The Anxious-Avoidant Couple: A Secure Love Excerpt
QUICK ANSWER
The majority of distressed couples are stuck in an anxious-avoidant pattern, where one partner works tirelessly to maintain connection while the other stays detached to keep things from getting too intense. It’s a second-best balance that can last decades, but it comes at a high cost: neither partner gets to be a whole person, and the cycle reinforces both insecure styles.
This is an excerpt from Julie’s book Secure Love, the “Big Book,” on the anxious-avoidant couple.
Why do most distressed couples fall into this pattern?
The majority of distressed couples are stuck in an anxious-avoidant pattern. Even partners who don’t fit into traditional categories of attachment styles will, in the face of unresolved relationship conflict, take on an anxious-avoidant pattern in their current relationship, regardless of how they showed up in past relationships. People with a history of avoidant attachment usually continue to show up with avoidance, but others may shift depending on how they and their partner play off each other during stress and conflict. The same is true for those with a history of anxious attachment.
Those with disorganized attachments have less predictable relationship-seeking behaviors, especially those in the oscillating category, but even they find themselves in the same patterns of managing conflict. A disorganized-oscillating partner will take on the anxious role, but with more intense fear, emotion, and extreme behaviors, while a disorganized-impoverished partner will take on an extreme version of the avoidant role.
What is the anxious-avoidant balancing act?
All relationships will either find emotional balance, fall apart, or have so much emotional disconnection that the relationship is difficult to sustain. Securely attached relationships find emotional balance because each partner comes to the relationship with inner emotional balance; two emotionally balanced people create an emotionally balanced relationship. This is the ideal.
The second-best version of relationship emotional balance is the anxious-avoidant relationship. Here we have one partner who must work tirelessly to maintain emotional connection, while the other must be emotionally detached to keep things from getting too intense. By contrast, two anxious partners create a relationship in which anxiety and high emotion can’t be contained, while two avoidant partners likely won’t have enough emotional investment for the relationship to feel worthwhile.
How does this differ from a secure couple?
Individuals who are securely attached have access to all the emotional parts of themselves: sadness, joy, anger, shame. They can feel and talk about distressing emotions, and be responsive to their partner’s distress. They react to relationship stress with a combination of reason and emotional intelligence, and are confident bringing up concerns. They’re in touch with their need for connection as well as their need for individuality.
This is not the case for the anxious-avoidant couple. The anxious partner often feels overwhelmed by their emotions, while the avoidant partner feels disconnected from theirs. The anxious partner is dominated by emotion, usually fear, while the avoidant partner is dominated by reason at the expense of emotion. Anxious partners try to protect the relationship by excessively bringing up concerns; avoidant partners try to protect it by not bringing up concerns at all, or by pushing their partner’s concerns away to keep the peace.
What happens when the two come together is that a second-best balance is forged. The anxious partner experiences emotions for both partners, brings up concerns, communicates distress, and fights for connection. The avoidant partner keeps emotions from getting out of control, minimizes fighting in the short term by avoiding concerns, and fights against enmeshment. All bases are covered, but usually at a high cost, the least of which is that this dance is exhausting for both.
What are the downsides of the balancing act?
Anxious-avoidant couples can keep this delicate balance going, sometimes for decades, but there are downsides. For the balance to be sustained, partners must constantly fight against each other’s attachment styles. This creates power struggles, sometimes with one partner consistently on the losing end, and an environment where relationship harmony is inconsistent at best. Eventually stress mounts to the point that it overwhelms the balance, and the couple experiences periods of escalated fights or tension.
Another critical downside is that neither partner gets the opportunity to be a whole person with access to all parts of themselves. Instead they stay stuck in the rigidity of their anxious or avoidant attachment. The negative communication cycle not only harms the relationship each time it plays out, it reinforces each of their insecure attachment styles, making it difficult for either partner to grow as an individual. Partners engage in insecure behaviors because it’s the only way they know to get some of their needs met, some of the time, to some degree. Asking an insecurely attached partner to change is asking them to risk getting none of their needs met, ever.
What does this look like for a real couple?
Consider Jonah and Zoe. Jonah, anxiously attached, feels his avoidant-attached partner Zoe ignores him when they spend time with her extended family. When Jonah protests, Zoe feels he’s trying to control her, and responds by accusing him of overreacting. Below the surface, Jonah is fighting to feel valued and to have his distress responded to. Zoe is fighting for her sense of self, which is tied to her sense of worthiness, and in her mind her worthiness is tied to her value to Jonah. Protecting her sense of self is her way of protecting Jonah’s view of her, which she believes protects the relationship.
The “in-law problem” has been ongoing, and the rigidity of their communication brings out their worst selves. Jonah acts out his anxious attachment in the emotionally unsafe way he communicates distress; Zoe acts out her avoidant attachment in the emotionally unsafe way she responds to his protests. While this doesn’t feel good for either of them, behaving otherwise means taking a huge emotional risk.
The only way out is for each of them, or at least one at first, to start reaching and responding in new ways. But in Jonah’s mind, if he stops protesting with accusations and blame, he risks getting no attention at all and feeling even more alone. In Zoe’s mind, if she quits dismissing his concerns, she risks losing her sense of self and feeling walked all over. So both cling to their insecure ways of communicating, to the detriment of the relationship and of their own growth, which also blocks any resolution to the in-law conflict.
You can learn more about these dynamics on the attachment styles hub, and the full path out of this stuck place, with tools and scripts, is in Secure Love.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do both partners have fixed attachment styles?
Not always. Even people who don’t fit traditional categories will, in the face of unresolved conflict, take on an anxious or avoidant role in their current relationship, and some shift depending on how they and their partner play off each other.
Why is it so hard for one partner to just change?
Because their insecure behaviors are the only way they know to get some needs met. Asking them to change feels like asking them to risk getting none of their needs met ever, which is why the cycle stays so sticky.
Anxious or avoidant? See which role you tend to take in the balancing act.