Women and Hope for the Avoidant Man

Where have all the good men gone? If you are in your teens or 20s, this probably isn’t a big issue yet. But, as you push 40, you may find yourself swimming in what seems to be a dating pool of avoidant men. Of course, there are avoidant women, too, and the patterns are not that dissimilar, and many people will not be pursuing heterosexual relationships. Clinically, however, women pursuing avoidant men seem to bear the brunt of the issue.

When people say someone is “avoidant,” they usually are referring to someone with a dismissing attachment style. The three other attachment styles are secure, anxious (preoccupied), and fearful. Whereas people with fearful styles are avoidant, they also are equally anxious. So, when I refer to “avoidant” in the remainder of this article, I am referring to the dismissing style.

Avoidant/dismissing people can be very charismatic. They often present themselves as successful, self-assured, and charming. They are initially quite flattering and interested in getting you talking about yourself. Their self-confidence and being unflappable makes them a challenge and you come away from your early interactions feeling energized and excited about the prospects. You are full of hope for what could be.

Hope and Attachment Theory

Hope is a good thing according to contemporary positive psychologists. I spent my graduate school years at the University of Kansas researching hope, and it was that that led me to my research on attachment theory. Poor parenting leads to a paucity of hope in adulthood through its contribution to insecure attachment styles. On the other hand, positive parenting leads to secure attachment and underlies the adult hopeful personality. But, hope, or what we can call “false hope” can also be bad.

According to the Greek myth of Pandora, hope was the last evil to remain inside of Pandora’s box when the remaining evils were released into the world. So, how can hope be evil, and why can it cause so much pain?

Hope is the belief that a positive future is likely because you have the strategies and motivation to reach those goals that you are striving for. But you need all three components (goals, pathways, and motivation) for hope to translate into positive mental health and emotional outcomes. Hence, there are three places where this positive formula can go awry.

Avoidant Men

And this brings us back to avoidant men.

They paint an enticing picture of romance. They let you dream of an idealized romantic future. They let this image linger just long enough to let it solidify in your mind. In other words, they provide you with the goal component of hope.

They then passively or actively encourage you as you dream and strategize the pathways to that imagined future. Their evident desire for you rewards you with positive feelings and motivates you to put more energy into the relationship. But, as your strategies fail, you may find yourself desperately grasping for any type of handhold to keep you afloat.

My years of working with avoidant men have convinced me that, for the most part, they are not doing this in a cold, calculated way (although some have gone over the edge into manipulative sociopathy). You can read more here to understand the underlying emotional/neural mechanisms. Nevertheless, the outcome is the same.

After a time, you realize that the goal you have been pursuing may never materialize. Most of your efforts to get the safe feeling of love, connection, and commitment have yielded little. When you talk to him, that avoidant man will still let you cling to that goal you originally envisioned. He won’t typically put you out of your misery. And he will give you the message that if you keep trying (motivation!), your efforts might pay off. But he won’t give you any viable routes to the objective or those he does lay out end up being dead ends.

And it gets even worse if you have connected that future you fantasized to one particular avoidant man. So, if you give up hope for him, it seems to you that you will be giving up hope for a positive romantic future. You cling to that dream with all of your might … and so you cling to him in an atmosphere of increasing despair.

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But there is a way to get out of this cycle.

1. Find new strategies. Do the “brain transplant test.” Ask yourself: Short of cutting his head open and putting someone else’s brain in there, is there anything that I could do to change his mindset? If the answer is no, then stop looking for strategies. If the answer is yes, consider what strategies might work for you. In evaluating strategies, ask yourself if such a tactic has worked in the past (if you keep banging your head on the wall, you will just get bloody). Don’t keep trying tactics that have never worked. If you can’t find viable strategies to securing a safe, loving, committed relationship with this person, then move on to the next step.

2. Change your goal. Research and scholarly writings on hope assert that high-hope people do not stubbornly cling to unachievable goals. When a goal is deemed unattainable, it is best to accept your losses and choose another goal (see also 3a below). One goal might be to find your happiness and fulfillment outside of the romantic arena.

3. Find new motivation: After a “failure” you will need to re-energize and find new motivation for getting back out there. First, try cognitive restructuring. This is where you directly challenge your thoughts and ideas.

a. Was it really a failure? If your goal was to get into a safe, loving, and committed relationship with this particular avoidant person, then, yes, it was a failure. But, if the goal was to have a safe, loving, committed relationship generally, then you probably dodged a bullet. It wasn’t a failure after all. In this case, the avoidant man in question was just a failed strategy to meet your actual goal … that of having a safe, loving, committed relationship with someone who excites you.

b. Accept that the strategy of winning over the avoidant man is not viable for you. It certainly gets you excited (it’s actually anxiety!), but not the other components of your goal.

c. Develop strategies for dating secure and anxiously attached men. I’m sorry, but it’s true that more secure men are likely to have been taken out of the dating pool by the time someone is beyond their mid-30s (unless they have re-goaled from their avoidant wives).

Anxiously attached men may not give you all the excitement you crave because they are too predictable and easy to get (no challenge; high-hope people prefer challenging goals), but they will give you the safe, loving, and commitment parts you want. And, you can keep the excitement going by placing healthy limits on (over) texting and frequency of contact in the early phases of a relationship.

And remember that your hope is not for one person; it is for your happiness in life. If an avoidant man asks you why you are ending it, just tell him that you are sorry but that he is simply a failed strategy.