---
title: 'Ignite and Settle (Part 2): Avoidant Attachment — Why We Want to Run When Someone Gets Close'
date: 2026-06-28T20:10:00+08:00
draft: false
showtoc: true
tocopen: false
type: posts
author: ["Xinwei Xiong"]
keywords: ["avoidant attachment", "attachment theory", "intimacy", "Chinese family", "emotional neglect", "childhood", "psychology", "self-repair"]
tags:
  - Psychology
  - Attachment
  - Relationships
  - Intimacy
  - Inner Work
  - Personal Growth
  - Self-Discovery
  - Love
categories:
  - Growth
description: >
  In the Chinese context, what people often call avoidant personality is more precisely avoidant attachment. Its core is not no need for love but a slowly learned lesson from childhood: expressing needs does not work, getting close is not safe, carrying it alone is steadiest. This piece lays out where it grows from, what its underlying beliefs look like, how it typically shows up, and step by step how it can be repaired — both with others and with yourself.
tldr:
  - Avoidant is not coldness. It is an early-learned lesson — expressing needs doesn't work, getting close isn't safe, carrying it alone is steadiest.
  - The pattern usually forms between ages 0 and 6, with 0 to 3 most critical. It isn't formed on any single day — it's the residue of repeated adaptation.
  - The core of repair is not forcing yourself to become warmer. It is allowing another person to come closer, a little at a time, without losing yourself.
  - The single most important sentence — you are not broken. You learned to protect yourself too early. That protection has now become excessive.
maturity: budding
columns:
  - ignite-and-settle
series:
  name: Ignite and Settle
  slug: ignite-and-settle
  order: 2
  total: 3
---

> This is Part 2 of "Ignite and Settle."
> Part 1, [The Quality and Time of Companionship](/en/growth/posts/2026-06-28-ignite-and-settle-1-quality-and-time/), described the act of "running when someone gets close."
> This part focuses on its origins and repair.
> Part 3 will describe anxious attachment — its mirror, with which it is biting at the bottom.

---

## 1. First, get the terminology right

In the Chinese context, what people often call "avoidant personality" is more accurately **avoidant attachment** or **emotional avoidance** — not necessarily the clinical "Avoidant Personality Disorder" (AvPD).

These are very different.

- Clinical AvPD is a specific diagnosis in DSM-5, requiring long-standing, pervasive, cross-context social withdrawal, fear of rejection, and meaningful functional impairment.
- Avoidant in the attachment sense is a **relational style** organized in attachment research from the 1970s–80s by Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, and later Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver. It doesn't describe a "disorder" — it describes a default operating mode in intimate relationships.

This article is about the second.

Its core is not "no need for love." The opposite, actually — the longing for love in avoidant people is often no less than anyone else's, sometimes deeper. It's just that, very early on, they were taught one lesson, over and over:

> Expressing needs doesn't work. Getting close to people isn't safe. Carrying it alone is steadiest.

That three-line lesson wasn't taught on any single day, in any single sit-down. It was trained in by ten thousand small things.

Let's lay those "small things" out.

---

## 2. Seven common soils for avoidant attachment

A caveat first: not everyone who lives through these environments becomes avoidant. Personality and attachment are also shaped by temperament, peers, later relationships, friendships, teachers, major events. What follows are statistically common soils, not verdicts.

### 1) Emotional needs chronically ignored

When the child was sad, hurt, scared, the caregiver responded not with comfort but with:

- "What's there to cry about?"
- "Stop being so dramatic."
- "Why are you so fragile?"
- "Stop bothering me."
- "Figure it out yourself."

Over time the child builds an experience:

> Me having emotions = bothering others = getting rejected.

So they suppress emotion, look mature, independent, calm — but inside it's "I don't dare ask."

A classic finding in attachment research supports this: avoidant attachment is systematically correlated with caregivers being "unavailable, under-responsive" when the child is in distress. The infant isn't unaware of this — they just discover that expressing won't get a response. So they **down-regulate** their help-seeking and proximity-seeking, to maintain the relationship they can't leave.

The keyword is **down-regulate**, not "disappear." The need is still there. It just stops being expressed. In adulthood this turns into a particularly twisted state: I clearly need it — but I cut the need before it shows, then explain to myself "I didn't really need it that much."

### 2) Parents value performance, rules, and function; not feelings

A common pattern in Chinese families:

- "As long as you're fed and clothed."
- "I work this hard to send you to school — what more do you want?"
- "Good grades are what matters."
- "Don't talk about feelings, they're useless."

This is not a complete absence of love. It's love expressed entirely as **providing, controlling, demanding, planning**. The child may know the parent is "doing it for me," but doesn't feel understood as a person.

So in adulthood they become: capable of doing things, taking responsibility, working hard — but not great at intimacy, not great at being playful or vulnerable.

These people are often praised at work — reliable, independent, stress-tolerant, unemotional. Ironically, much of this "strength" is a side effect of trauma. A person who was emotionally caught as a child isn't necessarily this hard; a child allowed to be little isn't necessarily this "mature."

### 3) Shame, denial, or putdowns in intimate relationships

Parents who often say:

- "Why are you so useless?"
- "Look at other people's kids."
- "With your personality, no one will like you."
- "Don't embarrass me."

These children learn to hide their true selves, because expressing the real thing brings criticism. Long-term emotional neglect, emotional abuse, and being put down are all correlated with later avoidance, social withdrawal, and difficulty with intimacy.

A more subtle version is **comparative shaming**: the parent never hits you directly, but constantly references "other people's children." The damage is huge, because it isn't attacking what you did — it's attacking who you are, telling you "the way you exist is wrong."

A person raised like this develops, in adulthood, **a strong reflex of shame around exposure**. Even with someone who shows no sign of attacking them, their first response after being vulnerable is to want to withdraw — not because this specific person is unsafe, but because their body long ago encoded "exposure = attack" at a base layer.

### 4) Parents who don't know how to express love either

Many Chinese parents aren't unloving — they were never loved well themselves. Their way of expressing love often looks like:

> Giving money, cooking, monitoring school, planning your life, criticizing you "for your own good."

But they don't say:

- "Are you having a hard time today?"
- "It's okay, I'm here."
- "You can lean on me."
- "You don't have to perform well to deserve love."

So what the child receives is: **the relationship is conditional. Love must be earned by performance.**

This deserves an extra paragraph. If you look back at many Chinese kids praised as "mature beyond their years," they often carry a baseline of "I must be useful, otherwise I have no value." This isn't innate diligence. It's a survival logic confirmed early and repeatedly — only when I am useful to you do you stay.

In adulthood this logic secretly shapes their romantic patterns: they may habitually give to a partner (cooking, solving problems, organizing life), but **they find it very hard to be taken care of**. Being taken care of is dangerous for them — it means they're temporarily "not useful," and the old program firmly believes useless people get left behind.

### 5) A cold, tense, low-touch household

Some families have no obvious violence, no major trauma — they're just chronically cold:

- Nobody talks about real things;
- Praise is rare;
- Physical touch is rare;
- Mistakes are met with silent treatment;
- Family members live parallel lives;
- The moment an emotion appears, it gets pressed down.

This kind of environment develops a **"low-need personality"** in the child: doesn't bother others, doesn't initiate, doesn't get close easily. Looks very mature. The substance is early-ripened.

"Early-ripened" and "mature" look alike but aren't the same. Mature is the steadiness after full development. Early-ripened is when some development is accelerated to completion and other development is frozen. An early-ripened child looks like an adult in function, but is missing the capacities one only develops by being allowed to be childish — they can't be silly, can't throw tantrums, can't run into someone's arms asking to be hugged, can't say "I'm tired, I don't want to do this anymore." They don't have these capacities because they never got to practice.

### 6) Strong control, weak emotional support

A common Chinese family combination:

- Heavy involvement in daily life;
- High academic demands;
- Wants to be involved in your friends, romance, major, work;
- But cannot catch you when you're truly suffering.

This produces a deep contradiction in the child: **kept close in control, alone in feeling.**

So in adulthood they crave intimacy on one hand, and fear being controlled and engulfed on the other. **The moment someone gets close, they want to retreat. The moment someone demands an emotional response, they want to flee.**

People shaped by this kind of "close-up loneliness" develop a near-sacred sensitivity to "personal space." Being pushed, interrogated, told "we have to talk this out today" — all of it can activate the childhood feeling of "nowhere to escape," because as a child there really was nowhere to escape.

### 7) Children forced to be "good"

Many avoidants were often praised as kids:

- "Such a mature child."
- "Never worries their parents."
- "Very independent."
- "Rarely cries."

But this "maturity" isn't always innate stability. Often it's because the child discovered: **expressing needs doesn't help, and may even cause trouble**.

So they learned not to ask, not to be playful, not to expose vulnerability. In adulthood this becomes:

> Disappears when stressed, gets tense when relationships deepen, uncomfortable when cared for.

If someone in your life is praised as "exceptionally independent, never made the parents worry" — be gentle. Beneath that independence is often a childhood where dependence wasn't allowed.

---

## 3. Underlying beliefs: the inner monologue avoidants themselves may not hear

The Chinese-style avoidant soil is usually not "no one raised them at all." It's:

> **Raised materially, demanded of functionally, with no one catching the feelings, the real self rarely seen.**

The underlying beliefs typically run:

- "I can't need others too much."
- "If I express, no one will understand."
- "Getting close means losing control."
- "I have to be independent so I don't get hurt."
- "If I don't bother people, they won't leave."

Note the last one — it has a particularly hidden tragedy:

> I use **lowering my needs** to keep you. I believe that if I don't ask, you won't find me annoying, and won't leave.

In reality this strategy almost never works. Because intimacy is exactly what's fed by "needing each other." The more you shrink yourself down to not-disturbing, the more the other person finds nothing to grab onto, nowhere to invest, and eventually really does leave.

The most common tragedy avoidants face: **the "I won't bother you" they spent everything maintaining is exactly what slowly killed the relationship.** They thought they were protecting it. They were actually suffocating it.

---

## 4. Formation timeline: when does it get installed?

The prototype of avoidant attachment usually starts forming between **0 and 6 years old, with 0–3 being most critical**. It isn't formed on any single day — it's a long, repeated adaptation.

### 0–1: The base layer of safety begins

The infant tests, through crying, looking, reaching, cuddling:

- "Will you come when I need you?"
- "Can you soothe me when I'm scared?"
- "If I express, will you respond?"

If caregivers are chronically cold, irritable, or absent, the child slowly down-regulates expression.

This is the earliest seed of avoidance: **I'm safer if I don't express.**

### 1–3: Intimacy patterns stabilize

Self-awareness emerges. The child more clearly seeks comfort, companionship, recognition.

If parents often say:

- "Stop crying."
- "Go play by yourself."
- "Don't be clingy."
- "Why are you so annoying?"
- "What's there to be scared of?"

The child learns: **getting close gets rejected, expressing emotion gets denied.**

So they become "not bothering anyone," "very mature," "not clingy."

### 3–6: The defense style takes shape

Now the child understands evaluation, shame, rules, comparison.

In environments full of denial, shame, silent treatment, and over-control, the child more easily forms a defense:

- "I won't expose real feelings."
- "I won't depend too much."
- "I'll handle it myself."

The avoidant pattern becomes more visible.

### 6–12: The pattern gets reinforced

Elementary school: peers and teachers enter the picture. If home is still emotionally cold or school adds rejection, shame, bullying, the child further confirms:

> Relationships aren't reliable. Relying on myself is safest.

Avoidance extends from "avoiding parents" to "avoiding friends, teachers, future partners."

### Adolescence: it becomes a visible relational style

Stronger self-esteem, shame, romantic need, and identity arrive. If the avoidant base is there, adolescence may show as:

- Doesn't initiate liking;
- Afraid of being seen through;
- Wants to flee the moment a relationship gets close;
- Uncomfortable being cared for;
- Cold-handles conflict;
- Says "doesn't matter" out loud but is actually very sensitive.

**Adolescence isn't the formation period — it's often the period of concentrated visibility.** Parents suddenly notice "the child changed." But nothing changed suddenly. The program installed earlier just finally entered the environment (dating, social life, peer evaluation) where it really runs.

### Bottom line

Roughly:

- The core of avoidance forms between **ages 0–6**;
- **0–3** is the critical window for safety and attachment;
- **6–12** reinforces it;
- After **adolescence** it becomes a visible relational style.

But it is **not unchangeable**. Stable relationships in adulthood, therapy, self-awareness, sustained respectful and responsive contact — all can slowly rewrite the pattern.

The most essential line:

> **Repeatedly discovering as a child that "dependence doesn't work" makes you, as an adult, accustomed to "not depending."**

It's not a character defect. It's an adaptation that was reasonable then and is excessive now.

---

## 5. The path of repair: ten concrete moves

The core of repairing "avoidance" is **not to force yourself to be extroverted or clingy**. It is to relearn one thing:

> Intimacy doesn't have to equal danger. Expressing need doesn't have to mean getting rejected. Depending on someone doesn't equal weakness.

The ten directions below.

### 1) Stop calling yourself "cold"

Most avoidants aren't unfeeling. They have a lot of feelings, just don't dare express.

On the surface:

- "I don't need it."
- "Whatever."
- "I'm fine alone."
- "Leave me alone."

Underneath, often:

- "I'm scared if I express, you won't care."
- "I'm scared if I need you, you'll find me annoying."
- "I'm scared if I get close, I'll get controlled."
- "I'm scared if I expose myself, I'll get hurt."

The first step is to change "I'm broken" into:

> I developed an avoidance system to protect myself in the past. That system is a bit overactive now.

This matters. **You aren't bad. You learned to protect yourself too early.** Switching your stance toward yourself from "fixing a malfunction" to "understanding a once-necessary strategy" is what makes all subsequent work hold.

### 2) Identify your avoidance triggers

Avoidants don't always avoid. They're triggered in specific situations.

Common triggers:

- The other person becomes suddenly very close;
- They ask "what do you really think";
- They express disappointment;
- The relationship enters a commitment phase;
- Their emotions get intense;
- You feel demanded of, controlled;
- After a conflict you don't know how to respond.

In those moments the avoidant slips into three default modes: **cold, vanish, rationalize**.

- "I'll just not reply for now."
- "I don't see the need to explain."
- "This relationship is too much trouble."
- "I'm more comfortable alone."
- "The other person is too emotional."

Train yourself, when these thoughts arise, to pause and ask:

- Am I really not caring, or am I nervous?
- Do I want to end the relationship, or escape the pressure?
- What I need right now — is it space, or safety?

If you can ask these three questions in the moment of impulse, you've already won half the battle. The mistake avoidants make most often is mistaking "nervous" for "not in love" and "wanting to escape pressure" for "wanting to break up."

### 3) Practice expressing "low-intensity needs"

Don't force yourself into deep disclosure right away. Avoidants are best served by starting with low-risk expression.

Where you used to say:

- "Nothing."
- "No need."
- "Whatever."
- "You decide."

You can shift to:

- "I'm a bit scattered, can we talk later?"
- "It's not that I don't care, I just need a little time."
- "I'm a bit uncomfortable, but I haven't sorted out how to say it yet."
- "I want to be alone for a while, but I'm not leaving you."
- "Actually I do care about this."

The point isn't expressing perfectly. The point is letting the other person know: **you're not cold, you just need to go slower.**

This small step is a **paradigm shift** for avoidants — discovering for the first time that "expressing need" doesn't have to be handing yourself over all at once. It can be one sentence, one small update, one brief status note. After this low-risk expression succeeds a few times, your body starts to believe it's safe and possible.

### 4) Don't solve pressure by disappearing

What hurts relationships most isn't an avoidant needing space — it's **sudden disappearance, no explanation, cold treatment**.

You can ask for space, but with a boundary statement. For example:

> "I'm a bit full emotionally, I want to be quiet for two hours. I'll get back to you tonight."

Simple, but very useful. It transmits three things:

1. I need space;
2. I'm not abandoning you;
3. I will be back.

This is critical practice for avoidants. It turns "retreat" from a **unilateral disappearance** into a **mutually understood pause**. The former lets the other's anxiety accumulate until it explodes. The latter gives the relationship room.

Many avoidants initially feel "why do I have to explain when I retreat, that's a hassle." But: you're not explaining — you're **acknowledging the other person is also in this relationship**. Retreating without saying a word is like saying "I get to decide what happens in this relationship, your feelings don't need to be informed." That's an invisible form of control, just dressed as "I just need space."

### 5) Practice receiving care

Many avoidants get uncomfortable when cared for, sometimes want to hide.

Someone says: "Are you okay?"
Your reflex is: "Nothing." "I'm fine." "Don't worry about it."

You can practice something a bit more real:

- "Actually a bit tired."
- "I'm okay, but thanks for asking."
- "I don't know how to say it, but I appreciate you asking."
- "I don't want to get into it now, but I felt your care."

This isn't being precious. **It's retraining your brain that being cared for is not danger.**

For avoidants, being cared for has a strange discomfort to it — you long for it and instinctively recoil from it. That reaction isn't ingratitude. It's your nervous system protecting you. In its old files, admitting "I need to be cared for" = admitting "I have a weakness" = exposure = attack. That chain takes time to unpack, piece by piece. The fastest way isn't insight, it's repeated experience — letting the experience of being cared for land, again and again, letting your body verify "this time there was no attack."

### 6) Build "safe relationship samples"

Avoidants can't change by thinking alone. They need **new relational experiences**.

Slowly identify who is safe:

- They speak steadily;
- They don't humiliate you on a whim;
- They don't weaponize your vulnerability;
- They don't force immediate responses;
- They respect your boundaries;
- They can also express their own needs.

In front of these people, **practice a little openness**.

Not handing over everything at once. Start with 5%:

- Share one real feeling;
- Admit one need;
- Express one bit of caring;
- Allow them to come a little closer.

The key to avoidant repair isn't "suddenly becoming warm." It's **incrementally increasing realness** with safe people.

Psychologist Dan Siegel put it well: **relational problems ultimately have to be healed in relationships.** No amount of solo reading or meditation can fully replace the **corrective experience** of "I tried something new in a safe relationship, and was not punished for it."

### 7) Distinguish "independence" from "isolation"

Healthy independence:

> I can take care of myself, and I can also connect.

Avoidant isolation:

> I can only rely on myself, because I don't trust anyone.

These look alike, are fundamentally different.

Ask yourself:

- Am I alone because I enjoy solitude, or because I fear disappointment?
- Am I choosing not to depend, or do I simply not dare to depend?
- When I say "doesn't matter" — does it really not matter, or do I not dare let it matter?

This distinction is enormous. **Chosen solitude and forced isolation look identical from the outside and feel utterly different from inside.** The first is rich, recharging, quietly being with yourself. The second is a tense withdrawal — refusing to get close first so as not to be hurt.

### 8) Don't only ask "are we compatible"

Avoidants often suddenly start nit-picking when relationships deepen:

- "Is he too clingy?"
- "Is she too much trouble?"
- "Are we not compatible?"
- "Am I out of love?"
- "I'm better off alone."

These questions aren't necessarily wrong. But often they're the avoidance system looking for an exit.

Add one more question:

> If I weren't fleeing, what do I actually need from this person?

Like:

- "I need you not to demand an immediate response from me."
- "I need you not to yell during conflict."
- "I need some personal space."
- "I need you, when expressing dissatisfaction, not to negate me as a whole person."
- "I need to enter commitment more slowly."

**Stating a need is more mature than just fleeing.** And when you try to state these needs, you'll often discover an astonishing fact: people are often willing to adjust, and the force pushing you to flee shrinks correspondingly. That "I must leave" urgency was often because you thought your only options were "endure" or "flee." There's a third: **say it.**

### 9) If you are in a relationship with an avoidant

Don't chase too hard, but also don't fully let go. Best practice: **steady, clear, with boundaries**.

Example:

> "I respect that you need space, but I cannot accept your disappearing for three days without a reason. You can tell me how long you need."

Not controlling, not pleasing.

The two extremes most damaging in a relationship with an avoidant:

- **Interrogating, chasing, emotional bombardment** — this activates their childhood fear of being engulfed; they'll flee faster.
- **Infinite patience, no limit** — they lose respect for you, the balance tips.

The middle road: **acknowledge their avoidance is real, while holding that your needs are also real**. Two real people don't require sacrificing either.

### 10) An effective repair sequence

In this order:

1. **Notice**: when do I want to flee?
2. **Name**: I'm not "out of love" — I've been triggered by intimacy pressure.
3. **Pause**: don't make decisions like "break up," "block," "go silent" right now.
4. **Express**: I need some space, but I'll come back to talk.
5. **Approach a little**: try saying one real feeling.
6. **Repeat**: let the body learn, one experience at a time, that closeness doesn't necessarily wound.

The key step isn't any particular one. It's **step 6, "repeat."** The avoidant program was installed by ten thousand small experiences; unpacking it requires ten thousand new ones. You can't solve this with a single insight, or a single relationship. It is **slow work** — but it can really be slowly rewritten.

---

## 6. The single most important sentence

What an avoidant needs to solve is not "how to become great at loving." It is:

> **How to allow another person to come close, without losing yourself.**

You don't need to jump from "fully avoidant" to "fully open."

You only need to go from —

> "I don't need anyone."

slowly to —

> "I can need someone a little, and it isn't dangerous."

---

## 7. For two kinds of readers

**If you are avoidant**:

Those traits in you — "independent, calm, doesn't bother anyone, disappears at the critical moment" — may have once saved you. Don't be in a hurry to scrub them all away. They are your old armor. What you need to do isn't smash the armor, it's **learn to take it off for a while**. When you actually start practicing taking it off, you'll find you're much lighter underneath than you thought.

**If you love an avoidant**:

Please remember, when they retreat, they themselves are suffering. They aren't hurting you. They are automatically running an expired program. If you can, when they want to flee, say steadily, "I see you, take your time, I'm not leaving" — they will often remember that sentence for the rest of their lives.

Avoidants are usually not "cured." They are **waited out**.

---

> Next: **[Ignite and Settle (Part 3): Anxious Attachment — Why We Keep Seeking Reassurance in Love](/en/growth/posts/2026-06-28-ignite-and-settle-3-anxious/)**
>
> We'll cover the mirror pattern — looking opposite to avoidance, biting at the bottom — why these two types most readily attract each other, drive each other to despair, and how the "anxious-avoidant trap" actually runs.
