before i even start this, i want to make something clear: i do not view avoidants as evil beings or that their intentions are necessarily done on purpose. i am an anxious person myself and both sides of the coin can be a lot to deal with, i know i am a lot. these behaviors stem from childhood trauma and become are defense mechanisms, i do not blame anyone for acting the way they do but rather not having any will to change it.

me and my boyfriend consistently dated for a year before breaking up, having a month break of not talking at all, and then getting back together again up until this point recently. i love him dearly but he could not care for me or anything i say anymore. what caused this was him being avoidant for multiple days on end and when i got upset and assumed it was about me (because 99% of the time it is), he got super angry and verbally degrading towards me and said it was suicide ideation related. i apologized and tried to comfort where from there he blocked me, so i decided to block him for a couple days. i sent a message on another app letting him know he could message me at any time and i was open to talk but i could not stand the verbal abuse any longer (its been over 18 months of it). couple days later i unblock him and text from that other app again to which he says "i dont love you anymore" because i blocked him over suicidal thoughts.

this is very hard, because there has been more times than i can count where he has left me begging for his comfort and to not block me over feeling suicidal. so to hear that the one time i do something stops him from loving me, compared to the countless times hes done it to me and i still love him, makes no sense.

the entirety of our relationship feels like this unbalanced scale. he can do things multiple times, blame me for him doing them, and then still be loved and cared for at the end of the day. but the moments i do something once, there cant be any forgiveness for me.

i know this goes past being avoidant at this point and is realistically just abusive, but when i tell him that he just tells me "you have every option to leave, its your fault you stay. dont blame me". i believe him every time he'll say something will be different and its just turned into him dragging me down with him.

whenever ive tried to leave him, he always flips the narrative and leaves me which causes me to panic. when i leave, he acts like he doesnt care about me and he couldnt be more happy that im gone, and ends up blocking me first. like theres no will to try to tell me he can change or even just beg for me to stay.

i just dont understand how someone can do something so many times and find a reason or excuse every single time, but the moment someone does it to him, there cannot be any forgiveness in it. its like he doesnt even understand the amount of pain he causes because once its happened to him, he can only care about his pain.

he often calls me a pussy or weak or that i have no backbone, but its almost that he's trained me to be this way. times ive tried standing up for myself leave me blocked or degraded or worthless. its been made clear that my wants or needs do not matter as equally as his do. ive been conditioned to believe that something will be different every time and it is not.

when i try to express that i love him and ive been trying to help him, the only thing he can say is "ive never asked for you to do xyz", which just feels stupid because do you seriously expect to get into a relationship and have someone not do anything for you?

and now i like cant leave. hes trained this panic response in me and i go batshit crazy when he blocks me, its really embarrassing. i have to be honest that the way i act is justifiable enough to get a restraining order against me. i make different accounts and text from different numbers, begging for him to talk to me because its been a constant loop that he blocks and i have to beg. i like cant let go at all.

we are at a point that he is only still talking to me because i cannot let go, and i blame him for that. i blame him for ruining my self worth, my ability to stand up for myself, my ability to leave.

i dont think he means to be this way. he doesnt mean to say vile things or act cold, but maybe thats just me trying to reason with how terrible he makes me feel.

i just wish i could leave. i wish i could leave without feeling completely empty and lost without him, which i know that is my anxiousness speaking.

this is a terribly written story and explanation and im sorry. i just spent the last hour being told that nothing about me matters to him and not being listened to about anything i say. its so hopeless.

I just remember always being on edge. Walking on eggshells, trying to read his mood, always hyper vigilant. Exhausting.

My likely FA former partner and I (AP) were together for about six years, including five years of long distance. We spoke daily, visited each other when we could, and built a strong emotional connection. He eventually moved to join me in June, and we started living together.

The first month was great, but things became more stressful as we moved into a new place, he started a new job, and we adjusted to living together. Our relationship deteriorated, and he eventually moved out and ended things.

He says he still loves me and cares about me, but he doesn't want a relationship right now. He wants to focus on his career, independence, and building his life without having to consider a partner. He doesn't want to work on or maintain a romantic relationship, and he doesn't want me to wait for him. He has said he doesn't want to rule out the possibility of us reconnecting romantically someday, but if that ever happened, we'd essentially have to start over as two new people.

He would like us to be friends, and we've talked about potentially hanging out in January. After lots of crying and anxiety spirals I finally found clarity and decided to let him go as a romantic partner.

Here's my dilemma: I genuinely enjoy his company. He was my best friend, too. I love our conversations, our humour, and how naturally we connect. I don't think enjoying someone as a person necessarily means they're compatible with me romantically, and I'm beginning to accept that he may simply not be the right partner for me.

But after years of daily communication and building a life around each other, I'm struggling with the idea of what friendship would actually look like now. I don't know whether I could genuinely enjoy a friendship without secretly hoping for more, or whether staying in contact would prevent me from moving on. I'm also afraid that I'll remain emotionally available to him while he moves forward with his life and eventually finds someone else.

Part of me thinks we should have a period of no contact first and see how I feel later. Another part of me wonders whether we could eventually have a meaningful friendship if I let go of the romantic expectations and establish healthier boundaries.

For those who've stayed friends with someone you loved deeply, especially someone who ended the relationship:

- Was it worth keeping the friendship, or did it make moving on harder?

- How did you know you were genuinely ready to be friends rather than holding on to hope?

- Can someone be a wonderful person to connect with but still be the wrong romantic partner for you?

- Would you give the friendship a chance after some time apart, or would you move on completely?

I'm not asking how to get him back. I'm trying to figure out whether there's a healthy place for someone I still care about in my life, even if we're no longer romantic partners.

Is there a discord for this group? I want to talk to other people dealing with the same thing but I don’t necessarily want to persevere it permanently on here.

One of the things my avoidant ex almost convinced me was that my empathy and tendency to put the people I love first was an unhealthy trait. And sure, continuously giving to those undeserving can be toxic.

But I don’t find all the advice about learning to reinvest in yourself particularly insightful. None of this was ever about me. It was about his incapacity, his inability to be honest to me or himself. If you feel certain that you largely behaved securely, the less you look inward the better.

Keep on giving, don’t change what might be the most beautiful aspects of your character because someone incapable of returning the generosity felt guilt.

There’s someone else out there with your same outlook, the same genuine unwavering kindness and loyalty, and they are the most deserving of your love.

in august i felt some distance growing. he continuously skirted around when i was trying to make plans to spend time together and he refused to fix our shared calendar that stopped working, talked to me less frequently and often with one-word responses, and in general was less responsive or interested in my life. we were medium-distance, he lives in the city and im a little over an hour away, so i would try to visit his city when neither of us weren’t busy. at the start of september i asked him if everything was alright and voiced that i was feeling brushed off and ignored a lot and asked if it was intentional. to no response

i tried to give him his space even though i was hurt from being ignored and after days passed of no response and eventually reading my messages i said i don’t deserve the silent treatment and asked if he was ghosting me to break up with me. again no response.

he finally messaged me over two weeks later talking about his own mental state and how he was feeling lost and like his life was falling apart, but the only apology he gave was “i’m sorry you don’t deserve this and it isn’t an excuse to treat you poorly” but then the next day said he didn’t have the “capacity to exist” and he needed time to himself.

devastated obviously, had spent the weeks following his ghosting crying nonstop and unable to eat or work or even be a person until the end of sep, but by the start of october i saw he updated his bumble profile and it made me spiral all over.

these last two weeks have been a blur of feeling insane and questioning everything. i know it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him but the “looking for something longterm” tag after just telling me he needed space is making me feel like a crazy person and i keep bouncing between horribly depressed and angry mania. it’s like this has put a spotlight on everything wrong with my life and how i need to be better despite how terrible i feel but i still crave closure and to understand what the hell happened even though i know it’s so unlikely and i’m not holding out any hope

i broke up with my avoidant bf a few days ago and i’ve been really struggling and im not sure if i made the right choice or not.

should mention that across our relationship he has always been a very manipulative person & emotionally immature which we were already trying to work through prior to this.

we had an agreement that porn is cheating and i had recently found out he was a porn addict for the entire 3 years of our relationship. i decided to move on from this and forgive him for this and then days later i found that in his youtube history he had been watching videos on how to pick up women on the street and incel esc-videos on manipulation tactics for seducing women on the street etc. also had lost my virginity to him an hour before finding these videos which made it hurt 10x more. (i had vagismus prior)

all of these videos seemed to be about random women and when i confronted him he said that it’s because he felt like i hated him because of the porn addiction so he wanted to prepare for me breaking up with him even though i was literally so forgiving and kind to him at the time and constantly reassuring him that i love him and can forgive him while unaware he was watching these videos. i also find it crazy that he’d immediately be preparing for “picking up” other women even if i did hate him, makes it seem like he just didn’t love me the past 3 years or had moved on before i even considered breaking up

the day after the breakup i was doing terribly and reached out to him asking if we could just go on a break instead because of how much i missed him, and he was very cold to me and said no and that im only reaching out to him because i can’t stand to be alone and said i need to move on. it’s like he completely switched from being guilty and apologetic to acting as if im the one who wronged him and i feel so torn between hating him and loving him and i don’t know if i overreacted and should’ve stayed with him or if this is just my anxious attachment talking.

It has been almost seven months since the discard and almost 6 months since the last time I saw him like I see who he is–a fucking coward who needed to find a relationship with the girl used to say was like a daughter before having the courage to break up with me and then still could not be honest with me.

I don't want him back. I know my life is so much better without him. But when does it get better?

Maybe my experience with FA ex has something to do with this, but does anybody else feel like they want a relationship, but they are also too tired of being unnecessarily jealous? But besides, no matter how tired I can get, I would almost never end the relationship because of that reason. While I am kinda insecure myself, I believe my prior experience with my ex gave me even more complexes. I believe the difference is that avoidant persons are more likely to stop holding back and just end everything when they feel tired or overwhelmed, while anxious (or, at least, me) prefer to tank it because they don't want to lose their loved ones. It feels so strange

After 3.5 months of no contact after my DA gf (F32) discarded me I sent her the following text on WhatsApp...

"A lot of time has passed, and I’ve often thought about whether it makes sense to write to you or if it’s better to leave things as they are. I am not writing to change any decisions, nor to reopen what hurt us. It’s just that, as time goes by, I can look back at what we lived through a bit more clearly.

I miss some of our moments together. Not the way I missed them at first, when everything hurt and I just wanted to turn back time. I mostly miss that very special feeling that once existed between us. The anticipation. The teasing. Our conversations. That sense that, in the middle of the whole world, we had found each other again.

A lot has changed inside me over these months. More than I expected. There were things I once waited for you to believe about me. In the end, I had to learn to believe in myself. And, as strange as it sounds, I’m glad it happened that way. I didn’t become a different person. I think I just found pieces of myself again that I had lost.

And maybe that’s why today I can tell you something without anger and without expectations: whatever happened in the end, what I felt with you was real to me. And there are moments when I still smile when I remember that version of you I got to know again in early 2025 — and the way the two of us were back then.

I don’t know where your life has taken you today, and I don’t want to assume. I just wanted you to know that, now that much of the anger and pain has faded, I wasn't just left with the bad things inside me. Much tenderness remained, too.

I truly hope you and your son are doing well. And if, at some point, you ever want to know how the person writing to you today is doing, I would be happy to catch up."

I don't know what to expect... she hasn't read it yet, since she is probably asleep...

My ex wants to move on and said it’s already difficult enough, but days later they refollow me on some platforms. It’s very easy to have nothing to do with me anymore, so why re-add and interact with stuff that strongly has to do with me? They broke it off by the way.

Well he came back 7 months after i was savagely discarded and ghosted after 15 yrs together. I guess his new gf w all the money in the world is broke and in jail looking at prison time and he just barely got let off and almost charged w her. His family has apologized to me but he really hasnt . He destroyed my life when he left . Hes like a whole other person now....its sad. I think he might go back to her once she gets out. Its sad because he makes it seem their 7 months was more important than 15yrs. Idk I feel like a fool for even talking to him...but I missed him so much and was so relieved he was away from her crazy psycho ass....so ya the answer is they do come back ....just sometimes not the same person...and its fucked.

While I was seeing a meme on a reel, I wanted to tag my friend and suddenly I had an idea to tag her. Boom! Greyed out.

So while ahe still keeps following my sister, followed me before I pulled the plug and removed her, after that she restricted me.

Fine then, I don't care. I am just giggling at this.

I am an FA and recently got out of a relationship with an anxious. I used to be DA and then it changed throughout the course of our relationship (3 years on & off). i am a teenager so i am trying to fix this sooner than later 😭

I know you have to do the hard part in terms of sitting and dealing with the emotions, but i am also trying to learn how to not be emotionally guarded. So like asking my friends how they are doing etc. or going to someone for support in the moment instead of when I have already “dealt” with the situation. also telling people more about my life instead of breadcrumbing everyone. but sometimes I feel like i don’t have anyone to go to or that there would be no point if i went to someone for help.

I have therapy next week and sometimes i find it hard to open up because I don’t want to cry or be seen as weak. i know all of this is just something i’d have to actually do for it to rewire my brain and wounds etc.

my biggest question tho is how i can show up and be there for someone in a relationship? i don’t really have any examples of healthy relationships in my life or in my family. i don’t really know how to make someone feel seen i guess. i always get stuck at what do i say when someone opens up or talks about their feelings. most of the time id give advice cuz everyone has always said i give good advice but i know sometimes its better to just listen. then i feel stuck and idk. it’s also hard for me to do it over the phone cuz i always feel even more disconnected. it’s easier in person for me for whatever reason. but it’s also hard ever since that, honestly, mentally abusive (on both sides) relationship recently ended with person who had anxious attachment. she tried forcing her way through my walls so it just made me pull back more but then she’d manipulate me and guilt trip me and whatever else. she always said she hated the fact that she never saw me cry once but it’s just really hard for me and i guess i’m just kind of lost in what do i do to start this healing process? i know it’s about proving your subconscious wrong but i still feel stuck. any help is appreciated, thank you

I had a four-month long-distance relationship with a fearful-avoidant girlfriend. The first three months of honeymoon period were perfect. Then she suddenly broke up with me, saying she feared the future because of my reactions to arguments, even though she often initiated them and my reactions always seemed to be the main issue.

After the breakup, I begged, cried, and tried to save the relationship. We then spent a month in an on-and-off no-contact period. When she found out I had started dating another girl, she called panicked, cried, and said, “You shouldn't have done that at all” and “I thought we were in love,” despite previously telling me not to hope for reconciliation.

Later, she became cold again and rejected my calls. After receiving her cold text, I replied, “I don't want you anyways. I've realised you're not emotionally enough for me.” which i think its too much.

Honestly, I still love her, but after she told me not to hope, I suffered and started struggling to move on. Her emotional reaction to me followes by her withdrawal drags me back again to the suffering, regrets, and confusion.

Did my last text break the cycle, or did I reinforce the same push-pull dynamic?

We dated for 2.5 years (since junior year of Highschool, we’re 19 now) and he recently broke up with me. Our relationship was genuine and we loved each other so much, but towards the end he was struggling with lustful thoughts and wandering eyes.

For months, he would send me paragraphs about how desperately he wanted to change his ways and seek help. He has cried to me multiple times and I can tell that his pain is genuine and his problems run deep. We tried to make it work for months and one day, after talking everything out and still putting in effort to make it work, he officially ended things and stated that he wouldn’t be able to give me the attention that I need and that I deserve better. He also claimed he wouldn’t have the time as he wanted to focus on his music.

Within one week, he was already talking to and posting with another girl on his instagram story. I knew how deeply his problems affected him and how much he wanted to change, but now his actions are showing that he doesn’t want to face these problems at all. He will most likely enter a long term relationship with this new girl and the cycle will continue once his problems resurface.

I know I’m not delusional when I say that he loved me deeply, so how could he move on so fast? Is he truly just done with me? The morning after posting the story with her (which I wouldn’t know about) he called me crying, asking how I am and saying that he misses me and wants to kill himself as he doesn’t know what to do. He also lied at the beginning of the call, saying he hasn’t moved on and he is not talking to anyone, but by the end of the call he was admitting that this new girl is so “pure” and he doesn’t want to hurt her. After the call, I told him he shouldn’t reach out as it isn’t fair to me or the new girl and he blocked me on everything.

How could he move on so fast and forget about the love we had? Does he genuinely not want to heal himself?

i only attract avoidants

This summer in a small town that I visit every year for vacations a girl who works at a local café used a regular customer to signal interest in me. She had noticed me before and asked him to find out if I was from the area. I found her on Instagram and we started talking. Within a week things got very intense. She texted first every day, proposed the first date herself, was warm and attentive in a way I hadn’t experienced in a long time. We went on a date, it was an amazing day. Two days later she told me she wasn’t ready for a relationship. I never brought it up or signaled I wanted one.

What I found out over time: she had lost someone she had been casually seeing for about a month, nothing official, in an accident about 2 weeks before she approached me. She has a difficult background, abandoned by her parents, raised by her grandmother who passed away last year. We both opened up about our pasts pretty early on and connected over having similar difficult upbringings, both of us dealing with absent or toxic parents. She mentioned she doesn’t have many friends and keeps mostly to herself. In the moments where she was most vulnerable with me she ended up deleting those messages afterwards, which I took as shame or regret about having opened up.

After the date her interest started fading. She ran hot and cold a lot. We’d see each other at the café regularly but always kept up a stranger act since it’s a small town where everyone knows everyone. Before I left she dropped the act completely in front of her uncle and her boss, asked me what time I was leaving the next day, and looked genuinely disappointed when I said I didn’t know. I kept it neutral.

She also told me to keep a book she’d left at my place, saying she wanted me to “carry a part of her” with me. When I got back to my hometown I sent her a long heartfelt message referencing our shared difficult upbringings, telling her I understood her, that she mattered, no anger, no demands. She never replied. That was 3 months ago. I deleted her contact so I wouldn’t fall into the trap of messaging her.

Now I’m back and staying for a while, something I’d mentioned to her earlier in the summer. She still works there. Since returning she regularly seeks eye contact and holds it until I look away, smiles at me, and goes warm and cold depending on who's there. She has my contact and has never reached out.

I’ve done a lot of work on this, therapy, reading about attachment theory, and she ticks almost every box for fearful avoidant. I understand her behavior intellectually. What I can’t reconcile is the consistent in person signals against 3 months of complete silence.

I feel like silence itself is a form of rejection, but our in person interactions seem to point otherwise. My therapist suggested that if I want to pursue, to drop the stranger act in a quiet moment and just ask how she’s been, keep it simple and warm. If I want distance, to stay neutral and surface level.

I’m not trying to chase her. I just want clarity, either something real or a clean rejection so I can stop being confused. I know I’m emotionally invested. She initiated everything from the start, pursued me, escalated the intimacy, and then pulled back. She hurt me and never once acknowledged it.

What would you do?

The breakup is coming up on 2 months ago and I am still holding on and can’t seem to get myself out of this funk that I’m in. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to let it go and should be over it by now.

A little back story, for the entirety of the relationship I was in school. When he first brought up the “what are we” conversation, I told her that I couldn’t give her what she needed in a relationship. We didn’t talk for 2 months then out of the blue she texted again. We started to hang out and I could no longer ignore my feelings for her, I brought up the topic and while we didn’t label it right away, that was when we started dating.

Over the next 10 months of dating, there were 2 times that she brought up where she was unsure about the relationship. Both times we talked in person and after talking she decided that she wanted to keep trying.

She also went back to school this year to get her masters degree and for the last 2-3 months of the relationship we were both in school. I graduate next month. When we broke up she had left for a camping trip with a friend and I hadn’t talked to her in a couple of days so I was excited to see her and at first she seemed excited too. Then a couple of hours later I asked to hang out and she said she wanted to talk. I knew what was coming and tried to prepare for it the best I could.

I tried to talk it out again but this time around she had already decided. She said the same thing I did, that she couldn’t give me what I needed in a relationship and that I deserved someone better. Said that she handles stress differently than I do. I tried to tell her we’ll make it work because I don’t want to be with anyone else, that I see a future for us.

I have been viewing this as an avoidant discard based on some comments she made, “I always thought I’d end up alone”, “I don’t make future plans because this could end at any time”, “I push people away when I get stressed/overwhelmed.”

Am I actually dealing with an avoidant? Or am I making this into something that it’s not?

There are just so many confusing things that are making me so unsure. She wanted to “date with intention” but then at the end says “she always planned to end up single”? Said she wanted this forever, but then ended it the second she’d be in a more vulnerable situation? Told me that she loved me then hours later broke up with me?

Last question, am I wrong to keep holding on to hope that one day she’ll reach out? I wouldn’t want the relationship back unless we both acknowledge the previous issues and work to fix them and become better people together, but I do hope one day that happens. Am I delusional?

A lot of missing back story but I’d just write a book if I wanted to explain it all 😑

So my ex ended things a little over a month ago. Told me I was too clingy, needy and some other rude things before she blocked me on everything without really having a honest conversation. I’ve spent my time since the breakup really focusing on myself by staying consistent at the gym, taking better overall care of my physical and mental health and going to therapy weekly as I acknowledged I had some things to work on being a more anxious person while also respecting the distance she clearly wanted. We attend the same gym but the location we go to has a girls only side where she usually works out so we don’t ever really cross paths. The last couple weeks though she has been working out on the co-ed side which I kinda thought was a bit odd but didn’t really put too much thought towards it. Yesterday she showed up at the same time as me but she brought another guy with her, they were working out together and kinda just felt like they were sort of hovering around in close proximity no matter what section of the gym I was at. It was really confusing cause she told me so many nice things when we were together like “You’re my person, my best friend and I’ve never felt a connection like this with anyone before” and then going and being in what seems to be the early stages of a new relationship just barely a month after ours.. I guess I’m looking for an outside perspective on the situation as I’m a bit confused. Was she bringing this guy around to make me jealous or get a reaction out of me? If she really wanted nothing to do with me as bad as she made it seem when she ended things I feel like she would’ve switched gyms or just kept to the girls only side?

About ten months ago, I went through a breakup that I’m still struggling to process psychologically.

For context, I was seeing someone for nearly a year. We talked every single day, expressed feelings for each other, and developed what I believed was a meaningful emotional connection. He even asked me to be his boyfriend at one point and wanted me to meet his mother. He shared personal things with me, and I genuinely believed we were building toward something serious.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he ended everything through a prewritten text message. He later admitted he’d had the message prepared for weeks. Within minutes, he stopped sharing his location and blocked me across practically every platform. He answered one phone call but otherwise gave me almost no opportunity to have a conversation or process what had happened.

He told me he was depressed, needed to be alone, wasn’t ready for a relationship, and that I was holding him back from getting help. He also said he needed to make the breakup as easy as possible for himself.

What makes this especially confusing is that approximately two months later, he was already in another relationship. That relationship eventually ended, and now he’s back on Tinder and actively posting pictures of himself in Facebook dating groups looking to meet other men.

I genuinely cannot reconcile the person who spoke to me every day, expressed affection, wanted me to meet his family, and discussed a future with me with the person who suddenly cut me out of his life as though I never existed.

It’s been almost ten months, and I’ve struggled with emotional numbness, anxiety, difficulty trusting people, and fear of abandonment, even while dating someone new. Sometimes when the person I’m currently seeing leaves my apartment, I experience anxiety and sadness, almost as though I’m preparing myself to never see him again.

I’m not trying to diagnose my ex or suggest he wasn’t allowed to move on. I’m genuinely trying to understand why this experience has affected me so profoundly.

Can an abrupt breakup involving emotional attachment, blocking, and a complete loss of contact cause a trauma-like response? Is there a psychological explanation for why someone can seemingly detach so quickly while the other person remains emotionally affected months later? And most importantly, how do you recover from this without carrying that fear into future relationships?

My FA ex and I were on and off since January 2022. I gave him an ultimatum at the end of 2024. It wasn’t something that I particularly wanted to do, but I was getting so physically sick of the intermittentness of the relationship dynamic he had created. And he said he’d choose healthier habits for us. He struggled a lot in his childhood, and I feel like I always gave him an excuse to treat me poorly. Of course he’s told me that I complete him, nobody comes remotely close to how he feels about me, I have the best heart… I’m so amazing and I mean so much to him. Then he goes weeks without talking to me and just tells me that he’s gone into himself and I should know that this is just how he is. He can’t sustain closeness for very long! Blah blah the usual

Last year in 2025, I ended things for good and went no contact and of course he was calling me probably every month in the middle of the night. But he didn’t want to repair things/wasn’t capable of doing so. This year for whatever reason, I answered one of those phone calls and we started things back up again. I started getting physically sick again. In May, I told him I’m done, I never want to see him/hear from him again. That I accepted a new job somewhere and I am moving away (at the time, I actually was about to move, but at the last minute I didn’t due to family obligations).

I just found out that two weeks after I went no contact and ended things for good with him, he met somebody and is in a fully committed/exclusive relationship.

I remember literally just a couple months ago telling him that I’m done and he was laughing. Scoffing almost. That home is home. I’ll be back.

Did he change for her? Am I just telling myself that he rebounded?

My friend/family keep telling me that I held a mirror up to him. That he wasn’t capable/willing to change. And that somebody doesn’t just automatically heal in weeks with substance abuse, closeness/intimacy/Withdrawl issues.

Unless she has magical unicorn skin woven into her bedsheets lol. I feel like deep down. I know that he hasn’t really changed in this new relationship is probably new and he obviously doesn’t have years of repairing to do.

I feel like I know him better than anybody. Even his friends have told me that they don’t even know half of the shit that he’s put me through because he doesn’t talk about anything with anyone except for me. But it cost me a lot, being his emotional punching bag.

So… Did they truly change or is it a mask that they’ve put on with the newbie?

1 year 9 months ago, I was dating an avoidant who then became the first guy I became intimate with. It was a big deal for me. Apparently not for him.

He then proceeded to treat me terribly and it was a constant push and pull dynamic where he would ghost me and distance himself and then lash out at me if I tried to get him to talk to me again.

He finally admitted that he doesn't believe I love him because he doesn't think anyone is capable of loving him. He then told me to leave him alone. He exhibited multiple signs of an avoidant.

That last conversation broke my heart and had me in tears. That was at the end of last year.

I then found this subreddit and I found it crazy how similar all our experiences were.. started talking to loads of people on here... but I was unable to move on.

Today.. almost 2 years later, I open reddit and see a post from this subreddit. I am proud to say, I have not thought about him in ages... I have moved on and have dated other men I was crazy about...

It will pass. I promise. You can do it. Time heals everything :) I am living proof of it. Just make sure you cut off contact and stay distracted.

I now look back and feel sad for him. But I don't feel the need to get back with him or even talk to him.

so hear me out.. this girl is the only person I've loved and have felt loved by, I (31F) met her (27F) around 3.5 years ago, we dated for 6 months and she broke up with me 3 times during that, the 3rd time she made sure to end it for good. she asked me if i loved her (which i hadn't told her yet) and as soon as i said yes she broke up with me. she then said that i am her ideal person bla bla so on. so after 7 month of agony on my and and no contact we somehow reconnected and i was like maybe i can be friends with her cz i love her as a person she's a real sweetheart, just traumatised.

so when we started hanging out, one thing led to another and she asked to get back together and get into a real relationship this time and she's 100% in and ready to deal with any issues we face. so as you might guess, i was hesitant, she told me she will prove by her actions that and gain my trust and she did slowly but surely. 6 months after that we moved in (her suggestion) and a few months after the move i noticed some changes and so did she. first her body shut down, her libido went down, not just for me but she couldn't even masturbate. she even told me she would be ok if i wanted to have sex with other people because she can't give me that right now. she was super depressed at her job and i told her to leave it and we'll figure it out. she left her job was looking for a different kind of job but couldn't land anything, more like was afraid of being rejected so every test project she got she self sabotaged and rejected them before the hiring team can reject her.

back then i wasn't seeing this pattern, back then i was just thinking she needs some luck on her side and i kept motivating her.

we also co own a business together even tho it's not something profitable but she makes her money from there i just invest in it and sometimes make money.

so fast forward i started working 15 hours a day, and we were having sex like once a month. but it wasn't what it used to be at least for me due to being mentally and ohysically tired from work.

she had her independence, i had never forbidden her from doing anything or seeing friends. even tho she had told me not to hang out with specific people because she got jealous and she was always scared that i will leave her, that was her greatest fear. a month or two before the breakup she even told me that she's scared that if i ever cheat on her she wouldn't be able to leave me because she loves me that much.

she didn't have a stable job, goals or something specific to work on, so she made a new friend, a guy through a gig she had. he was from abroad and he visited for like 6 days, came to our country but spent all his time with her, from day 1 i felt something was off that he was i to her and she was like noo he's like a brother to me, so the guy left the day before our 2 year anniversary, and she chose to stay awake till 8am to take him to the airport and had picked up a client for the next day (on our anniversary) and was too tired afterwards to even go out for dinner.

the day after she went out drinking with her friends. so that entire week i was feeling something was off and i kept asking her she said she's fine. a week before this she was talking about getting married with me.

so i get mad and be like this whole thing isn't normal there's something wrong and she was like we should break up, i love you but you deserve better, she emphasised the lack of sexual compatibility (which we had abundance of prior to her initial shutdown)

i was like shit like that can be fixed, I'll quit one of my jobs and focus on us. so i suggested taking a break to think about it.

during the break, for the first time ever i went through her messages, it was a gut feeling and i saw the texts between her and the guy he confessed feelings for her , she said she liked him too that she felt chemistry but he's too emotional for her and she's really confused right now and this isn't fair to me(her partner she's breaking up with)

the texts showed that nothing happened between them and then she told him not to text her again.

so what i do? i ask her and she denies it. then after a day i tell her that i know everything and she felt extremely guilty and shame and blamed herself and she said it wasn't about him, that it could've been anyone because she just wanted something physical with someone random.

so i told her that i am willing to do whatever it takes to make this work, specially since i saw that she told him to piss off at the end.

so after a few days when we met up, as expected she broke up with me saying she lost herself and she feels like she's that type of person that will never be able to be in a relationship, that i deserve better and she just wants to have random sex and that she realised that we aren't compatible. i stayed super calm and said ok. she came home to pick up some of her stuff, broke down in tears and hugged me crying saying she hasn't been this comfortable with anyone in her life and then left. she also mentioned that during the break there were several times that she thought to just come back home. she also mentioned that when she got high she started thinking that there wasn't an issue in the relationship and wtf is she doing. because honestly we never fight , we're very in tune, we're very understanding of each other and are comfortable together and we truly loved each other.

now i don't recognise her, she has gone super cold, and a week after the breakup she already downloaded tinder. i left the country a few days after the breakup and it's my 2nd week away and i will go back next week so she can fully move out and i take the appartment back for myself.

Now the thing is that i get why she did all of this, i read too many stuff about psychology, neurology and how her childhood and relationship traumas can affect her brain and neuropathways and everything clicked.

she now feels relief, and has deactivated, i dont even recognise her (as a person). she's just distracting herself. now that i read and watched every thing i could find about this, i connected the dots, her parents, her childhood, her past relationships (which some she has also sabotaged but tells the story in a way that she was the victim)

she now believes she made the right choice and she will 100% not regret it. those were her words. she wanted to stay friends.

Since i give a shit about her and i am tired of this generation and how they discard people, yeah i get it protect your peace and shit. but i fkn love her, unconditionally. i care about this person's wellbeing. even if she's not gonna end up with me i want her to heal. but her coming back to me would be great too..

i was also an avoidant even tho i hadn't given it that much thought, i stopped dating after i hurt someone and i didn't get into any sort of dating for almost 4 years until i had healed, the only thing that helped was EMDR therapy.

so what i want to do right now is get her into therapy , which she rejected before but i need to find the right timing.

i need advice on how to and when to make my next move, i am acting so cold at the moment to speed up the breaking down process of the deactivation

if your advice is gonna be to give up, then don't comment cz i ain't a quitter.

TL;DR

I want to find a way to help my avoidant ex realise she needs therapy and chooses to heal i stead of being stuck in the same loop

i need advice

My ex (25F, Polish) described herself as avoidant. We were together for around 10 months and broke up about a month ago. She has been in therapy for 10 years.

1. In the beginning, she pursued me intensely — lots of attention, chasing, and what I would describe as love-bombing.
2. She confessed her love first. I didn’t say it back immediately because love is serious to me and I wanted to be sure before saying it. Later, I genuinely fell in love with her.
3. Early on, she told me she was avoidant and even said something like: “If one day I decide to leave, don’t let me go.” (maybe manipulation)
4. I invested a lot in the relationship emotionally, financially, and by supporting/protecting her.
5. We both had emotional ups and downs, but hers were much more intense.
6. Eventually, despite loving her, I realized we had major incompatibilities regarding marriage, family, boundaries, and long-term values. I told her I didn’t see a future together. She asked me not to give up and to keep trying.
7. We tried, but I still felt we were incompatible as future husband and wife, and I communicated this to her.
8. Eventually, we had another conflict about her male friends. This was a major boundary/incompatibility for me that I couldn’t accept, and I was emotionally exhausted, so I broke up with her.
9. A few hours later, she sent me a very emotional message saying how much she loved and missed me, that I was her home, and that her number would always be available to me.
10. The next day, I called her thinking that if there was still mutual love and respect, maybe we could save the relationship or at least to close face to face. To my surprise, everything had reversed — now she wanted to leave.
11. She was saying that she loved me but wanted to leave. I asked to save if there was love or at least to finish not through fighting. I became emotional and pushed for clarity because “I love you, but I’m leaving” didn’t make sense to me at the time.
12. Eventually, after I pushed for a definitive answer, she hesitantly and with what sounded like a scared voice said: “I don’t love you.” I immediately stopped arguing, said goodbye, ended the call, and disappeared from her life. I haven’t contacted or chased her since. And didn't even suffer knowing there shouldn't be future but as know I am learning attachment types just curious about the things.
13. On the same day as the breakup, she blocked me in instagram and posted new photos on Instagram, even though we had never followed each other, never communicated through Instagram, and basically had no Instagram connection during the relationship. That also confused me — especially the timing of posting new photos and blocking me on a platform we never used to communicate.

My question: How would you interpret such a sudden reversal in someone with an avoidant attachment style? Could my breaking up with her have triggered deactivation, or was she probably already emotionally detaching despite still expressing intense love?