AVOIDANT

It is important for you to maintain your independence and you often prefer autonomy to intimacy. While you do want to be close to others, you feel uncomfortable with too much closeness and tend to keep your partner at arm’s length. You don’t spend much time worrying about being rejected. You tend not to open up to your partner and they often complain that you are distant. In relationships, you are often on high alert for signs of control or impingement by your partner. 

Whether you are single or in a relationship, you are always keeping people at a distance by using various ‘deactivating strategies’. These include: 

• Saying ‘I’m not ready to commit’- but staying together, sometimes for years;
• Focusing on imperfections in your partner: the way he talks, dresses etc;
• Pining after an ex or waiting for The One;
• Flirting with others to introduce insecurity into the relationship;
• Not saying ‘I love you’- while implying you do have feelings for them;
• Pulling away when it’s going well (eg not calling after an intimate date);
• Forming impossible relationships, such as with a married man;
• Avoiding physical closeness - for example, not wanting to share the same bed, not wanting to have sex, walking several strides ahead of your partner.
• If you’re avoidant, you use these  strategies to make sure the person you love won’t get in the way of your autonomy. But, at the end of the day, these tools are standing in the way of you being happy in a relationship.

Y’all want to know how amazingly this matched up to my Saturday night/Sunday morning? I tried to sneak out of someone’s apartment. I drunkenly insisted that he can’t read to his face, over and over. I even made jokes about how his major primarily involved map-coloring. I designated squares for us to walk in so we could be physically apart. I insisted that I hated him for no real reason. And I kept saying I was never going to see him again… At least it looks like I was right about something! This reminds me of the professor.