5 Ways to Support an Avoidant Partner

This blog post is based on an episode from my podcast, On Attachment. To subscribe, click here.

In this post, I’m sharing 5 ways that you can support your avoidant partner to feel more comfortable, safe and secure in your relationship. I am constantly fielding questions from my community along the lines of “How can I get my partner to open up?” or “What can I do to stop my partner from pulling away when they get triggered?” – and while I’m always quick to remind people that we can’t control others’ behaviour (nor should we take it upon ourselves to be responsible for their emotions), healthy relationships are about interdependency and mutual support. And so, I offer you these tips in the hope that you can implement them and notice some shifts in your relationship.

1. Do not villainise them

If you want to support your avoidant partner, it is so important that you do not villainise them, or use their avoidance against them. 

In a lot of literature and online content around attachment styles, avoidant people are really demonised. “Avoidant” is treated as synonymous with “selfish’, “callous”, “dishonest”, “uncaring” and even “narcissistic”. It’s almost a dirty word in the dating world.  As far as I’m concerned, this is way too reductive and frankly, is inaccurate. (And I say this as a former anxiously attached person with first-hand experience of navigating challenging relationship dynamics with avoidant partners!).

We need to remind ourselves that avoidant people are in pain and fear – in the same way that any other insecure attachment style is in pain and fear. And sure, if you’re anxiously attached, you probably won’t like the strategies that they use to keep themselves safe when they are in fear, because those strategies mean they pull away from you (whereas your strategies are to get closer to them). 

Are some avoidant people dishonest and selfish? Sure. But to tarnish a huge chunk of the population with the same brush based on a handful of unfortunate encounters you may have had, is unfair and self-defeating. And it certainly isn’t going to help your partner to feel safe enough to let their guard down if you bring that attitude to your relationship.

So, don’t villainise them. 

And further, resist the urge to forcibily “diagnose” them with being avoidant. (I see you!)

This is something I see allllll the time: people wanting to know how best to make their partner understand that they are avoidant. And while I understand the desire to share your insights with them if you’ve been doing a lot of reading and personal development work, there’s a good chance your partner will feel that you’re trying to criticise, change or control them by shoving your copy of “Attached” in their face and reading out all the traits to “prove” to them how avoidant they are. 

Believe it or not, this isn’t going to bring you closer. 

2. Respect their need for space, privacy and autonomy

The second way that you can support your avoidant partner is to respect their need for space, privacy, autonomy, and separateness.  

Now if you’re an anxiously attached person, distance = uncertainty = anxiety. This can create a lot of insecurity and mistrust, even in the absence of any factual cause for concern. The anxious partner simply cannot relate to wanting that degree of space from the person they love. 

But it's important to zoom out and realise that, if not for your particular sensitivities, there's nothing inherently wrong with someone who values space, autonomy and independence. In fact, anxiously attached people could learn a thing or two from their avoidant partners about building a stronger sense of self outside of the relationship. 

It’s useful to contextualise these behaviours for the avoidant person and understand that, for them, hyper-independence and extreme levels of self sufficiency are a survival strategy that they have usually had in place since early childhood. That is what they know, and it's worked really well for them for a long time. It has kept them safe when they needed it most. 

So if you come barreling in and start telling someone that they're wrong for the ways in which they know to keep themselves safe, and bust down the door against their will, it’s going to feel really invasive and overwhelming. 

If you want to support your avoidant partner, respect their need for space, rather than insisting on your own desire for extreme levels of closeness. And trust that the more you respect it, the less smothered they will feel, and the less they will feel compelled to lean on their distancing strategies. 

As with all healthy relationships, it's about figuring out where the middle ground lies.

3. Communicate clearly and directly

The next tip is to communicate clearly, directly, and quite literally, with your avoidant partner - particularly when it comes to needs, expectations and feelings. 

Many avoidant people do not have the same vocabulary and tools when it comes to emotions as other attachment styles. This includes reading emotional cues, identifying and putting words to their own feelings, and knowing what to say in response to others’ expression of emotions. 

This is yet another example of where anxious and avoidant people sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, in that the anxiously attached person is usually hyper-attuned to other people’s emotional states, and is constantly reading the environment trying to preempt other people's needs and micromanage that. The avoidant person doesn’t do this. And again, that doesn’t make them better or worse – just different. 

So be very mindful of projecting your own capacity to read other people’s emotional states onto your partner, and then being disappointed when they can't read your mind, intuit how you're feeling, or perceive a situation differently to you. It's really counterproductive. It really doesn't get you any closer to what you want. It just creates gridlock in your relationship. And shaming and blaming someone for not knowing something that you haven't told them is really counterproductive. It's not how you build a secure relationship. 

Communicate very clearly: for example “when [this specific thing] happened, I felt [this]. It would be really helpful for me going forward, if we could agree to [do something else]”. As uncomfortable as it might be for you to directly ask for your needs, that's your best chance at having them met. 

4. Be mindful of blame, criticism and accusation

Avoidant people have a real sensitivity around feeling inadequate. They often feel that they’re always disappointing people, that no one is ever satisfied, that even though they feel like they’re doing their best, someone is always upset with them and telling them where they’ve fallen short.

This can be very demoralising for the avoidant person, and will often prompt them to become defensive and/or disengage and shut down.  

By contrast, if an anxiously attached person is feeling blamed or criticised, their response is likely to be trying to (over)explain themselves and change the other person’s mind. Because for the anxious person, being misunderstood and having people upset with you is very uncomfortable – and as always, the anxious person’s response to a trigger is to “go in” and seek to reestablish control.

So if you notice that your frustrations with your avoidant partner often come out in the form of blame or criticism, my invitation to you would be to figure out what you actually want from your partner (rather than expressing what you don’t like or want). Almost invariably, underneath our complaints and criticisms are unmet needs. And if we can drill down to these unmet needs and express them as requests or desires, we’re far more likely to get what we want. 

5. Learn their love languages

The final tip is to get curious about the ways in which your avoidant partner’s love languages might be different to yours. In my experience, avoidant people usually tend towards the non-verbal, experiential love languages - such as gift giving, quality time, and acts of service. By contrast, most anxiously attached people favour receiving love via words of affirmation and physical touch - so they may “miss” some of their avoidant partner’s shows of love or bids for connection. 

So if you want to support and build connection with your avoidant partner, make sure you’ve got your eyes open to the ways in which they may be conveying that they love and care about you – and take the time to acknowledge this and express your appreciation. And equally, you might want to consider ways in which you could show them love using their love languages – so maybe it's giving them a thoughtful gift, or arranging a really fun date.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please spread the word and share on socials or with someone you think might need it.

And if you’d like to go deeper on this topic, be sure to check out my best-selling masterclass How to Navigate Anxious-Avoidant Relationships.