How to Deal With an Avoidant Partner: A Plan You Control

About this tool

How to deal with an avoidant partner is one of the most searched relationship questions, and the honest answer starts by narrowing it. You cannot assign an attachment style to another adult from the outside. Avoidance is measured by a person's own answers on self-report questionnaires such as the Experiences in Close Relationships scales, which your partner would have to fill in themselves. Distance that looks avoidant can equally be stress, depression, grief, a family where feelings were simply not discussed, low interest in this particular relationship, or a partner protecting themselves from something you are doing. So this page is about moments you can observe and choices you can make, not about what your partner is.

From the other side, the pattern is recognizable. Answers get shorter as the conversation gets closer. A good evening is followed by two quiet days. Plans stay loose. Independence gets stated often and sincerely, and it lands on you as rejection even when it is not meant that way. Some people start finding faults right after a moment of real closeness, which is bewildering to be on the receiving end of, because the warmth was genuine and so is the retreat. Writing down the specific moments, with the behavior and nothing else, is the first thing the worksheet below asks of you.

In the research literature this is described as a set of deactivating strategies: moves that keep the attachment system quiet by turning attention away from closeness, need and vulnerability. Mikulincer and Shaver's Attachment in Adulthood, the standard survey of the adult literature, treats avoidance and anxiety as two continuous dimensions rather than personality boxes, so most people sit somewhere along each and a position can shift. One useful detail from the emotion research: Gross and Levenson reported in 1993 that deliberately holding expression back reduced what showed on the face while indications of sympathetic nervous system activation went up. A flat response is not reliable evidence of a flat interior.

What reliably makes distance worse is pursuit. Following a partner from room to room, raising the volume, sending the long message at midnight, demanding a label tonight, or narrating their silence back to them (telling them what they are feeling and why) all add pressure to the exact system that is already set to quiet down. Ultimatums you do not mean are the most expensive version, because they spend your credibility and teach a partner that your limits move. None of that makes you the problem. It means the natural move makes the next hour harder, and a better one is available.

The most directly useful study here is Overall, Simpson and Struthers in 2013. They video-recorded 180 couples discussing a change one partner wanted from the other, and found that partners higher in avoidance showed more anger and more withdrawal when they were the one being asked to change, and that those discussions went worse. The exception was softening: when the asking partner acknowledged what the other was already doing and made the request less confrontational, the avoidant partner's anger dropped and the discussion went better. That is one study of one kind of conversation, but it points at something concrete. How you ask changes what comes back.

In practice that means trading complaints about character for requests about behavior, which is the kind of partner buffering Simpson and Overall reviewed in 2014. Not 'you shut me out', which is a verdict a partner can only accept or fight, but 'I would like half an hour on Sunday to talk about the week, and then I will let it go.' One sentence, one specific thing, a time, and a visible end. The I-Statements Worksheet drills the sentence form, and DEAR MAN (DBT Skill) lays out the DBT version of a complete ask. Keep it to one request at a time. A list reads as an indictment, however fairly each item was earned.

The couple research also suggests the ordinary moments carry more weight than the difficult conversations. Gottman and Levenson followed 79 couples in Indiana for 14 years and reported that negative emotion during conflict predicted divorcing earlier, while an absence of positive emotion in ordinary talk about the day predicted divorcing later on. That is one small sample from one city, so hold it loosely. The practical reading still fits what couple therapists describe: the small, low-stakes exchanges where one person turns toward the other are where a relationship is kept, and those are also the exchanges a partner high in avoidance can usually manage.

If you recognize yourself as the one who pursues, the pattern has two people in it. One partner moves toward contact to settle their alarm, the other moves away to settle theirs, and each move is the other's trigger. Neither position is the villain of it, and neither person can stop it alone. Attachment Style Quiz gives you a reading on your own anxiety and avoidance, which is the half of the cycle you can actually work on, and How to Heal Anxious Attachment is the plan written for the pursuing side.

The best-studied route for a couple stuck in exactly this shape is emotionally focused couple therapy, developed by Sue Johnson and Leslie Greenberg, which works on the pursue and withdraw cycle itself rather than on communication tips. Wiebe and Johnson's 2016 review in Family Process summarizes the trials; most of them are small, and a good outcome is not promised by any of them. What is clear is that this is a two-person job. You cannot run a couple's therapy on one partner, and no worksheet makes someone want more closeness than they want.

One boundary on everything above: this page is about distance, not about control, contempt or fear. If you are monitored, belittled, cut off from money or from people, blamed for your own reactions, or afraid of how your partner will react, the frame here does not apply and softening your asks is the wrong advice. The comparison at Healthy vs Unhealthy Relationships sets out the difference, and support from a professional who understands coercive patterns matters more than any request script.

Last, a note on sending this page. The matching page for a reader who recognizes avoidance in themselves is How to Heal Avoidant Attachment, and it is the one to offer only if your partner asks you for something to read. Handing it over unasked reads as a diagnosis, which is both unkind and unfounded. This worksheet is yours: your observations, your request, your limit, your review date. If you finish it and the honest answer is that you are waiting for someone to become a person they have not agreed to become, that is worth saying out loud to a therapist.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Checked that the page makes no claim about the partner's diagnosis and that the request and limit sections stay inside what the reader controls.

References

1. Mikulincer M, Shaver PR. Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2016.
2. Overall NC, Simpson JA, Struthers H. Buffering attachment-related avoidance: softening emotional and behavioral defenses during conflict discussions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2013;104(5):854-871. doi:10.1037/a0031798
3. Simpson JA, Overall NC. Partner buffering of attachment insecurity. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2014;23(1):54-59. doi:10.1177/0963721413510933
4. Gross JJ, Levenson RW. Emotional suppression: physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1993;64(6):970-986. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.6.970
5. Gottman JM, Levenson RW. The timing of divorce: predicting when a couple will divorce over a 14-year period. Journal of Marriage and the Family. 2000;62(3):737-745. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00737.x
6. Wiebe SA, Johnson SM. A review of the research in emotionally focused therapy for couples. Family Process. 2016;55(3):390-407. doi:10.1111/famp.12229
7. Brennan KA, Clark CL, Shaver PR. Self-report measurement of adult attachment: an integrative overview. In: Simpson JA, Rholes WS, eds. Attachment Theory and Close Relationships. Guilford Press; 1998:46-76.

How to Deal With an Avoidant Partner FAQ