Anxious and avoidant: Why you attract each other and how it can work

What the pattern looks like

A weeknight. She has been looking forward to their evening together. He comes home tired from work and mostly wants quiet. She asks what’s wrong. He says, “Nothing.” She asks again, a little louder. He goes into the other room. She follows him. He says he really needs a moment right now. She hears: “You’re too much for me.” He hears: “You’re getting it wrong again.”

The example works in any combination: with the roles reversed, in same-sex couples, between friends. The roles are always the same: one person pursues, the other distances. And both feel they are only reacting to the other.

Why you attract each other

If this kind of relationship is so exhausting, why do these two find each other so often? Research offers three explanations.

Uncertainty feels like falling in love

Erin Whitchurch, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert showed women the profiles of men who had supposedly looked at their own profile. Some were told the men found them very attractive, others that the men found them average, and a third group that it was unclear. The women who thought about the men the most and felt the strongest attraction were the ones who didn’t know.

For anxiously attached people, this is especially tricky. Someone who is close one moment and distant the next keeps their attachment system constantly in motion. It hopes, waits, ruminates. That activation feels like strong attraction, but a good part of it is alarm.

The familiar feels right

To the anxious style, an avoidant person feels familiar: closeness is never quite certain, so everything stays intense. To the avoidant style, an anxious person feels familiar too: they confirm the old picture that closeness is confining and you have to protect yourself. Both get what they know, and neither gets what they need.

What we choose isn’t what we wish for

Kelley Chappell and Keith Davis had people read descriptions of possible partners. Regardless of their own attachment style, most found the secure partner the most attractive. Brandi Holmes and Kimberly Johnson reviewed the research on partner choice: in real couples, you still often find patterns that complement each other, such as anxious and avoidant. What appeals to us in theory and where we end up in life aren’t always the same.

The cycle: pursuing and withdrawing

Couples researchers call the pattern demand-withdraw. It’s one of the most thoroughly studied patterns in romantic relationships. An analysis of numerous studies by Paul Schrodt and colleagues found that the more often it happens, the less satisfied the people involved are, on average.

This is how it usually goes:

1. Something unsettles the anxious person: a short reply, a distracted look, a postponed date.
2. Their alarm goes off, and they seek contact: asking, texting again, trying to talk.
3. For the avoidant person, this quickly becomes too much. Their alarm goes off too, only quietly: they go silent, dodge, need distance.
4. The withdrawal confirms the anxious person’s fear, and they seek even more contact.
5. The pressure confirms the avoidant person’s picture, and they pull back even further.

The important part: Neither of you started it. Andrew Christensen and Christopher Heavey even found that the roles depend heavily on the situation. Whoever wants something to change tends to demand. Whoever is happy with how things are tends to withdraw. Attachment still plays a role: people high in attachment anxiety end up in the pursuing role more often, people high in attachment avoidance in the distancing role.

What happens beneath the surface

Psychologist Sue Johnson developed a form of couples therapy that targets exactly this cycle. She describes how very different feelings often lie beneath the visible behavior.

Couples researcher John Gottman has also described what often happens in the body during withdrawal. The person pulling away is often not indifferent but flooded: heart rate and tension climb so high that a calm conversation is barely possible. Withdrawal is then an emergency exit. To the pursuing person, though, it looks like a door being slammed.

What really helps you both

Ximena Arriaga and colleagues summarized what makes people more secure. It looks different for the two styles:

• The anxious side needs the repeated experience of being valued and of the other person staying, even after a fight.
• The avoidant side needs the experience that their independence is respected and that closeness doesn’t feel like losing their freedom.

That sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t. Jeffry Simpson and Nickola Overall describe how one partner can buffer the other’s insecurity: showing the anxious person affection clearly and staying warm even in conflict calms their alarm. Giving the avoidant person room and not pushing makes closeness less threatening for them. It works best when both do it for each other.

Six steps out of the cycle

1. Name the cycle together

Find a calm moment, not in the middle of a fight. Give the pattern a name, for example “our merry-go-round.” From then on you can say: “I think we’re on the merry-go-round again.” This is the central step in Sue Johnson’s approach: seeing the cycle as your shared enemy, not the other person.

2. If you pursue: start more gently

Sybil Carrère and John Gottman observed newlywed couples during a conflict discussion. The first three minutes alone predicted with high accuracy whether the couples were still together six years later. What mattered was how much harshness and how much warmth there was in that opening.

So instead of “You never get in touch,” try: “I felt unsure when I didn’t hear from you. I’d like you to send a quick text when you’re running late.”

3. If you withdraw: announce the break

Distance is allowed. Disappearing hurts. The difference lies in a single sentence: “I’m overwhelmed right now. I need half an hour, then let’s keep talking.” And then really come back. An announced break with a time attached gives the anxious person what they need most urgently: the certainty that you’ll return.

4. Don’t use guilt as a tool

Nickola Overall and colleagues found that people high in attachment anxiety more often try to make their partner feel guilty in difficult moments. In the short term, it works: partners feel guilty and give in. Over time, though, the partners who were pressured this way were less satisfied with the relationship. A direct request lasts longer than an accusation.

5. Agree on fixed rituals

Uncertainty is what feeds the cycle. Small agreements starve it: a quick message at lunch, a set evening each week, a sentence before going to sleep, even after a fight. For the anxious person, that’s safety. For the avoidant person, it’s predictable and therefore easier than spontaneous demands.

6. Get help if you’re stuck

If you recognize the cycle but can’t find your way out of it, couples therapy isn’t a defeat, it’s a sensible step. Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) starts exactly here, and a review by Stephanie Wiebe and Susan Johnson shows that many couples experience clear improvements with it.

When it’s no longer healthy

Everything in this article applies to relationships between two people on equal footing who sometimes make each other’s lives hard. It doesn’t apply when one person systematically controls, belittles, isolates or threatens the other.

And if you’re single right now

Then this knowledge can help you the next time you meet someone. Pay less attention to the intensity at the start and more to how you feel after you meet: stronger or stirred up? Can you be yourself? Are your boundaries respected?

Secure people often cause less of a racing heart at first, because they don’t play games. They text back when they feel like it, say when they like you and don’t push. If you’re used to uncertainty, it’s easy to mistake that for boredom. It’s worth giving the calm a chance.