Fearful Avoidant Is Afraid Vs. Doesn’t Want You Back

A fearful avoidant attachment is a “fear driven” attachment style meaning, fear is the driving emotion of everything a fearful avoidants says or does and how a fearful avoidant thinks, feels and act.

When thinking of coming back, many fearful avoidants experience major fear and anxiety and often actively avoid conversations and situations where getting back together might come because they don’t trust their own feelings and believe that don’t they make good decisions.

Many of the things they say or do out of fear of being wrong or making a mistake coming back may make you think that your fearful avoidant ex doesn’t want you back, is breadcrumbing you or leading you on.

The closer a fearful avoidant ex is to making a decision about coming back, the more likely you are to see these “fear driven” behaviours.

1. Stalling and delaying

“I’m not ready to be in a relationship” is the go to reason for a fearful avoidant who wants you back but is afraid and scared of getting back together. Even if you’re consistently loving, caring and supportive, they keep 1) postponing when they’ll be ready to come back and 2) coming up with different reasons (some you’ve heard before and others completely new) why they’re not ready to be in a relationship. If you examine the reasons very carefully, they all add up a fearful avoidant wants to get back together but is  afraid at the same time.

2. Defensive and overly sensitive

A fearful avoidant ex will avoid any and all conversation that might lead to talking about getting back together because such conversations make them anxious. But all the effort to avoid anxiety actually creates more anxiety and makes a fearful avoidant ex defensive and overly sensitive. You can be talking about something unrelated, and they blurt out “I don’t want to get back together” or “I’ve told you I don’t want a relationship” leaving you wondering what you could possibly have said to make them think you were talking about getting back together. You start feeling like you’re walking on egg-shells.

3. Nitpicking and non-stop negativity

They become increasingly hypervigilant and even exaggerate the negativity of the situation. It’s like they’re out to catch you saying the “wrong” word, making the “wrong” comment etc. and pounce on it. They’re constantly questioning and interrogating, making assumptions and accusations, projecting and overreacting, and anything doesn’t match their interpretation of “acceptable behaviour” is interpreted as “nothing has changed”. You even find yourselves getting into unnecessary arguments and avoidable conflicts.

4. Difficulty letting go of the past and/or forgiving

They can’t let the past go. They tell you the leaving the past in the past and even forgive you, but nah. A fearful avoidant’s penchant for excessive rumination which intensifies negative emotions and recreates negative experiences. They may even give “the relationship is toxic” as the reason for not coming back, something entirely different from what they’ve said about the relationship in the past.

5. Impulsive and disorganized behaviour

The closer a fearful avoidant ex is to making a decision about coming back the more they’ll test you, and the more disorganized their testing behaviour is. For example, they’ll suddenly block and unblock you the next day or even after a few hours, agree to meet then immediately cancel 0r post an Instagram story and then hide their story from you. If they were responding to your texts immediately, they’ll start to leave you on read and sometimes completely ignore texts.

6. Mental health decline

Fear exacerbates mental health problems and intense, excessive and persistent fear is a root cause of most common disorders. If a fearful avoidant struggles with emotional or mood disorders or addiction (e.g. depression, borderline personality disorder, or alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling or gaming addictions, etc.) they will to get worse with the fear of making the wrong decision.

7. Panic attack

Some of a fearful avoidant’s fear of getting back together can manifest in protest behaviour similar to anxiously attached protest behaviour, the difference is that someone anxious is protesting the breakup or separation and a fearful avoidant is protesting getting close or getting back together using stalling and delaying strategies.

In some extreme cases, a fearful avoidant who wants to get back together but is afraid will have a full-blown panic attack especially if they internally feel the pressure to decide whether to give the relationship another chance or let you go.

They’re afraid that if they don’t make a decision soon, you’ll give up on trying to get back together and even move on. but the same intense fear of losing you also paralyzes them. What if it’s not what they really want, or they later regret getting back together.

If they got friends and families involved, that’s an additional layer of worry and fear. Should they tell friends and family that they’re thinking of getting back together? What exactly and how much do they tell them? How will they react? How will they handle the fallout? What if they’re right that getting back together is a bad idea?

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What To Do With Fearful Avoidant Ex Scared Of Coming Back

How Do You Reassure A Fearful Avoidant Ex?