“Avoidant” is commonly used to describe someone who steers clear of closeness, intimacy, exposure, the messiness of relationships. That’s accurate enough as a behavioural description. But in attachment theory (in research by Mary Ainsworth and later Mary Main) avoidance isn’t really about avoiding people, it’s about avoiding one’s own feelings.
Specifically, the feeling of being alone. The feeling of not mattering, of being unseen, treated with indifference, or of neglect. Ainsworth observed in her “Strange Situation” studies that some infants, when a mother returned after an absence, behaved as if they didn’t care. They turned away, playing it cool. Yet their physiology told the underlying truth that stress was high. The child had learned a strategy that looked like independence but was actually a defence against disappointment. If reaching for comfort repeatedly fails, you stop reaching. You “look fine” instead.
Mary Main extended our understanding of this dynamic into adulthood with the Adult Attachment Interview, showing how avoidant patterns don’t disappear; they simply become more sophisticated. Adults with avoidant strategies often speak about childhood in a way that sounds neat, rational, even dismissive, as though the emotional register has been switched off. They have learned to tidy away longing rather than feel it.
This plays out in relationships. An avoidant adult may value connection in principle, even crave it, but the moment it becomes real, something tightens up. They may withdraw, minimise conflict, intellectualise emotion, or retreat into work, hobbies, or busyness. Partners feel a strange sens of “you’re here, but you’re not with me.”
What looks like indifference is usually a fear of dependence. What looks like self-sufficiency is a way of staying safe from the old ache of being unseen. The relationship becomes a kind of perimeter: close enough to enjoy companionship, far enough to avoid vulnerability.
So avoidance is a trick the psyche plays to survive. It’s a counterfeit form of strength: complete independence. The capacity to do without others because needing them once felt too painfully unmet. It works, up to a point. But it also costs something essential: the ability to depend, to be known, to be moved by another person, to connect.
Avoidant behaviour isn’t coldness; it’s the imprint of aloneness. Underneath it is a very human truth: we are built for connection and no amount of self-sufficiency quite cancels that need.
Image credit: Ross Sneddon
