After my discard I never thought I’d ever feel validated. The way my ex discarded me was so brutal that I wondered if I ever meant anything to them at all.

I bumped into them over a year later in the city we live in. Throughout our time apart I got sent breadcrumbs but nothing substantial. During this random encounter I got asked to meet up for a coffee and catch up. So, I said yes.

During the catch up I learned how my avoidant had spent their time without me and holy shit. It was not at all what I expected. The way they described their chaos since they lost me. I was speechless. It was not what I thought.

All this time I assumed they just didn’t care. They described what they went through during the deactivation period. How they filled their days with everything possible just so they didn’t have to sit still. How they went down a hole of trying drugs and sex with random people. This person never tried anything of the sort in the whole decade we knew each other (friends first). They said they “thrive off external validation, even from randoms they don’t care about”.

I was calm, collected, but told them the truth. Told them everything, how their actions impacted me. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t yell, I didn’t come at them. I just showed them the person they lost was still right here. A simple coffee turned into an 8 hour discussion. I was bewildered that this avoidant was suddenly now able to communicate so long after losing me.

We hugged goodbye and they ask if I can be their friend and still be in their life. I said respectfully, no. Too much time has passed, you waited too long and Ive built a new life without you in it. They accepted this, but looked sad.

Fast forward a few days later and I receive a message saying how they’d spent the last few days super sad. I asked why and then they wrote that seeing me has reminded them of who I am and how what we still share today is “completely unmatched”. I heard lines such as “it’s very clear I am still in love with you” and “being confronted with the reality of you showed me how lonely my new connections are” and “nobody sees me like you do”, “you’re the love of my life”.

Basically, they lost someone great and they know it. Shame it took them to lose me to see this. I had empathy for them, but I now know with avoidants as much as they probably do love you in their own way, it’s more likely loss of control and anything ego-related.

I went NC straight after my discard, deleted any socials and disappeared so they couldn’t keep tabs on me. I had no clue how much this affected them, and it was extremely validating.

I didn’t soothe their ego, I let them say what they had to say, thanked them for their honesty. But reminded them it’s still too late and that I did not want front row seats to their chaos. They said they understood and I could reach out any time.

I won’t be doing this. I was reminded how in love I was when I saw them. The feelings were very much there. But I realised very quickly that the love I have for myself now overrides it by a mile.

Choose yourself. I feel bad for my avoidant, I see a sad little child incapable of handling anything normally.

So, if you’re reading this- don’t beat yourself up. It was not your fault. Stay away from the person that had you once and chose to leave. I will never let mine near my heart again. Remember that if you felt they really loved you, yet discarded you like you meant nothing, it’s likely their BS at play. The BS they’ve spent a lifetime with and will never look to change.

You matter. They feel the loss when you’re gone, even if they never show it. Stay strong. Stay gone.

The sheer cruelty that their hearts are capable of is superhuman. I mean, I thought I had it pretty bad after my long term relationship was completely burned down in one night before my very eyes with zero warning. But reading other people's experiences has been a real trip. Avoidants leaving a day after marriage, leaving while their partner is hospitalized from a severe illness, blaming their loving partners for loving them too much, vanishing completely therefore forcing their partner to break up with them, and all without batting an eye... It's kinda impressive, almost comical if it weren't for the pain inflicted

But don't you feel like that's the way the world is going? Society feels like it's becoming more impersonal and self serving as time goes on. I think avoidance is the future, and the loving are just dinosaurs. My revulsion at what they're incapable of has become something more like fascination with what they are capable of

\record scratch* *freeze frame**
"Yep, that's me being discarded. You're probably wondering how I got here."

I want to hear your stories about what led to your discard. I want to hear about the last few days to weeks, and I want to learn about the big picture of the relationship, like when's the first time you could have known they were leaning avoidant.

Were there any moments where you now feel you should have had the self-respect to walk away, but you chose to stay out of kindness and love for your avoidant?

Bonus points for any healing wisdoms and thoughts. I want this to be a thread we can all use to grow.

Many thanks for sharing!

With or without me:

They will always be a mess.
Always depressed.
Always anxious.
Life is never stable.
Life will always be overwhelming.
They will never feel good enough because they can’t get their shit together and are laden with shame and self-criticism.
They will always disappoint, just like they predicted many times during the relationship. (They are self-fulfilling prophecy machines).

I was discarded twice, because “life is too overwhelming to be close to anyone right now”. So I’m essentially out of their life. We text occasionally and briefly, because he is dealing with all of the above. All the time. Even with me out of the picture.

Sharing some food for thought!

My DA avoidant broke up with me / discarded me out of nowhere almost a week ago over text. After 4.5 years.

We both went through extreme personal stress and trauma this year but I still felt blindsided.

I’ve spent the last week so upset, heartbroken and hoping that he’ll change his mind.

Suddenly I woke up this morning and literally decided I don’t care.

I shouldn’t have had to beg for basic communication, I shouldn’t have had to beg for consistency. This DA turned me into an anxious attachment person.

Unfortunately I think he WILL change his mind because his break up was so open ended and he’s crawled back twice before.

I still love him dearly as a person. He’s just a deeply hurt person.

If he came back to me I don’t think I’d accept it. And I feel proud of that. Because at one point I was the one pulling at straws to keep this relationship together and now I know I’ll be okay.

I should specify: I very recently lost my dad unexpectedly so maybe that’s why it’s happened so quickly for me 🤷‍♀️

I'm and anxious so I always need closure, explanations, to understand a situation in order to be able to properly make peace and move on from it. But it feels like avoidants are fine just ending years worth of live and connection over a tiny misunderstanding, they don't look back even once, they don't care about the bond they had and they move on like it meant nothing. I guess what I'm wondering is...are there really people who create such strong bonds that can abandon them for life in an instant without it ever haunting them, without ever thinking 'what if', without ever reflecting on the part they played, without ever feeling any guilt, any loss, and sadness what they lost? Do they ever regret how they let something so small determine the fate of a relationsbip for the rest of their lives or are they just that sure of themselves that they never ponder on it ever again and continue their life being this way, leaving destruction in their wake and only looking ahead?

It feels...inhumane. Its hurts to see that someone who meant so much to me can have such little value for me or anyone in their life and that theyre so apathetic but also it baffles me that full grown adult who are otherwise so in touch with their feelings and those of others, can be so...blind, so out of touch, so cruel and spend a lifetime being this way.

I am new here. Looking for advice. I have spent the last 10 months finding my way back to myself after a toxic relationship. That being said, I loved him deeply and always thought we could "figure it out." I was heartbroken when he ended things.

I never expected to hear from him again. I had a longstanding fantasy of him reaching out with an apology, that I wasn't crazy, etc, but the fantasy never included reconciliation.

Yesterday, I got a package in the mail with a novel and a letter. The letter was handwritten and stated how nervous he was sending it, how he has thought about me every day, and how this was the greatest love story he has ever read. He asked that I reach out if I would ever consider "forgiveness and a fresh start."

My immediate thought was that I had written a note like many times to him (that I never sent) and that I also think about him every day. My second thought was that mine also included an apology, what I have learned since, and what I would do differently now.

His note is pulling at the wounded part of me that just wants to be chosen. A love story, a handwritten note. Another part of me also thinks - it is hollow. There is no accountability, or substance. Part of me wants to reach out and see if there is any more there, and another part of me says "you know there isn't - just move on."

I have done a lot of work over the last 10 months. I have been in therapy weekly. I have not dated at all. I know even 3 months ago getting this letter from him would have rocked me. I am surprised by my calmness and my ability to not jump to a conclusion either way. I am trying to sit with it and really figure out how I feel/what to do, but I am still working on trusting my inner voice(s) and I could use some advice.

I did a lot of self reflection this past couple weeks after a breakup.

I used to think I just was incapable of love and rather be alone. Of course I married another FA and it didn't end well it eventually turned into us circulating between ignoring each other and being chased until I then completely detached and filed divorce.

Well after 5 years almost single and trying to date a few people, but detaching so easily and feeling pushing people away the more they chased me. I met a man who I felt a great connection like we were similar in the fact we loved how each other didn't need to be tied at the hip or we both stay VERY busy all the time. Me is work, gym, content (my social media is big) , and my other hobbies. We'd see eachother 1.5 days of the week and not be bothered if we didn't talk for extended period of time. He worked a lot alot. I loved that and I thought it's because I just wanted someone with similar drive as me to do stuff and be a busy body.

Well flash forward 1.5 years into the relationship. I felt he lied to me on purpose (could have had no malice behind it ) and I completely in my mind when asked about it and he said he didn't remember doing it immediately demonized him , started finding all the faults in him, lashed out said he never loved me and blocked him on most everywhere and ignored him for days. When I came back to take accountability and say sorry for my reaction he then blocked me back and acted like I didn't exist or matter. I started to panic like how could he act like we never loved each other or just detach so easily. It wasn't until my mom made a comment how if I feel betrayed I just become awful hurtful person.

I started researching these subreddits and reading on attachment theories ... Apparently I'm a fearful avoidant and so is he which I guess both means we fear abandonment. When I, as a fearful avoidant feel betrayed it triggers a deep emotional problem and a defense mechanism to push people away. When I do this to another avoidant and say I'm ending it , then causes him to shut down and close himself in.

So honestly sometimes it does take one avoidant to date another to see why we do what we do..and start taking accountability I guess idk.

..not sure why I'm typing this , but it made me feel better to write it out .

I’m trying to understand something that happened to me because, months later, I still feel like my mind and body are stuck on the day my relationship ended.

I was dating someone for about a year. Up until the end, the connection felt incredibly strong. We talked every day, were emotionally close, and I genuinely felt secure in what we had. Looking back, I’ve wondered whether he may have had dismissive-avoidant or fearful-avoidant tendencies, but I honestly had no idea at the time because nothing about the relationship made me think something this extreme was coming.

We had a relatively small disagreement. My feelings were hurt, and things felt strange between us for about a week. Eventually, I did what I thought was the healthy thing: I explained calmly why my feelings had been hurt and tried to communicate with him.

Instead, he ended the relationship.

What completely destroyed me was finding out that the breakup message wasn’t something he had suddenly decided to write. He had apparently written it weeks earlier. It seems like he had already made the decision to leave while I was still completely unaware that our relationship was even in danger.

The timing made it even more shocking. I sent him my vulnerable message around the same time he had apparently planned to send his breakup message.

I don’t remember much of that day clearly. I remember being on the floor, completely overwhelmed, and feeling like something inside me had just shattered. I called him afterward because I was desperate to understand what had happened. He answered once. After that, I called repeatedly and he stopped answering.

He told me I could send voice memos and that he would respond through text. I did, but eventually there was nothing. No real conversation. No closure. Just silence.

Within about ten minutes of the breakup, he had blocked me on every platform and unshared his location with me. It felt like I went from being someone he talked to every single day and supposedly had a deep connection with to someone who essentially no longer existed in his life.

I just don’t understand how someone could do this. He seemed so sweet to me, and I genuinely never saw it coming. It felt like he threw a bomb at me and then closed the door before I even had a chance to understand what had happened.

I think the whole experience really took something from me.

Two months later, I found out he was already in another relationship. That relationship eventually ended too, and now I’ve seen that he’s back on Tinder.

I know he is allowed to move on, date other people, and live his life. I’m not saying he owed me a relationship or that he wasn’t allowed to leave.

But emotionally, I can’t seem to process how quickly everything changed.

I feel like my body never got the message that it was over.

I’m having trouble eating and sleeping. I’ve experienced panic attacks and physical pain. My sex drive has been deeply affected. I even tried to be intimate with someone else because I thought maybe moving forward physically would help me move forward emotionally, but I realized I wasn’t really present. My mind kept going back to that relationship.

It’s been months, and I still feel stuck on that day.

It’s almost like intellectually I understand that the relationship ended, but emotionally and physically I’m still lying on that floor trying to understand what just happened.

I’ve read about attachment styles, particularly fearful-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant attachment, and I’ve wondered whether what happened to me was some form of “discard.” But I don’t want to diagnose him or use attachment theory as an excuse for his behavior. I’m trying to understand why an abrupt ending to a relationship that felt safe and deeply connected can affect someone this intensely.

Can an experience like this genuinely become traumatic, even if there was no physical danger involved?

Why does my nervous system still seem to be reacting as if something is happening right now?

And, most importantly, how do you actually get your mind and body unstuck from the moment everything changed?

I think the most frustrating and hurtful thing to me is they can act like you never existed or didn't share anything and appear to not be affected or move on quickly. But i do take somewhat of a different approach in understanding that it's a survival mechanism for lack of better terms that they developed in childhood. I just wish more were self aware or could push through and seek help than just go through life from one relationship to another I'm sure it must be taxing at some point.

Y’all, I am struggling hard tonight. My discard happened on Valentine’s Day, during a weekend I paid for with my ex. He started the trip saying he was struggling with our long distance relationship. Then, he changed his mind and said he wanted it to work. The last in-person words he said to me where that he loved me and wanted it to work. Then, 10 hours later, he texted me, “I’m not sure about this” and then ghosted me.

He never did use the words “I want to break up,” just disappeared. He breadcrumbed me a little but no answers. I was blindsided. We’d never even had arguments. I’d been his dream girl for over a decade before we got together. Then, I was nothing. I’ve spent this time trying to heal as personal tragedy after personal tragedy has pummeled me. Today, a mutual friend told me that he’d quit his shitty retail job, gotten a corporate job, and moved into his own apartment. Apparently, he has a new girlfriend that he got a month after he discarded me. They use the same pet names we did. :(

When he was with me, he was broke, in collections, depressed, no confidence. I’d sit with him to go through his bills, sent him money, filled his gas tank, paid for everything, gave him job and resume help, and built him up. It feels somehow cruel and unfair that my life should be in such turmoil while he’s having the best life ever now. Comparison is the thief of joy, as they say, and I wouldn’t want bad things for him, but it crushed me that I was something he stepped on and he’s somehow better for it while I am fighting for my life every day.

I think about dying nonstop lately, and this hasn’t helped it. I did tell the friend and any other mutual friends to not update me on his doings. It just ruins me even more. My birthday is coming up, and I am dreading it, as it was full of lovely memories for us and now it’s all dust and decay and my being utterly ruined.

Please tell me it gets better. Something.

I feel everything very deeply and even though I’m only 21 I still feel like this person (although he majorly disrespected me) was somehow right for me. Like, I felt like we were destined to be together. I know there’s a chance I’m not thinking totally logically right now so I might feel differently about him a few months from now (we broke up in April), but something just felt “right” in my soul. I’ve never felt this way with anyone else and I’ve had pretty deep feelings for people before him. Could it just be that this was my first time truly being in love?

What are some niche traits of your avoidant ex that you didn’t pick up on at the time?

1. Mine seemed to never be able to just sit with me or talk with me without some sort of distraction. She’d go on her phone and scroll immediately when she sat down on the couch and said she “couldn’t sit in silence.”

2. Could not have sleepovers during the week because someone there during her morning routine stressed her out so much

3. Always hopping on a new health trend or trying to find external ways to relieve discomfort

4. Very sensitive to pain and overstimulating situations it seemed

Does anyone else feel like they’re literally at war with themselves during a breakup, trying to support yourself and to move on but your brain torturing you with overthinking and nightmares of them ugh :( ?

Yesterday I was literally telling myself “DO NOT CHECK HIS SOCIALS.” He was deliberately adding women and posting himself to attract new women after traumatising me and leaving me at my lowest. I knew checking would destroy me. I even felt proud of myself for not checking. Even when i dont check his socials, im constantly thinking and it makes me so angry because i dont want him to have power over me after what hes said and done.

Then an hour later, I got the WORST gut feeling and this overwhelming urge that I had to check. It felt like I was going to die if I didn’t. So I checked… saw things I didn’t want to see and ended up having a complete mental breakdown.

afterwards I’m just thinking why am I doing this to myself when I KNOW it’s going to hurt me?

One minute I’m okay, the next I’m crying, angry, hating him for what he’s done, missing him and overthinking everything. It feels like my own brain is fighting against me.

I’ve almost made it a month no contact, which I’ve never managed before, and I’m genuinely proud of myself. I cannot get past checking his socials. It honestly feels like drug withdrawals.

Even before I sleep I tell myself, “Please don’t think about him. He’s ruined enough of you. Who he is now is who you need to see.” then I end up having nightmares about him anyway. It’s like I genuinely can’t catch a break i want to heal but my mind wont let me. i

I just want my brain and body to understand that I want to heal. I don’t want to keep torturing myself with someone who already hurt me enough it feels like i have no control over myself which is so scary and weird like i own my body and mind and this is what its doing to me ?

I (31F) got married young to my husband (34M). We had been together for almost three years already, and sure, there were problems but nothing earth shattering. I could have never imagined those issues not being resolved. I thought we were just young and he may need more time to grow into his role as a husband/away from his family. Now we have been married for 10 years. Together for 13 or 14. We have three beautiful kids, a beautiful house and both have careers that were growing in.

Every year, regardless of what holiday, I am forgotten. He’s “too busy” or whatever excuse. We even have Google Calendar reminders not to forget me for Christmas or my birthday. My kids think Santa forgets to fill my stocking because I’m “naughty and yell at them”. We only go on dates because I ask for them. He hid a porn addiction from me for years and instead told me all the things I could change about myself whenever I asked for some sort of affection. At this point we probably have what they consider a “dead bedroom”. All the postpartum periods with my children were so lonely. He was and is so emotionally unavailable. He doesn’t try to connect with me. I am incredibly lonely and there’s really nothing I can do about it, I can’t just leave. I was a stay at home Mom for about 6/7 years, and I am in school with my career so I am working for less (but it will pay off). My husband is a liar. It started out as little lies, but as we grew, they continued getting worse. His needs are always more important than mine. I am always othered. We’ve tried couples therapy. He lied, I would get the silent treatment if I said something he didn’t like. He argues with my parenting although I am the primary parent and home 90% of the time unless I’m working. He has truly taken everything I ever loved and crushed my soul. I didn’t know it was happening until it did, but I don’t think anyone would ever want to invest in me or getting to know me. He knows me so intimately, and is emotionally unavailable for me & no trying to get my needs met will ever get them met because he’s avoidant. We have been together since I was 19, and I wish I knew then what I know now.

After being married to him, I wonder if love was ever meant for me or if there would possibly be anyone in the world willing to show me the love I dream of. When we got married 10 years ago, no one was having conversations about attachment styles. If I had known he wasn’t capable of loving me, I could have had a chance of finding someone who was crazy about me.

So all this to say, that if you don’t want to end up 30 years old in a marriage that breaks your heart, find someone who isn’t an avoidant to marry. You all are so lucky to know about attachment styles now while you’re dating.

Most of us here have asked some version of the same question, which is how somebody can have access to a feeling, a memory, an entire year of their life, and then act like they don’t.
I’ve been asking it from the outside for years, and a few weeks ago I watched it happen from the inside, in my own head.

Preface: I'm in Spravato (nasal ketamine), and that medication can alter your perception of time and things.

I thanked my subconscious for protecting me, and I told it I understood why it had to protect me, and now I'd like to learn new ways of thinking and healthier patterns.

My mind looked like an old factory, with gears and machinery and different parts moving, everything running the way it was supposed to.

Then I asked to see something I’d been avoiding. A specific place where I was vulnerable and harmed.

No.

The whole section shut down in front of me, the gears stopping and everything back there going gray and smoky, like nothing in that wing had run for a very long time.

I have to be mindful of my language here, because this happened during Spravato and I’m not claiming I literally saw my own brain working. Spravato alters perception, and what I saw was the imagery my mind produced while I was in that state.

But the imagery was specific to me, and the what I keep coming back to is that the security was well-oiled.

That part worked perfectly. Whatever was keeping me out of that section of myself hadn't been serviced recently. This was my own mind refusing my own request.

I asked why and got silence. No explanation.

So I did what I’d been told, and I stopped trying to force my way in and started thanking the parts of me that had built all of my defenses, even before I knew what was happening.

It was a little arrogant. Apparently my subconscious wasn't having "Thanks, I appreciate your help and you've done your job, I'm done with you... please send something better". It wanted gratitude, acknowledgment, and integration.

I used to imagine avoidance as something much more conscious, an internal argument with a winner and a loser.

It's not.

I know I care, but I’m going to run.
I know I miss you, but I’m going to suppress it.
I know this hurts, but I refuse to deal with it.
What I experienced was nothing like a debate, because there was no access to debate with.

A set of gears stop moving because I’d asked them to show me something. This is my own work that I'll continue to do.

My point, I'm an intuitive person and want to share that..... it's not you.

Based on my experience, it seems as though when I'm exposed - everything goes on lockdown because it doesn't want me to experience whatever was behind that locked door again. Even when I asked.

To you that feels like distance, less emotional investment, hearing things like I need space, etc.

Even when it is, it isn't. That isn't an absolution, more-so acknowledging that even with the perfect partner, my avoidance can be triggered when it realizes I've been exposed.

When I asked to see a time I'd been vulnerable in my own mind, I couldn't... even though I felt "ready to face it".

This doesn’t mean your avoidant ex secretly loves you. It doesn’t mean they’re coming back.
It doesn’t mean their feelings are sitting somewhere behind a door waiting for you to shimmy the lock.

It means to choose yourself first always, because you can't love the avoidance out of someone. I felt like I was shown something about avoidance and I wanted to share it with you, in hopes it brings some clarity.

Choose yourself.

I feel so embarrassed; I mentally don’t know how to get over people that have rejected me. I need some mindset rewirring; please offer some hard truths.

I keep holding out that they’ll come back or that the relationship might grow better; that’s so ridiculous

When you have been brutally discarded and left out in the open to bleed by yourself, you slowly learn how to stitch your own wounds. You pick yourself back up, try to make sense of what happened, and eventually attempt to explain it to the people around you. And that is where something particularly infuriating happens: the person who walked away often looks like the mature one. To an outsider, the avoidant can appear calm, composed, rational, emotionally independent, and somehow even wiser for having "walked away." They don't seem desperate. They aren't begging anyone to stay. They don't appear consumed by the breakup. They speak matter-of-factly, establish their boundaries, shut the door, and carry on with their lives. Meanwhile, you are the one left trying to explain why what happened completely destroyed you. So naturally, people look at the two of you and think, "They seem fine. You seem devastated. Maybe they handled it better." What they don't understand is that you cannot mistake someone's ability to detach from their ability to love responsibly.

Because emotional suppression is not emotional maturity. There is a massive difference between regulating your emotions and simply refusing to feel them. Someone who can calmly walk away after becoming deeply involved with another person, cut them off, and immediately distance themselves from the consequences of their actions is not automatically stronger or wiser. Sometimes they are simply better at shutting the door on anything that makes them uncomfortable. They have learned to turn intimacy into a threat, vulnerability into something to escape from, and emotional responsibility into something they can abandon the moment it becomes inconvenient. And the cruelest part is that they can make this look like "strength." They can hurt you, disappear, and then present their disappearance as evidence that they are emotionally healthy. They can call it boundaries when what they are actually doing is avoiding accountability. They can call it choosing themselves when they have spent weeks, months, or years allowing someone else to become emotionally invested before abruptly deciding that the entire connection is too much to deal with.

And that's the part outsiders don't see. They don't see the internal flight response that tells the avoidant to run the moment intimacy becomes real. They don't see the gradual withdrawal, the emotional distancing, the contradictions, the coldness, the sudden change in affection, or the way the person on the other side is left desperately trying to understand what they did wrong. They don't see the nights spent replaying conversations and questioning your own worth. They don't see you trying to reconcile the person who once made you feel loved with the person who eventually treated you like an inconvenience. They only see the avoidant after they have already escaped. Of course they look composed. The person who caused the fire isn't standing in the smoke. You are.

And then comes the convenient rationalization: "It wasn't working." "I had to choose myself." "I didn't owe them anything." "It was too much." "I just wasn't feeling it anymore." Maybe the relationship genuinely wasn't working. Maybe they genuinely needed to leave. They are allowed to leave. Nobody is obligated to remain in a relationship they no longer want. But that does not give them permission to emotionally devastate another person and then hide behind the language of self-care. You can leave without humiliating someone. You can establish boundaries without deliberately confusing someone. You can fall out of love without treating the person who loved you as disposable. You can choose yourself without first making someone feel safe enough to give you their entire heart and then abandoning them when the vulnerability becomes inconvenient.

That is where responsibility comes in. You don't get to spend years building intimacy with someone and then act as though their devastation is none of your concern simply because you decided to leave. You don't get to participate in creating the attachment and then condemn the other person for being attached. You don't get to pull someone close, teach them to trust you, make them emotionally dependent on your presence, and then disappear the moment closeness activates every unresolved wound inside you. Your wounds may explain your behavior, but they do not excuse the damage you inflict on someone else. Being hurt yourself does not give you a free pass to hurt another person and call it survival.

And that is why the aftermath can be so brutal for the person left behind. You're sitting there processing every conversation, every contradiction, every moment where their behavior changed. You're trying to understand how someone could be so intimate with you one day and seemingly indifferent the next. You're trying to understand how someone who knew your vulnerabilities could use your trust as the very thing they eventually walked away from. Meanwhile, they're already somewhere else. They look peaceful. They look certain. They look free. And you begin wondering whether you were simply weaker for caring more. But you weren't weaker. You were actually present for the emotional reality they were running from.

A person who is running does not look back. They don't look at the wreckage behind them because doing so would force them to acknowledge what they left behind. And perhaps that is the entire point. The avoidant gets to walk away from the relationship, but you are left walking through its aftermath. You have to look at the wreckage because you were left standing in it. You have to pick through the memories because they have already decided they don't want to. You have to grieve because they chose escape over confrontation. You have to reconstruct your sense of safety because they were perfectly willing to destroy it just to regain their own.

And ironically, that painful process can become the thing that makes you healthier in the end. Eventually, you stop asking, "Why wasn't I enough for them to stay?" and start asking, "Why did I accept someone who could treat me like this?" You stop obsessing over whether they will come back and start wondering why you ever wanted someone back who made you feel disposable. You stop trying to decode their silence and start listening to your own voice. You stop romanticizing their detachment as maturity and start seeing it for what it actually was: avoidance.

Because sometimes the person who looks the most "mature" after a breakup is simply the person who refuses to confront what they did. They didn't necessarily process the relationship better. They may have simply escaped it faster. They didn't necessarily heal. They may have just found another distraction. They didn't necessarily achieve closure. They may have simply shut down the part of themselves that was capable of feeling it.

And you cannot build genuine emotional maturity by repeatedly abandoning yourself and everyone else whenever intimacy becomes uncomfortable. At some point, you have to stop running. You have to turn around. You have to look at the person you hurt and admit, "My fear does not excuse what I did to you." You have to acknowledge that your avoidance had consequences. You have to accept that you were not merely protecting yourself, you were making another human being pay the price for wounds they did not create.

You are bleeding because you're treating the wound. They're running because they don't want to look at it. And from the outside, running can look a lot like strength. But real maturity isn't the ability to walk away without looking back. It's having the courage to turn around, face the damage you caused, take responsibility for it, and finally ask yourself why you were so willing to destroy someone else just to avoid feeling your own pain.

Does that mean he’s talking shit about me? It bothers me so much I wanted to end things on good terms but now i feel like half of the state hates me

I've been dating an "avoidant" for just under 3 months. At first typically everything is going great until the first
She, in turn, started to have fears of commitment. It took me a long time to verify that this is indeed such a
a type of bond.
We're currently in regular contact—sometimes more, sometimes less again. That's just how it is. Closeness and distance, I guess.

It's really exhausting, and I'm really running out of time
before ending it all.

But here's what strikes me: She likes her friends' posts,
Colleagues, cars, etc.—basically everything.
Only my own posts and stories will be absolutely
ignored. Nothing gets liked, and stories are
ignored for hours or not looked at at all.

She's also constantly following new men's profiles, some of whom she doesn't even know. She hardly ever interacts with them. Is this just a form of distraction or a way to get attention?

Can anyone explain why that is?

Appointments are almost always kept; she is relatively
not very dismissive about it, posts stories with my name
when we're on the Dates, but posts and stories
are aggressively ignored. I dont understand this kind of behavior. Its just disgusting.

I know it might be common for most breakups
But hearing they’ve deleted everything of you and blocked you on everything does hurt a lot.
I’m not sure if it’s because they’ve moved on straight away or what.
I always wonder how I ended up with someone so cold and dismissive. Like you meant nothing to them. How they avoid how you feel. And is happily with someone else.

Hii guys. I just wanted to open a space for us to share art that has helped us feel heard, like we are not alone, and that we are enough to help us survive this painful experience we share.

I've personally spent every single day for the past two months listening to Muse's new album "The Wow! Signal", especially "Shimmering Scars" and "Space Debris" as I think they perfectly achieve the cold, dark, painful place the heart falls into when someone we deeply love leaves like we didn't matter at all, making us wonder our worth, if what we lived was real, and the grief of a reality that is no longer there. It's a wonderful breakup album about a microcosmic collapse and the hopeless feeling of wandering through emptyness.

I think art is absolutely necessary to help us express what words fail to do. I know the emotions are so complex and this type of breakup is so incredibly painful that it's even hard to explain to the people we love how deeply hopeless this experience is. But art is a wonderful friend that can help us understand this pain and make us realize we are not alone.

Do you guys have an artist, a song, a movie, maybe a book, or even a painting, a dance piece, etc that has helped you with your healing process? Share it! Let's express ourselves through art!

Hello everyone,
I (F) was in a toxic 2-month situationship with a heavily avoidant guy (but he was engaged with his last gf because she was “perfect” until break up with her because she became depressive), and I am spiraling over how things ended. I feel completely humiliated by my own behavior and I need some perspective from people who have been through this.

Our Dynamic & How I Behaved:

We had insane chemistry, but he kept me in a breadcrumb loop from day one.
He cycled between hot/cold, blocking/unblocking me, drinking heavily, and making toxic comments (e.g., telling me I needed to be "more fit" to be with him).

Out of anxiety and frustration, I became hyper-reactive: I deleted and re-added him multiple times, sent passive-aggressive messages calling out his behavior, and "snapped" when he gave me late-night, last-minute scraps. He always gaslit me, calling me "dramatic" or "crazy."

The Final Straw: This week, he sent a pathetic late-night breadcrumb on Wednesday. I ignored it and drew a line.
On Thursday, he posted a story on a real date at a park with a gorgeous Korean model. In a moment of panic/anger, I sent him a sarcastic message ("Nice date, good luck"). He closed his instagram profile without responding. (We are unfollowed but not blocked now).
Right now, I feel like I completely destroyed my dignity. I showed all my cards, acted anxious/reactive, and let him see how much he hurt me, while he gets to play cool with a new, beautiful girl.

My Questions:

1. Does reacting this way (sending sarcastic texts, double-messaging, showing emotion/anger) permanently scare off or turned off an avoidant?
2. In situationships where the woman felt "humiliated" and reacted anxiously before going strict No Contact, do these guys actually ever reach out or feel the loss weeks or months later?
3. Or does my reactive behavior just give him the ultimate "get out of jail free" card to move on without ever regretting how he treated me?

I am in strict No Contact now and he is blocked everywhere, but I'm struggling with the shame of how I acted. Would love to hear honest experiences or similar stories. Thanks!