll walk you through how each style feels from the inside, why anxious and avoidant partners are so drawn to each other, and what I’ve seen in years of couples work that you won’t find in most books.

What anxious attachment feels like:

With anxious attachment, the core fear is that people are going to leave you. That you won’t get your needs met, or that not enough help is available.

Your nervous system is hyper alert to any sign of abandonment. Your Spidey senses are taking in a LOT of information so you can make sure you’re okay.

You might:

• Seek reassurance
• Feel panicked or obsessed when someone pulls away
• Overanalyze their texts, their tone, their timing
• Spend hours trying to figure the other person out

Love feels like something you have to *earn*.

Distance and silence create a sense that you’re under threat, and your body can go into fight or flight.

What avoidant attachment feels like:

With avoidant attachment, the belief is I am safer when I’m on my own. I’m more regulated on my own… I feel BETTER on my own.

When someone with avoidant attachment is by themselves, they focus on things outside their feelings (like work, exercise, sports or a project). That brings a sense of grounding, because they’re not feeling the dysregulation of relationship emotion.

Many avoidant people didn’t get to work through emotions together with a parent as a child. Often their needs or feelings were shut down, minimized or treated as a problem.

So they never learned how to manage intense emotion in relationship, and their coping strategy is to create distance.

The avoidant fear is you’re gonna trap me… you’re gonna put me into a relationship where I’m not gonna feel safe. I’ll feel flooded by your emotions, I won’t know what to do, and I won’t be able to get away. Closeness can feel suffocating… even when they crave deep love underneath.

Why your avoidant partner “didn’t think about it”

If you’re anxious and you ask an avoidant partner, did you think about our conversation?, they’ll often say, “No, I didn’t really think about it.”

So I want to be really clear about this. They’re not lying to you, and it’s not proof that they don’t care.

Not thinking about it is their coping mechanism. They did the thing they know how to do to feel okay again.

Their growth is to spend time feeling their feelings, thinking them through, and figuring out what they want.

Anxious and avoidant attachment are driven by the same desire… to feel safe in love.

The anxious avoidant dance

So the cycle usually goes something like this.

The avoidant partner pulls away. That triggers the anxious partner’s fear of abandonment, so they pull closer.

The avoidant partner feels overwhelmed, you’re trying to get something from me, and pulls further away.

Eventually the anxious partner gets fed up and gives them space. The space lasts days or weeks, MUCH longer than the anxious partner can tolerate.

By the time the avoidant partner comes back, the anxious partner is hurt and angry… so fed up that when they do finally show up, it just feels like a drop in the bucket. And the dance starts again.

I go deeper into this cycle in anxious and avoidant relationships.

Why anxious and avoidant partners choose each other

In my experience as a couples counselor, when you ask people about their childhood, it usually becomes very clear why they picked the partner they picked.

We choose what’s familiar. Often one or both parents had that attachment style, or your parents played out this exact dynamic with each other.

Sometimes you pick an upgraded version of what was familiar. Like your father, but he’s a yoga teacher.

You could be dating your father… but a father who does nonviolent communication. Or your father, but he likes the same sports as you.

Avoidant partners are often drawn to anxious partners because the anxious partner pursues. They reach for intimacy and keep the connection going. For someone who never learned how to create and maintain connection, that can be a *real* help.

In the beginning, the excitement and closeness can feel like a soul connection (a kismet connection). Over time, the intensity starts to feel like too much for the avoidant partner. They withdraw, and the cycle begins.

Can you be both anxious and avoidant?

YES. Attachment is a spectrum, and we all have anxious and avoidant tendencies inside us. Different people bring out different parts of you.

I’ve mostly been in the anxious position in romance. I’ve also been the avoidant one, in some romances and in some friendships.

When someone shows up for you more securely, you often show up more securely too.

One way to tell the difference in yourself is to notice how alone time feels.

For many avoidant people, being alone is genuinely regulating. When anxious people take space, it often comes from feeling defeated, I’m just going to be alone because no one can show up for me. That collapsed feeling is a different experience than the relief avoidant people feel.

What I learned from couples work:

When I started working with couples, and I’ll just be honest here, my bias was often that the avoidant partner was the problem. They were shut down and not talking.

What I found over time surprised me…

Often the anxious partner was the one who had a harder time making progress. When their partner gave them what they asked for, they couldn’t let it in. It wasn’t enough… or they didn’t trust it… or they pushed it away.

This is why, for anxious attachment, so much of the healing is learning to RECEIVE.

I write more about that in what secure attachment actually feels like.

And if you’re ready to understand why awareness of the dance hasn’t been enough to stop it, I teach the next step in my free training, Attachment Essentials, which also gives you access to my free community.

With love,
Sefora