Love Styles – Are You an Avoider?
Jousline Savra is a How We Love marriage counselor in Roswell, and in this blog post, looks at the Avoider love style. First, to help you define what an Avoider’s love style looks like, let’s give you a quick rundown of behaviors common to those being named an Avoider, and how you experience this type of love style in relationships.
Avoider Love Style Defined
The Avoider Love Style can be defined by the following attitudes and actions:
- They need their space
- They are typically “fine” when asked how they are feeling
- They feel overwhelmed and push you away when you get in their space
- They feel emotions that are restricted and buried deep inside
- They are not aware of what they need or how they feel
- They rarely discuss personal concerns or emotional issues using words
- They rarely miss their loved ones when separated
- The language of emotions is foreign as they communicate with you
- They are happiest and most comfortable when others ask very little of them
- They avoid conflict at almost all costs
If any of these attitudes and actions are true for you, then it is a good possibility that you have developed an Avoider love style. You may want to consider taking the love-style quiz. Now, one thing to make note of, according to the love style quiz that the Yerkovich’s have developed, you can actually have or develop more than one love style. However, there is typically one that will dominate your personality and relationship-building abilities. So, perhaps you know you have some of the Avoider love style tendencies, but not all of them. That could be because you’ve developed another love style as your dominant one, but share some of the Avoider love styles in your make-up. That’s alright because once you recognize your love styles, you can begin to understand why you act and think the way you do. Once that is understood, you can make changes in your actions and attitudes to better help you build better, stronger, healthier relationships.
The Avoider Love Style Background
Avoiders will give direct or indirect messages that are not going to be talked about for the rest of their lives. Attachment theory states that we develop the love styles and relationship behaviors that we do from the way we were raised during our early life experiences. The Avoider love style is one that stems from an unhealthy and cold environment growing up where adults were unable to emotionally connect and create soothing experiences for each other. Parents aren’t unfeeling, but they don’t demonstrate their feelings in front of the children. Sometimes the environment was chaotic, but there was never a follow-through or comforting experience. Therefore, Avoiders often prize independence and self-reliance, leaving their children to fend for themselves. While all parents should strive to see that their children grow up to care for themselves, the parents of Avoiders go to great lengths to push their children toward self-care. The Avoider individual ends up learning to rely on themselves and pulls away from others emotionally and physically. The atmosphere in the home that lacks affection can create an individual who is very uncomfortable around any display of emotions, even positive ones. They do this so they can deal with the anxiety that stems from the lack of comfort, care, and nurturing received from their parents.
The Avoider Love Style and Therapy
The Avoider love style is nothing to be ashamed of, but it can cause issues and problems in your adult relationships. Therapy can help you overcome the Avoider love style by assisting you to:
- Get in touch with your emotions and learn to express them in a healthy, appropriate manner
- Resolve conflict instead of avoiding it
- Be the one to approach family and friends for emotional, social, spiritual, and physical support
- If married, it’s critical to know how to emotionally connect and comfort each other
You don’t have to go through life alone. Don’t be misunderstood in your relationship any longer. Using techniques developed just for the Avoider love style, I can help you overcome your issues and have the happy, healthy, secure relationships you deserve. Contact Marriage Counselor Jousline today. You can schedule an appointment by clicking on the upper right-hand side of this page and discussing your happier, brighter future.