Why Chasing An Avoidant Ex NEVER Works

Getting your avoidant ex back is never easy because avoidants are programmed to resist your attempts at contact, ignore you and run away the first chance they get.

And so you probably feel like you have to chase after your avoidant just to get them to notice that you’re alive.

But it turns out that the more you chase your avoidant ex, the more they pull away, leaving you all alone.

I’m going to tell you WHY this happens, how to break the cycle and get them back, by using their avoidant tendencies against them.

So why is it that chasing an avoidant ex never works? It’s because of how your ex’s avoidance affects their ability to form attachments, and—more crucially—to handle any sort of emotional pressure.

Understanding Avoidant Attachment

Let’s explain what exactly avoidant attachment is because I see a lot of misinformation going around about this topic. Just because your ex is avoiding you, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are an avoidant.

To put it simply, avoidants are specifically people with an avoidant attachment style. This means that they feel a lot of anxiety around romantic attachment and intimacy and use avoidance as a coping strategy.

Avoidants feel both positive and negative emotions when they connect deeply with another person. Of course, they get something important out of it or they’d stay away completely. There are people who completely abstain from romantic and personal relationships. These people aren’t avoidants because they don’t attach at all.

So avoidants will get close to you but they’ll feel deeply threatened by that closeness.

Avoidants value their independence more than most so when they start to grow close to another person, they worry that they’ll lose their freedom and their sense of self.

That’s why, when things move too fast, get too close or feel too intense for an avoidant, they pull away, ignore you, brush you aside—whatever it takes to get some space. They get distance from these difficult feelings by getting distance from you and the relationship.

They aren’t necessarily doing this consciously. They feel overwhelmed by the closeness and reflexively act in ways that push you away.

So if you’ve ever had a partner make a joke or change the subject when you were trying to bring up real issues or compliment them or tell them how much you mean to them, then chances are that person was an avoidant.

And if you’ve dealt with that, you know that calling them out on it only leads to more denials and deflection.

This is hard enough to deal with in a relationship, but what about after a breakup?

Well you won’t be surprised when I tell you that few things trigger avoidant behaviour like a breakup does.

You see, one of the reasons that avoidants balk at closeness is because they actually fear rejection. I know it probably doesn’t feel that way with how quickly they dropped you and acted like you didn’t exist, but it’s true.

You see, the thing about avoidance is that it begins in early childhood. As little children, we’re dependent on our caregivers for basically everything: food, shelter, safety, but also our emotional needs.

Because of this, we make a lot of demands on our parents to take care of us, hug us, love us, watch us dive into the pool, whatever. It’s how we stay alive and grow as a person.

So when a parent fails to meet these demands, when they present a pattern of denial or rejection of their child’s emotional needs, the child learns that their emotional needs are too much for another person to handle, so they learn to keep them inside and handle them on their own. They become an avoidant.

So not only are these avoidant behaviours ingrained from that point forward, but so is a deep fear of rejection. One of the reasons that avoidants keep their needs to themselves is that they fear revealing them to their partner and being rejected yet again.

And a breakup—even if it was spurred on by the avoidant themselves—feels like the biggest rejection of all. It just shows the avoidant that everything they suspected is true: no one can be relied on to handle their needs. They’re too much and they’ll never find someone who is willing to put up with them.

So they reach for the only coping strategy they ever really learned: avoidance.

This is why your avoidant ex is keeping such a distance from you. It’s not necessarily that they’ve moved on or that they don’t like you. There’s even a good chance that they still want to be with you.

But the whole situation feels radioactive to them right now. It’s like they’ve put their feelings into a little box and closed the lid.

They feel like all their emotions around the breakup are now contained and so they’re safe. But talking to you, or even thinking about you, would mean opening that box again and being overwhelmed by despair.

So it’s no wonder that chasing after your avoidant ex doesn’t work.

RELATED: Why Your Ex’s Drama Is A Good Sign

I mean think about it. Because of the associations they have between you and the breakup, even the idea of you is a threat to their emotional safety right now.

So every text, every call, every message you send to them pushes them further into the danger zone. And, of course, this is so much worse if you pour your heart out, tell them you miss them, that you love them: anything like that is going to make them feel overwhelmed and out of control–like they’re losing their independence and their agency.

I know that’s not your intention. You only want to show them that you’re here and that you want to talk to them. But to them, this brings up a lot of emotions that they can’t handle right now.

So they run. They ghost. They block. And they feel immediate relief so they’re able to tell themselves, “I feel better so I must have made the right decision.”

How To Win Back Your Avoidant Ex

So you have this person that you want to be with and any attempt to get close to them only pushes them further away. It’s like trying to chase the end of the rainbow, it only recedes from you as you approach it.

So what are you supposed to do?

Well the first thing you have to do is make the decision not to give up. Many people take their ex’s silence as a sign that this is the end and they move on and find someone new. But if you really want your ex back, there is a path forward for you.

You have to do the counterintuitive thing, the one thing that you don’t want to do…you have to pull away from them.

Yes, you need to match their silence and keep your distance from your ex for a significant period of time following the breakup.

No texting to just check in. No social media stalking. No coffee dates to catch up.

This feels impossible, I know, but it’s going to do more to bring them back to you than anything else possibly can at this stage, trust me.

And this all goes back to that little box that we talked about, that metaphorical hiding place for your ex’s emotions.

You see, that thing really isn’t as safe as they think it is. Because avoiding your emotions is always going to be a losing strategy. They’re always going to come out eventually and hit you with a vengeance.

And while that box is full of sadness, anger, shame and despair, it’s also full of their love for you. They’ve tried to push down the feelings of missing you so deep that they never had to deal with them.

But when you give them space and wait, these feelings are going to emerge and they’re going to drive your ex crazy.

Because—as we know—avoidants struggle to process emotions—that’s why they keep them inside. This means that they typically have no emotional support system to talk these things out. They’re white-knuckling this process, hoping these feelings will just disappear.

But instead, they’re going to pop up in a few weeks or a month and your ex is going to feel compelled to reach out to you and try to get you back. And you’ll be there waiting for them.

I know—it feels like torture. You’ll be tempted to break the silence but if you do, it’s going to backfire on you.

You see, when you break no contact, you open that box they’re protecting. And so YOU get blamed for these out of control feelings of theirs, and this justifies running away from you.

So let them feel your absence. Let them feel the silence and sit with their bad feelings. They won’t be able to blame you for getting space so instead of the cause of their issues, you’ll start to look like the solution.

This is playing on the avoidant psychology a bit. Avoidance is really their only move in a situation like this.

They avoided you to avoid these feelings. But now you’re absent, so they’ll no longer associate you with these negative emotions. In turn, they’re going to run to you, to try to avoid the feelings all over again.

But what are you supposed to do during this time? I mean, should you just wait by the phone for their call? Well, no you need to be making moves of your own here as well. Because it’s so easy to fall into despair and lose yourself in the breakup. Then, when your ex comes out they find a puddle of tears in place of the person they fell in love with.

Stay Strong And Rebuild The Connection

But this is only the start of the process of winning back your avoidant ex. I know it’s frustrating, but your ex breaking the silence is rarely going to be the end of the story here. Because if you jump at the chance and pour your heart out, tell them how much you miss them and ask them for another chance at this moment, chances are they’re going to run for the hills all over again.

Remember, things are VERY emotionally charged for them right now. They’re right on the edge. So you need to take a breath, slow down and draw them in slowly.

Because one of the reasons that your relationship didn’t work out was because of your ex’s natural tendency towards avoidance. While you may have done nothing wrong, chances are you fed into this cycle by trying to get closer to them than they were comfortable with, before they were really ready.

This is so easy to do with an avoidant. Because when they push you away, it can be pretty distressing. In order to combat this distress, you draw closer to them for comfort. And the cycle repeats.

So this is a great opportunity to show your ex that they have nothing to be afraid of here. You’re not going to overwhelm them with giant emotional demands. You’re not going to force them to relive the breakup or have a bunch of heavy conversations about what happened and what it means. And you’re not going to push them into some future that they’re not even sure that they want right now.

Instead, you’re going to be a safe place for them. You’re going to provide peace, comfort and intimacy, at a pace they feel comfortable with.

RELATED: Why Do Avoidants Cheat?

So basically, don’t rush into anything. Take your time, focus on fun and try your best to attract them back to you the way you did in the beginning of the relationship. Maintain some distance from them so they never feel pressured and allow them to come to you over time.

In short:

Chasing an avoidant ex never works because it only feeds into the fears that led them to run away in the first place.

But when you stop chasing, stop begging, and start respecting your own worth… that’s when they start moving towards you, rather than running away.

Brad Browning

Brad Browning is widely regarded as the world's most trusted breakup experts, boasting over 12 years of experience working with clients from around the world. Brad's #1 best-selling breakup reversal guide, The Ex Factor, has helped more than 130,000 people from 131 countries to re-unite with an ex. Brad is also the author of Mend The Marriage, a comprehensive self-help guide that teaches married couples how to save their dying marriage and prevent divorce. Brad’s YouTube channel has over 400,000 subscribers and 50 million views, and he has been featured in a number of well-known media outlets and industry journals.