Free to Attach

AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships. People who are avoidant feel most comfortable when the conversation stays superficial. They often overintellectualize life. They retreat to work. They try to be self-sufficient and pretend they don’t have needs. Often,

If you’re avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else—the emotional equivalent of finding a home—is a condition that you find difficult to accept.

For some of us, the fear of intimacy overpowers the desire for it. It feels safer to be alone or in relationships where we are “unemotionally involved” than it does to be emotionally vulnerable, close, and loving. I understand that. In spite of the range of needs and wants that go unmet when we don’t love, it may feel safer to not love. We don’t ri

Many of us have learned to run from closeness rather than take the risks involved. We run from love or prevent closeness in many ways. We push people away or do hurtful things to them so they won’t want to be close to us. We do ridiculous things in our minds to talk ourselves out of wanting to be close. We find fault with everyone we meet; we rejec