Skip to content

Why Almost All Avoidants Come Back When You Give Up

Channel: Chris Seiter
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMpv00CtevM

Seiter argues that avoidants tend to re-engage once you stop chasing, framing it as supply-and-demand economics, but warns that getting them back is not the same as keeping them.

Key points

The economics of giving up

  • Chasing floods the market with supply (your attention, availability, investment); when supply is high and demand low, the avoidant devalues what is abundant.
  • He maps the process onto a dollar bill cut in three: phase 1 inflation (chasing makes you cheap), phase 2 market crash (your withdrawal removes the supply they took for granted), phase 3 scarcity rebound (your absence makes them crave and chase you).

Why "almost" -- avoidants who do not return

  • Three reasons an avoidant does not come back: they found a new "currency" (replaced you), they are too disconnected to register the loss, or they never valued the relationship to begin with.
  • Takeaway: most come back only if they had something to lose. The real question is whether they ever valued it enough to miss it.

Keeping them is the harder problem

  • Seiter says most clients who reunite break up again within about 6 months, because the original problems remain.
  • Citing Dr. Nicole LePera (via a Lewis Howes interview), he suggests avoidants may experience a truly secure partner as boring; for someone raised in chaos, peace can feel alien, like giving an adrenaline junkie a quiet cabin.
  • He invokes "boiling the frog": let the avoidant acclimate to security slowly rather than rushing back in, which triggers their fear of engulfment.
  • The paradox: to get them back you give up; to keep them you must not care if they stay. Avoidants respond to space, not pressure or explanation.

Why people fail

  • Most cannot tolerate the uncertainty; they are really trying to soothe their own anxiety, so they reach out too soon and mistake temporary relief for progress.
  • He names Solomon's Paradox: people give clear, rational advice to friends but fail to apply it to themselves. The challenge is becoming the person who can follow through on what they already know.

Reception

  • Strongly resonant; many commenters describe recent breakups with a fearful avoidant and share their own no-contact experiences.
  • A recurring agreement: avoidants come back when you are genuinely fine without them, when a rebound fails, or when they need you again.
  • A common warning, often from experience: even if they return they tend to leave again, so the real question is whether you want them back at all.
  • Several frame the cycle as an anxiety loop and value the peace found after leaving over reuniting; one notes a partner took 3 years and multiple returns.
  • Some pushback on the framing: one argues an avoidant proposing because you played "games" is not real success; you should find someone who wants you without games.