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When an Avoidant and You Both Stop Contacting Each Other

Channel: Guided Awareness
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9aCYI4oHIs

A therapist (Anber Haq) maps the two mismatched grief cycles that play out when an avoidant and an anxious partner both go no-contact: the avoidant's relief-to-reaching-out arc runs opposite to yours, so they often circle back right when you've stopped wanting them.

Key points

  • Attachment origins. Dismissive avoidants typically had critical, high-expectation parents who praised independence, so their blueprint is to not show emotion. Fearful avoidants were abused/neglected and their blueprint is to constantly change how they show up. Anxious-preoccupied learned to hide their true self and could only earn love through emotional expression/outbursts.
  • The avoidant's grief cycle (in order):
  • Relief - contact stopping removes the pressure of emotions they can't handle; they act happy to be out, which reads as not caring but isn't.
  • Denial and rationalization - "I don't need this, it didn't mean anything, we were just friends." She notes there's nothing to deny if no feeling exists. Some jump to offering friendship here, which she frames as a good sign (more emotional awareness than full avoidance).
  • Indirect bonding / covering up - if denial doesn't hold, they numb the feelings via drinking, travel, or other behaviors, looking like they're "living their best life" when they're actually suppressing.
  • Reconnection - they usually reach out, but mainly when the distance wasn't you trying to teach them a lesson or manipulate them; genuine space given for the relationship's sake produces the cleanest reconnection. They may just start talking or suggest friendship without a stated agenda.
  • Your (anxious) grief cycle runs opposite: distress (silence read as rejection/abandonment), then rumination (replaying interactions, "what did I do wrong" - often when you realize your ex was avoidant), then gradual acceptance and rebuilt stability, and finally a stage where you may not even want them back.
  • The core mismatch: both people care, but process grief on opposite timelines - "right when you're done with them is when they realize how much they need you." If they return and part of you thinks it could work, she says that's normal and common and it can.

Reception

  • The comments split sharply from the video's reconciliation-friendly tone: the most-liked replies urge people to just leave avoidants - "after 90 days your brain breaks the pattern," "don't waste time, it's manipulation and games," "no one deserves emotional abuse."
  • Many long, raw personal accounts of no-contact (commonly 7-8 months to 2 years), grieving daily, and the disorienting fact of still loving someone who hurt them - "how can I love someone who discarded me so bad?"
  • A recurring, self-aware thread from men wrestling with the savior complex the video warns against: several admitted "blasting" their avoidant partner with attachment-theory videos, watched them feel "too seen" and lash out, and are bracing to lose them while trying not to be the fixer.
  • Common request for follow-up content: how to gently raise attachment style with an avoidant who isn't self-aware, and videos on "hybrid" avoidants and situationships.
  • Pushback from a "Casey" (interest-level) camp rejecting attachment theory outright - "she's not avoidant, she's just avoidant with you; put a guy she really likes in front of her and she's not avoidant anymore."
  • Several described the classic fearful-avoidant arc back at Anber: intense fast start, the partner saying "I love you" first, then "you deserve better / I can't give you what you need," followed by nitpicking, conflict, and withdrawal.