Coping with fearful-avoidant attachment: when you want closeness and fear it

If the attachment style test placed you in the fearful-avoidant style, your first thought may be “why do I keep flip-flopping?” Adult attachment research describes attachment along two dimensions: anxiety, how much you worry about being abandoned, and avoidance, how uncomfortable it feels to lean on someone close (Brennan, Clark and Shaver, 1998). Fearful-avoidant is the name for the place where both are high.

In 1991, Bartholomew and Horowitz combined a person’s view of self with their view of others into a four-style model and called this place fearful: wanting close relationships, yet avoiding them for fear of reaching out and being rejected or hurt (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991). That is why the wish to get close and the wish to back off grow by turns, and sometimes at the same time.

One thing worth knowing: the “disorganized attachment” studied in infants and the fearful-avoidant result an adult gets from a questionnaire are not the same concept. A questionnaire measure of disorganization in adults was proposed only in 2015, and that line of research is still young (Paetzold, Rholes and Kohn, 2015). So rather than reading this result as proof of a wound or as a diagnosis, use it as a map of how your feelings move in relationships right now. This guide collects practices you can try with that map in hand.

A fearful-avoidant heart often moves in this order. When things are good, you want to get close fast and give a lot. Then, when the other person really comes close, an alarm saying “I am going to get hurt” goes off, and you suddenly reply less or turn cold. Once there is distance, a different alarm, “they are going to leave,” goes off, and you want to cling or check in again.

Attachment research explains that the higher the anxiety, as in the anxious style, the more people amplify distress and attachment needs to draw a response, and the higher the avoidance, as in the avoidant style, the more they regulate feelings by suppressing those needs and coping alone (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2019). With both high, both moves can feel familiar, so some people switch from one to the other as the situation changes. From outside it can look fickle; from inside, two alarms are ringing in turn or at once.

Knowing this loop can help you blame yourself less. It also gives you words for your partner: “When I suddenly go cold, it is usually because I am scared, not because I dislike you.” Attachment styles in dating shows which loops each pairing tends to fall into.

The first step is noticing which alarm is ringing. When you are badly shaken, ask yourself whether it is closer to “I am scared of being left” or “I am scared of getting hurt.” The first tends to bring the urge to check and cling; the second, the urge to hide and cut things off.

Once you can tell, give it a short name: “the leaving alarm is going off” or “the getting-hurt alarm wants me to shut the door.” In a lab study, choosing a word for the emotion on faces showing negative feelings reduced the amygdala’s response to them (Lieberman et al., 2007). Naming a feeling does not make it disappear, but it can open a gap between the urge and what you do next.

At the end of the day, jot down when an alarm went off, which one it was and how strong it felt from 0 to 10. A pattern starts to show: perhaps the leaving alarm grows when a reply is late, and the getting-hurt alarm grows when your partner talks about the future. Knowing the pattern lets you prepare before the alarm goes off next time.

Decisions made when an alarm is loudest are often the ones fearful-avoidant people regret: sending “we are done” in the heat of the moment, deleting a number, or, the other way round, sending long message after long message late at night. So set one rule in advance. When an alarm is at 7 or above, any big decision about the relationship waits a day. This rule does not apply when the alarm is about a partner who threatens or controls you: leaving, blocking them or asking for help should not wait (see “When it is too much to carry alone” below).

While you wait, calm your body first. A long exhale, a short walk or paying attention to the soles of your feet often works before any effort to change your thoughts. If you were in the middle of a conversation, say why you are pausing and when you will be back: “I am too shaken to talk well right now. I am not breaking up with you; I will message you in an hour.” Taking a break when feelings run too high in a fight, then coming back once calm, is also what John Gottman recommends in his book on marriage (Gottman and Silver, 1999).

If you still reach the same conclusion a day later, once the alarm has quieted, you can decide then. The judgment you make after the alarm settles is often closer to what you really want. If you keep breaking up and getting back together, also read thinking about getting back together.

What often helps is not quick certainty but evidence that builds slowly. Set small promises rather than big ones, such as “I will call you at lunch tomorrow,” and keep them, again and again. As the experience of keeping your own promises and having your partner keep theirs adds up, you gain something to recall when an alarm goes off: “it was fine last time too.”

Writing down promises that were kept also helps. When an alarm is loud, bad memories tend to crowd out everything else, and a record restores the balance. If the record instead shows that your partner rarely keeps promises or keeps putting you down, that is not your alarm overreacting; it may be a sign to look again at the relationship itself.

Having both dimensions high does not shut the door on change. Some people recall difficult relationships with their parents yet now talk about their past calmly and coherently, the way people with a secure style do; researchers classify them as earned secure (Pearson, Cohn, Cowan and Cowan, 1994). For more practice when anxiety leads, see coping with anxious attachment; for when you want to pull back, see coping with avoidant attachment. Research on how attachment changes is gathered in becoming more securely attached.

While two alarms take turns, breaking the loop alone is especially hard. If you keep moving toward and away from the same person, or old memories suddenly surface and shake the relationship you are in, counseling can help. A counselor’s office can be a safe place to practice getting close, and some couples therapy helps both partners understand each other’s alarms from an attachment point of view (Johnson, 2008). If past experiences feel deeply tangled up in your reactions, it can help to look for a counselor who has often worked with experiences like yours.

If mood swings spill beyond romance into all of daily life, and low or anxious mood lasts more than two weeks, it may be a mood problem rather than an attachment pattern. The depression check-in (PHQ-9) or the anxiety check-in (GAD-7) can help you see where you are before you talk to a professional. These check-ins are not diagnoses; they are a way to start the conversation.

Also, an alarm may be telling you about a real danger in the relationship. If a partner controls you, threatens you or puts you down, that is not your attachment problem; it is a safety problem. Rather than practicing holding on, reach out first to people you trust or to a specialist service. Warning signs and helplines are listed under “When it is not about attachment” in how to talk to an avoidant partner.

If things feel so heavy that you have thoughts of hurting yourself, you can contact a crisis line at any time: 988 in the US and Canada, or Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland.

Q. Can fearful-avoidant attachment be fixed? A. Where you sit now, with both alarms high, is not a fixed lifelong spot. Telling the alarms apart, putting big decisions on hold while they ring and repeatedly experiencing small promises being kept may gradually help you move toward the secure side. Retake the test after a few months and compare how your anxiety and avoidance scores have changed.

Q. Does fearful-avoidant mean I have trauma? A. Not necessarily. Main and Hesse (1990) proposed that disorganized attachment in infants may stem from frightening or frightened behavior by the very person a child turns to for comfort, but the fearful-avoidant result an adult gets from a questionnaire is not the same concept. Other things, such as a temperament that reacts strongly, being hurt again and again in past relationships or heavy stress right now, can also push both dimensions up together. If past events keep troubling you, that alone is worth bringing to counseling.

Q. Is fearful-avoidant the same as borderline personality disorder? A. No. An attachment style describes a recurring tendency in relationships, while a personality disorder is a diagnosis a professional makes against a set of criteria. Questionnaire scores cannot tell you whether a diagnosis applies. If mood swings or impulses keep upending daily life, talk to a mental health professional rather than drawing conclusions from a test result.

Q. How can I support a fearful-avoidant partner? A. Rather than reading the sudden approach and retreat only as rejection, behaving consistently, as you said you would, often helps. When they need a break, agree on when they will be back and wait; when they are anxious, reassure them briefly and clearly. If supporting them drains you to the point of losing yourself, though, it is also important to name your own limits.

References: Brennan, Clark & Shaver (1998), in Attachment Theory and Close Relationships (Simpson & Rholes, eds.); Bartholomew & Horowitz (1991), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61(2), 226-244, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.226; Paetzold, Rholes & Kohn (2015), Review of General Psychology 19(2), 146-156, https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000042; Mikulincer & Shaver (2019), Current Opinion in Psychology 25, 6-10, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.006; Lieberman et al. (2007), Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x; Main & Hesse (1990), in Attachment in the Preschool Years (Greenberg, Cicchetti & Cummings, eds.); Pearson, Cohn, Cowan & Cowan (1994), Development and Psychopathology 6(2); Gottman & Silver (1999), The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work; Johnson (2008), Hold Me Tight.