Avoidants Are More Obsessed With You Than You Realize
Unfortunately all the evidence is in their behavior post-breakup
There’s an obsession — an extreme, intense need for an avoidant to erase you from their lives.
This infatuation they have with you (in some ways) dwarfs the intensity of an anxious attacher.
The avoidant person’s “discard” behavior often involves an enormous amount of mental energy because they’re constantly monitoring for threats to their autonomy, strategically managing distance, and making calculated decisions about when to pull away.
Ironically, this hypervigilance around attachment keeps the other person at the center of their attention, just in a different way than anxious attachment does.
True detachment doesn’t look like this.
While this fact might not lessen the pain of their discarding, there is solace in understanding their extreme reactions are coming from a place that was originally about them being attached to YOU.
Then you have the classic 2 am “hey…” text from them 6 months later, after they’ve come back to their senses. This is the smoking gun that reveals what’s really been happening during all those months of supposed “moving on.”
(To be fair, though, not all avoidants come back. Some you will never see or hear from again. But even I’ve had experiences of them trying to slink back as if nothing happened.)
A truly detached person doesn’t circle back.
They don’t have random Tuesday nights where someone from their past suddenly bubbles up in their consciousness with enough intensity to overcome whatever pride or logic kept them away.
They don’t wake up a year later with the sudden urge to “check in” or see “how you’ve been.”
That middle-of-the-night reach-out is the avoidant’s version of anxious rumination finally breaking through to the surface.
(However… that doesn’t necessarily mean they loved you. Love is a completely different topic. We’re talking about attachment here.)
RAS flip (Reticular Activating System)
The RAS flip is primarily about how they zone in on all the “bad” things once everything changes.
What was once an intensely positive feeling about you and the relationship drastically shifts to a deeply negative feeling.
You become the villain in their life.
Whereas before, you were not.
They probably idealized you, craved you, and promised so many things. And that’s the problem, because this all leads to a huge imbalance.
The “RAS flip” happens when attachment suddenly turns into detachment.
People who have such sudden, extreme reactions aren’t coming from a place of detachment already because there’s always a deep layer of pain involved. Probably resentment and frustration, too.
What’s interesting about attachment dynamics, particularly the anxious-avoidant relationship, is even though the avoidant routinely pulls away in moderate to severe cases (or even occasionally when it’s mild), they’re still “attached” to you.
The avoidant still NEEDS the anxious partner to chase them to feel wanted.
It’s just that they get turned off by it simultaneously.
You’ll see this in real time. It’ll seem like the avoidant is detached from you overnight, but there will always be a lead-up you’re unaware of.
Afterward, they’ll tangibly do this in several ways, including, but not limited to:
Ripping personal touches off the wall (pictures, posters, shared collectibles).
Completely rearranging living spaces immediately after splitting up.
Getting a makeover or buying new clothes.
Blocking you online.
Shifting their entire demeanor toward you.
Ghosting you and then completely ignoring your attempts to contact them.
Staying out late into the night partying.
One last “fuck you” text message or note.
Anything they can do to pretend that the relationship never existed. It’s all rooted in fear, not indifference.
When my avoidant fiancée unilaterally ended our relationship out of her own selfishness and her childish inability to manage relationship turbulence, her entire demeanor and behavior changed overnight.
Suddenly, she was always out partying, socializing, and generally living life like nothing ever happened. In a petty move, I noticed she moved all her Funko Pops to “her side” of the living room, whereas before, we had all our collectibles together.
While she wasn’t the most warm and loving woman, she still had some tenderness for me, but that all changed overnight. My ex had started acting like a cold-hearted bitch toward me.
I had to shut that shit down. “As long as I am living in this apartment with you, I expect you to start treating me with more respect.”
Avoidants and moving on compared to anxious attachers
The deeper the attachment, the stronger the need to sever all emotional ties.
The anxious attacher’s pain, while intense and sometimes chaotic in contrast to the avoidant’s, tends to be more transparent and externally expressed.
This visibility often forces them into self-reflection, therapy, or counseling.
Pain creates opportunities for growth through suffering.
The avoidant’s behavior, by nature, gets reinforced rather than challenged.
It’s all in the word: avoid.
Same way, one would avoid exercising.
They don’t get fitter. In fact, someone who avoids working out not only reinforces bad habits, but they make it cumulatively harder to lose excess weight or gain strength the more they put it off.
So, when an avoidant discards the other person out of habit, and the other person pursues, it “proves” their narrative that people are clingy and suffocating.
When they create distance and feel relief, it confirms independence is safer.
Remember, pain is the greatest teacher. By avoiding it, you avoid growth.
However, our society rewards “moving on quickly” and “being independent,” even when those behaviors are just as compulsive as any anxious behavior.
While it’s true some people who get too attached in a relationship can end up going to extreme lengths (that might even break laws or hurt others) to reconnect or get their ex back, most rational people, even if they are clingy, eventually learn to let go.
If not, the patterns will continue.
Avoidants don’t have this problem, because even the clingiest anxious attachers will chase avoidants, but not the other way around.
Some avoidants never cared
Not every relationship with an avoidant ends in a blindsiding, painful discard.
Sometimes it’s mutual, and you feel nothing afterward. If you’re attuned, you’ll see it coming and may even be prepared to leave them.
Oftentimes, you’re own emotional reaction will even mirror the avoidant’s.
When someone discards you and you feel nothing, that’s your nervous system giving you real-time feedback about how much they actually mattered to you, regardless of what you thought you felt.
Think about it this way:
When someone truly isn’t on your radar, meaning you’re simply not attracted or interested in them, they don’t register as requiring any management at all.
You’re not up late at night thinking about them, wondering, “How do I make sure I keep distance from them?”
You simply don’t think about them.
And yes, it’s true some avoidants will date you and simply not feel anything at all.
You can be so deeply into someone and fear intimacy at the same time, and conversely, you can still be guarded, standoffish, and avoidant while not being attracted to someone. Or even securely attached and not interested.
So, a truly detached person would just… leave.
They wouldn’t stick around long enough to need to manage distance, wouldn’t engage in the elaborate dance of withdrawal and occasional breadcrumbing, nor would they invest energy in maintaining just enough connection to keep the anxious person hooked.
The fact an avoidant sticks around long enough while playing stupid hot and cold games while they orchestrate this dynamic shows they’re getting something from it.
Final thoughts,
The anxious-avoidant dance is the engine that keeps these toxic cycles running.
The avoidant person who stays in these push-pull dynamics is revealing their own attachment wound, expressed inversely.
And there’s a payoff for the avoidant.
It’s often expressed as a need for a sense of control and validation, a fundamental need they were never able to get growing up.
They need to feel desired without feeling trapped, important without being vulnerable.
Thus, avoidants will attract a similarly insecure, anxious person to confirm, reinforce, and placate this trauma.
The anxious person’s pursuit confirms their worth, while their own withdrawal confirms their safety.
Keep in mind, the intensity of the eventual “need for space” often reveals just how much impact you had on them initially.
They were definitely into you, and rarely is their discard of the relationship your fault.
If you enjoyed this and found it useful but want a more serious and effective approach to dating avoidants, setting boundaries, and communicating your needs, I recommend downloading my boundary-setting guide here.
This isn’t some “fix your whole relationship in 5 steps” gimmick. It’s a practical tool. It’s a reference for when you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to hold your ground in difficult dynamics.
Whether you’re trying to speak up for yourself, communicate your limits more clearly, or stop internalizing other people’s behavior, this version cuts through the noise and gets right to it.