Avoidance, Anxiety, and the Mechanisms Behind Couple Conflict

Professor Overall: I love studying attachment avoidance. I love studying attachment anxiety as well, but I have an affinity for understanding attachment avoidance, because there are some benefits of attachment anxiety within relationships for individuals and their partners – they’re really invested. Now, it can be difficult to be really invested, but it can also create moments of intimacy and bonding and joy.

But people who are high in attachment avoidance – they have less opportunity to experience those moments of connection that make us full, happy people with meaningful lives. And it’s not that people who are high in attachment avoidance don’t want to have these experiences, because they’re wired just like everyone else, and get the same benefits of being connected and supported in terms of their health and well-being.

But there are real barriers for them to experience that – because of their distrust of others, and their need for autonomy and independence and self-protection that stops them from approaching intimacy.

It becomes even more difficult in ongoing relationships, because relationships are never perfect. Why relationships are fascinating and why they’re hard is because they involve two people that have different needs, that have different interests. No matter how much you love your partner, no matter how great your relationship is, you’re going to experience times where your interests are in conflict, when you’re not going to want to do the same thing, when you’re affecting your partner in a negative way, when you need their support, or when they need your support.

For people who are high in attachment avoidance, when those situations arise, their automatic response is that there is something unreasonable about what’s being requested of them. That there is… that it is an imposition on their autonomy and their independence. Really, because deep down, it’s not safe. Now, whether they experience that deep down is another question. It may not feel like that for the person high in avoidance. Instead, what it feels like is that the partner is asking for something unreasonable.

So people high in attachment avoidance are more likely to respond with anger and withdrawal during conflict,¹ because it feels like their autonomy is being impinged upon – that their partner is being unreasonable in their influence of them, and that there is a sense of malintent in some way, even when that is not the case.² They’re just more likely to see it that way.

People high in attachment avoidance are also biased in their perceptions of their partner’s negative emotions. They see them as more angry and hurt than they actually are. They see them as more distressed and trying to get support and care from them than they really are. That’s because their concern is that, in some way, their partners are doing something that’s not fair, that’s unreasonable, that they can’t trust. So their general strategy is to withdraw from their partner.

One of the reasons we’ve shown recently in research that people high in avoidance withdraw is because it reduces the power their partner has over them.³ It reduces the degree to which their partner can influence them. So they’re not trying to protect their own power – which I think is what some people think people high in avoidance are doing, trying to protect their own control and power over the situation. What they’re trying to do is avoid other people having power over them. So they withdraw.

Professor Overall: When we use the term defensiveness, we’re really talking about the concerns about autonomy and independence – actually, the concerns about not being dependent. It’s not about being completely independent; it’s about not being dependent in ways that give the partner power to hurt or neglect and so needing to trust the partner.

So when we talk about avoidant defenses, we’re really talking about situations that activate those concerns of autonomy and not being dependent, and therefore are more likely to create anger and withdrawal as a way to manage that situation.

The behaviors and the contexts that down-regulate that type of defence are those which directly address the concerns of people high in attachment avoidance. A lot of our research in the last 10 years has been focused on what partners can do to reduce the degree to which this process is happening – what can they do to alleviate these concerns that trigger these avoidant withdrawn strategies?

One is being softer with influence.⁴ When we’re trying to influence our partner during conflict or communicate with them about an area of dissatisfaction, we do it in a softer way that recognizes the autonomy needs of people high in attachment avoidance – that does it a little less directly, takes a little bit more time to invite the avoidant person to feel safe enough to have that conversation and that interaction.

I’m not suggesting at all that people who are experiencing difficulties with somebody high in avoidance shouldn’t be expressing their needs, or their hurt, or their anger. Those are all important emotions that we need to express to our partners to resolve relationship problems. But it’s more about the way that those are communicated – that keeps avoidant people in the interaction, or at least doesn’t push them so hard that they’re not able to engage in a constructive way.

Other ingredients of behaviors that buffer people high in attachment avoidance are showing that you’re trustworthy – showing that they can actually trust that you don’t have bad intentions. Sometimes that’s as simple as recognizing in a conflict, or discussing a conflicting interest or a sacrifice that they need to make in order to make their family work or the relationship work, what avoidant people have brought to the table – what they have tried to do, given their particular kinds of concerns and needs.⁵

When people high in attachment avoidance need support, they similarly withdraw, because they don’t feel safe with their emotions. When you try to directly provide support to people high in attachment avoidance, they’re like, “Get away from me. I don’t need you, I don’t want you, you’re taking over.” So again, it’s about a softer, more indirect support style that really is guided by the needs of the avoidant person – coupled with direct expressions of care in ways that people high in attachment avoidance can digest.

Professor Overall: The principles we want to think about applying when understanding how to respond to people high in avoidance or anxiety are: what are the underlying concerns and needs that drive these sometimes unhelpful strategies?

For people high in attachment anxiety, they’re really interesting because they’re facing dual motives. On the one hand, they really strongly desire intimacy and closeness and acceptance. They want to be loved, and they want to be loving. Those motivations can increase a lot of positive behaviors in relationships that help relationships thrive.

But coupled with that motive is a fear of rejection and abandonment, and a belief that the partner – even if they’re loving now – will not be loving in the future. So they can be really happy now and never be completely settled, because the fear isn’t about what’s happening now. It’s about: in the future, I still could be let down by this person.

The kinds of behaviors that really soothe people high in attachment anxiety within conflict interactions are those that are real, clear demonstrations that the partner is committed and that they’re loved. But it’s not just that they love them right now – it’s about showing a commitment for the future. Allowing people high in anxiety to feel a little bit safe – and the feeling that their partner will be there continually in the future.

This can be difficult, because you can be really loving in the moment and that still not get to that real inkling that maybe this won’t last. “Maybe they will still let me down next conflict, or next week, or when they meet somebody attractive at work, or when I’m depressed, or when we have children” – this kind of catastrophizing about what’s going to happen in the future.

So partners who are very clear in their expressions of commitment are more likely to help people high in attachment anxiety feel more secure in their relationship⁵ – and therefore express that more motive for closeness and intimacy, rather than the fear of rejection and the kinds of negative emotions and behaviors that can stem from it.

Professor Overall: The demand-withdraw pattern is a communication pattern characterized by one partner really trying to demand change in a conflict area, or trying to express their feelings and engage the partner in conflict interactions or discussions about their problems, or trying to push forward an issue in the relationship. And the other partner withdrawing or disengaging – trying to avoid the discussions, or within an actual conflict interaction, just shutting down. Reducing eye contact, closing off with the body, turning away. In the lab we see that, but in real life, that’s often walking out the door, or just going into another room. Exit stage left.

Even secure people will experience this pattern. This is just inevitable – whenever we’re in a relationship, we’re going to disagree. We’re dependent on each other. Everything we do affects one another, and that’s not always going to be in a good way. So this kind of pattern is relatively common.

It’s common because, often, when there are areas of conflict in a relationship, it’s because one person wants change. Think about all of the common relationship problems we have: couples fight about communication, the amount of time spent together, the division of labor, parenting, how often we have sex and how we might have sex, how we manage in-laws and our families. These are common issues. And most often, when we’re experiencing disagreement about an issue, it’s because one person wants change. One person wants the other person to think, feel, and behave differently.

When we’re struggling with communication, it’s usually because one partner wants the other to listen more, and that partner wants the other not to yell as much. When we’re having trouble about time spent together or intimacy, it’s usually because one partner wants more intimacy and therefore wants the other partner to want more intimacy.

When the demand-withdraw pattern was first being researched, like 50 years ago, it was a very gendered dynamic. You saw demand-withdraw as women as the demanding one, and men as the withdrawing one. But actually, that’s because in man-woman relationships, women are usually the ones that are looking after the relationship and trying to improve things. If you switch it over and you get couples to discuss a topic that the man would like to change in man-woman couples, then the gender differences go away. It really isn’t about gender – it’s about the role that you have in the conflict. I want to improve this, I want this to be better, and I want you to think and feel differently about it. It really depends who’s in that role.

Of course, when you come back to attachment, the person more likely to be in the demand role is going to be somebody higher in anxiety compared to avoidance – because people high in attachment anxiety want things in their relationship. They want things to be better. They want things to improve. They’re more likely to respond to even small disagreements as though it’s a major problem. So their motivation to have a good relationship and to be stable means they’re more likely to be in this demanding role.

People high in attachment avoidance, on the other hand, are not monitoring the quality of their relationship as much. They are not wanting to make drama if there isn’t one to be made. And they’re more likely, when they’re on the receiving end of somebody’s request for change or expression of dissatisfaction, to be withdrawn.

Professor Overall: Intuitively, we do think, “Oh, when we see couples having different responses and strategies, that’s an anxiety-avoidance combination.” But the empirical evidence for these kinds of combinations is not very robust.

That could be for a variety of reasons. One: they’re actually quite rare – couples where one partner is really high in anxiety and one is really high in avoidance. That’s probably likely because that couple would really struggle to enter a long-term committed relationship. (Depending on the cultural context, I have to say, because we often think about choice in relationships and entering relationships that aren’t always necessarily the kinds of choices we think we’re making – particularly in contexts where women are more dependent on men for resources.)

We also may just not get to see very many anxious-avoidant pairs in our research, for the same reason avoidant people don’t come to The Attachment Project and complete the questionnaire. People who are really, really struggling – and couples where there might be high anxiety and high avoidance, and therefore having a lot of struggles – really may not be coming to the lab to participate in a relationship study, or even completing questionnaires. They may be turning up to therapy more, for those who are in a context that can afford therapy, and perhaps if they have children and they need to stay together.

So I think it is probably a bit of a myth that it’s a common pairing. But that myth comes from a more general myth that people are categories – that you’re anxious, or you’re avoidant, or you’re secure. That isn’t the case. Attachment insecurity is a dimension. We’re high versus low in anxiety, high versus low in avoidance. When we’re low in both, we’re more likely to be secure.

What that means is that there are probably often relationships in which there are tendencies toward anxiety in one and tendencies toward avoidance in the other – but they’re not anxious-avoidant pairs in the way we think of them as categories of people. The tendencies and the way that we often respond to these ‘diagnostic situations’ – by which I mean situations where we need to trust our partner – those situations are going to bring out our tendencies toward different types of strategies. So the experience of an anxious-avoidant pair is probably more common than actually a diagnosis or category of couples being that way. Because whenever our partner is responding in a different way than us, it feels quite discrepant.

The empirical evidence for whether anxiety and avoidance combinations create unique problems is also not really that reliable. There are some studies that show some patterns; there are some others that don’t. But what we see in couple interactions is that these different orientations can ramp up the other type of insecurity.

You think about people high in attachment avoidance, entering conflict, already concerned that their partner is experiencing more negative emotions than is justified, and wanting more from them than is reasonable, and trying to influence them. And their partner is a little bit more anxious than they are avoidant or secure – and they’re really wanting to talk about the problem, and really trying to express their feelings, and really wanting to get into resolving the issue, to have closeness, to have intimacy. You can see that those different needs and strategies are going to clash, or at least create a little bit more difficulty for the couples to come together in a way that would allow them to move through that interaction in a successful way.

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