In order for an avoidantly attached person to be attracted to you, they need distance, they need a fantasy, and they need to feel uncertainty. They love a chase. They love the excitement of trying to win you over. They love feeling like, “I’m obsessed with you. I just wanna be with you all the time.”
The Honeymoon Phase: When Avoidants Are Obsessed
If you’ve ever dated an avoidant, you know the beginning of the relationship is always the best—the honeymoon phase. It’s typically when the avoidant is so obsessed with the anxious partner that they can’t get enough of you. They want to see you all the time. They want to know everything about you. They want to feel the connection with you.
And the anxious partner? Usually they’re thinking, “I don’t really know you yet. I don’t feel super comfortable with you yet.” But over time, the anxious partner starts to fall—free fall—into the avoidant. That’s when the avoidant starts to feel the shift.
Why Safety Feels Like Boredom to an Avoidant
When all those sparkly things start to disappear, and now they’re just like, “I’m with you, and that’s it. I know everything about you. There’s nothing more to learn. I feel nothing really exciting for you anymore”—that’s when the avoidant’s like, “Wait a second. I don’t know if we should be together.”
Their nervous system is no longer getting that dopamine hit every time they’re with you or every time they send a message to you. They start to associate the emotional intensity building in the relationship with something uncomfortable. They feel like they can predict your behavior before you do it. The future you keep talking about feels like signing their life away. They like the freedom. They like feeling like they have control over their schedule and their time.
Sometimes an avoidantly attached person’s nervous system can actually interpret the feeling of safety as boredom. They’re used to the chase, the exhilarating feeling of “Can I win them? Can I see them again?” It’s like playing a game, and you’re finally about to win. Or like a puzzle you’re solving, and all of a sudden you’re about to put the last piece in—and then it’s done. Now what? Just stare at the puzzle?
The Puzzle Analogy: How Avoidants Repeat the Cycle
If you’ve ever finished a puzzle, what do you do? You take all the pieces apart, put them back in the box, and then maybe you take it out again three months later or a year later. That’s kind of what the avoidantly attached person does to you. The puzzle was completed, so they break up with you. They take all the pieces apart—literally break your heart into a million pieces—put it into a box, and then they send you a text a year later: “Hey, how’s it going? How have you been?”
And then they put all the pieces back together, and the whole cycle happens over and over again—unless you decide, “You know what? I want to stop this. I want to get out of this cycle. I don’t want to do this puzzle again. I don’t want to be hurt again. And I’m done.”
