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THIS Makes An Avoidant Fight For You And Not Take You For Granted

Channel: Chris Seiter
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXvFKlyN2ic

Seiter argues that the only way to get an avoidant ex to value you and re-engage is to stop trying to get them back, and that most people who chase have already lost the traits avoidants are drawn to.

Key points

  • He opens with a tongue-in-cheek five-step "formula" from the avoidant attachment subreddit for making an avoidant fall in love: provide cool experiences, be super unavailable, still be the one to reach out, no commitments or needs, and magically know their affection needs. The post is a joke meant to show how pointless chasing an avoidant is.
  • Reading "between the lines," he claims each step reveals real leverage: avoidants are drawn to people who inspire but do not smother them, who create scarcity, who reach out on their own terms (signaling strength, not chasing), who do not demand commitment (sparking fear of missing out), and who respect their space without pressure.

The trap

  • He claims avoidants fight for partners who are strong, self-sufficient, and unpredictable, but that almost everyone who wants an avoidant back is none of these -- they are needy and predictable.
  • His model: you start secure, dating the avoidant erodes that security into anxious attachment, then they leave and call you the problem (he likens it to gaslighting). Chasing then makes you the very needy, predictable person that drives them away, an endless cycle.
  • He says over 10 years working almost exclusively with people trying to win avoidant exes back, he has watched them break down because they know letting go is right but cannot do it emotionally.

Bowlby and moving on

  • He invokes John Bowlby's 1945 Tavistock work and the protest-despair-detachment stages children show when separated from a parent.
  • His claimed application: if an avoidant's detachment is met with an unexpected change (a partner actually moving on), it can trigger separation distress and prompt them to re-engage.
  • He plays a success-story clip from a client, Ashley, whose avoidant ex re-engaged only after she went back to school, got a new job, and got her own place -- thriving without him created scarcity.
  • The irony he names: by the time people reach true independence, they often no longer want the avoidant back. His final takeaway is that moving on is not manipulation to bring them back but freeing yourself.

Reception

  • Strongly resonant; the most-liked comments broadly agree with the "just move on" conclusion and are openly hostile to staying with avoidants.
  • Many frame the advice as a paradox: to win an avoidant back you must genuinely stop wanting them, at which point you no longer do (HBon111, northshorelight35).
  • A recurring theme is that chasing equals begging for the bare minimum -- decency, clarity, respect -- and is beneath self-respect (Bruno.r.d, hoodedhippie).
  • Several report that even when the avoidant does come back they pull away again once you act like a secure partner, so it is not worth it (AD-hh6dd, Asta_Rune).
  • Commenters describe avoidants as emotionally delayed, draining, or broken, and advise cutting ties entirely; a self-identified avoidant agrees, telling chasers to stop wasting their time.