You want to be in your relationship, but don’t feel love for your partner. The early infatuation you thought was love has subsided, and now you don’t feel anything. Even though you want to love the person you are with, you can’t.
Some days, you don’t want to be around them or be bothered by them. You want your alone time, your space. When you argue, you want to run away to find peace.
You eventually reach a point where you question whether you really love your partner or not.
If this sounds familiar, it may be that you have an avoidant personality. You don't feel love because you are cut off from your emotions — and subsequently, the emotional connection you need to feel love.
Avoidant attachment is an unconscious coping mechanism to avoid addressing your emotions. The consequence is that your partner often feels as though they don’t matter. You may be physically close but, to them, it feels as though you are emotionally distant.
When I read about how individuals with an avoidant attachment fake intimacy, I recognised myself.
Suddenly, the string of broken relationships made sense.
Although I had a vague understanding that I failed to make the girl in my life feel wanted and special, I hadn’t realised it was because they didn’t feel connected.
Because I didn’t know how to connect with them in a way that made them feel special.
I was cut off from my emotions and I didn’t know how to feel love.
I suspect my lack of attention, affection and acknowledgement was the catalyst for my girlfriends to get pissed at me and start an argument.
Most of the time I didn’t know what we were arguing about. Each time felt like an attack on my integrity. Criticisms I didn’t think I deserved were aimed at me and accusations I couldn’t possibly know anything about confused me.
“I’m not a mind reader!”
Guys, when a woman says, “You should have done this, you should have done that and you should know what I want,” she isn’t expecting you to read her mind.
What she is really saying is “You should know how I feel.”
Humans share the same emotions, and if we all had access to them, we would automatically know what a person needs when they need it.
Girls, if you’re dating an avoidant personality, he doesn’t know how he feels. Please, don’t expect him to know how you feel. You are projecting unrealistic expectations, and that never ends well.
It’s worth noting that avoidants aren’t necessarily trying to deceive or dismiss their partners. This behaviour is a survival strategy rooted in early emotional experiences.
An avoidant personality develops in childhood because they learned that vulnerability wasn't safe.
Avoidance is a means of protecting their fragile emotions from being hurt.
To understand the inner workings of avoidant personalities, it helps to understand why you are avoidant in the first place.
Attachment Theory shows that when parents consistently rejects, ignores, or minimises an expression of emotions, the child becomes detached from their emotions to avoid pain.
Pain comes in various forms; rejection, shame, humiliation, guilt, feelings of being unheard and unworthy, no sense of belonging.
Feeling unloved.
This kind of environment teaches the child to suppress their emotional needs in order to avoid the pain of repeated disappointment. Over time, the child adapts by becoming emotionally self-sufficient and independent.
Whilst the "strong silent type" is lauded by society, when you distance yourself from intimate conversations and expressing your emotions, avoidance becomes a maladaptive coping strategy that wrecks relationships.
To compensate, intimacy is navigated through control, avoidance, or performance.
If any of the following sounds familiar to you, you may have an avoidant personality.
As a result, you struggle to trust others to fulfil your emotional needs and feel uncomfortable talking about how you feel and what you want.
In relationships, you may even feel as though you no longer have control of your life or feel your personal space is being invaded. You feel suffocated.
Avoidant attachment isn’t a character flaw—it’s a survival strategy.
But as adults, it can limit the ability to form deeply connected, emotionally fulfilling relationships unless the underlying patterns are recognised and addressed.
The coping strategies that avoidants adopt can be identified by specific patterns.
You may recognise some of the seven common strategies avoidant personalities use to protect your emotional fragility.
Thoughtful gifts and sweet talking help avoidant individuals to show an emotional state but they do not share their emotions.
They may say "I love you," and mean it or plan romantic dates, but these actions are often ritualistic rather than emotionally expressive. Performative gestures mean they want closeness, but they feel too vulnerable to become emotionally connected.
What’s more, they may not know how to connect meaningfully on an emotional level.
Rather than discussing emotional struggles with anybody, avoidants will often "help" by giving advice, fixing problems, or offering logistics. While this can be helpful, it sidesteps the emotional conversation real intimacy requires.
Avoidants typically do not have a problem sharing intimacy on a physical level. We enjoy sex and cuddling. Where they struggle is in having conversations that require emotional openness.
We struggle to express what they need because they are afraid they will be rejected, unheard or humiliated. Sometimes, it may be an underlying feeling of guilt and shame that prompts resistance.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” is real for avoidants.
When the conversation gets too emotionally involved, avoidants may make a joke, change the subject, or rationalise emotions rather than explore them.
For example, rather than exploring how something feels, avoidants often pivot to how something makes sense.
A typical strategy is to make excuses grounded in reality or analyse a situation and explain the reasons behind it. You are great at giving explanations and offering solutions.
But when it comes to understanding or even acknowledging the emotional reality of yourself or your partner, you are dazed and confused.
A partner says, “I felt hurt when you didn’t reply to my message.”
The avoidant replies, “I was busy with work and had back-to-back meetings.”
The circumstances may be true, but you have to be honest with yourself. Could you have spared 30 seconds or so to check in?
Sharing personal thoughts, past traumas, or vulnerabilities is difficult for avoidants. You’ve learned that expressing how you feel brings discomfort, judgment, or abandonment.
The easier option is to protect yourself by staying emotionally guarded or dismissing things that cause you pain as nothing. If you don’t talk about it, you don’t have to think about it.
Conversations stay at surface level, often focusing on facts or ideas rather than feelings. You can talk for hours, but only ever share what you think.
Hardships are glossed over with “It’s in the past” or “It wasn’t a big deal.”
Avoidants associate commitment with vulnerability — and vulnerability with potential rejection, criticism, or loss of independence. A deep-seated lack of trust — not just toward others, but also with your own feelings — prompts you to keep relationships surface-level.
The unconscious belief here is that if you get too close, you will get hurt.
By avoiding commitment and becoming a burden for someone else, you maintain control over your emotional safety.
You may tell yourself that you are fine on your own and that you don’t need anyone. The truth is, you’re afraid to commit to anything that will cause pain. You may not have any problem pursuing a connection, but you back off when things get serious.
Because avoidants suppress emotions, displays of distress or passion are minimal and infrequent. You can also come across as cold and withdrawn. If this is pointed out, you feel even more misunderstood and confused.
Children who grow up in environments where emotional expression is discouraged, ignored, or punished, learned to suppress emotions and rely on logic and reason.
Logic and reason involve controlling your emotions so the thinking brain can function. It’s easier to intellectualise problems than to work through them on an emotional level.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with applying logic and reason to distressing situations, it becomes maladaptive when an emotional response is not available.
Avoidants respond to arguments by appearing unfazed and offering logical solutions, being defensive or stonewalling. There is little or no emotional validation towards your partner.
A better way of communicating is to acknowledge how the other person feels, and then put your point across. This leaves room for compromise.
True intimacy involves:
Emotional unavailability, even when masked as closeness, includes:
Express your emotional needs clearly: Developing meaningful and loving relationships involves connecting with others on an emotional level. Whilst this will feel uncomfortable at first, it is a necessary step. To protect yourself, set boundaries around communication about your emotional needs.
Observe your/their responses: How do you react when the boundaries of emotional discomfort are breached? Do you lean in with curiosity or pull away defensively and look for excuses and distractions?
Don’t confuse performance for presence: A romantic gesture doesn’t replace genuine emotional engagement. Do you have deep and meaningful conversations that connect you to your partner? Be open and honest about how these moments make you feel.
Seek therapy or wellbeing coaching: Professional support can help both partners understand each other and grow together.
Avoidant individuals are not bad or incapable of love—they simply learned that expressing their emotions can invite pain.
Because of this the emotional brain recognises a perceived threat and finds a coping strategy that will protect them from experiencing more pain.
If you're in a relationship with someone who fakes intimacy, remember: true emotional connection comes from presence, not performance.
By understanding the role of avoidant attachment and spotting the subtle signs of emotional repression, you can make more empowered choices such as improving communication in ways that develop emotional intelligence and fosters.
Real intimacy is not about doing; it’s about being.
