An introduction is order. Officially. Who I am and how I got here. If you’re returning, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m only now introducing myself. It’s actually simpler than you might think. I matter less than the content of my blog. I’m here to bring insight and compassion into a familiar and painful experience of loving an avoidant and being stuck in what I’ve come to call Avoidant Hell. If you’ve come here to my blog, then you probably know exactly what I’m talking about: the addictive, intense, and yet stagnant, going nowhere inner landscape of an avoidant.

Who I am comes second, but I’ll tell you how I got here if you tell me how you got here, too. Drop a comment below and share.

The details of my life aren’t important here. I’ll just say that my skittery-but-clever fox slipped into my life and burrowed there before I even realized what was happening. He was actually a coworker I hated. I know, sometimes I wish I could go back to that earlier version of myself, pat myself on the back, and say, “Keep up the good work, Andi. Hold your position, and you’ll never have to deal with his bullshit later on.” But, honestly, we both know that if I could really go back in time, I would say, “Jump his bones, he’s into you, you clueless moron! Enjoy the heat and intensity while it lasts because when it cools, it falls below zero.”

I think the addiction for me was the cyclical nature of it. This guy kept coming back. That’s incredibly flattering to someone with low self-esteem. At first, I couldn’t tell if he was into me. You know their plays. You know they come in sideways, upside down, inside out, never directly. But he kept asking me to lunch, and I hated him, right, so I kept making excuses I only half believed. The narrative around work was that he didn’t have any friends and was just friendly, so it was easy to brush him off.

He just kept coming back. A friendly co-worker who keeps coming back can’t just be friendly after a certain point, you know? And it felt good. It fed my ego. So I leaned in. And like most anxiously attached people, when I say, “I leaned in,” I mean I jumped in headfirst. I started planning the wedding and honeymoon and going through the logistics of living situation and merging out lives together.

It wasn’t long before I centered my world around him. I waited, phone in hand with bated breath, for a text from him. I blew up my friend’s phone with questions like, “If I said this, would he think I’m too much?” or “Omg, I haven’t heard from him all weekend!”—and yeah, that first weekend of silence?

Whoa. It hit me like a freight train.

Everything had been warm and flirty and intense and deep—we’re talking mixed tapes, late night chats, inside jokes. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so connected to someone before. Our connection was metaphysical. We were soulmates.

And so that weekend he left my trivia prep question unanswered? Yeah, he couldn’t even bother to answer what was Pam’s favorite yogurt from The Office. He literally and eagerly just agreed to go to The Office themed trivia night with me.

Dude.

Tell me I’m not the only one who looks back at my earlier self and think, “What were you thinking?”

This guy couldn’t even answer the least emotionally charged question in the universe. Even a simple, “Don’t know” would have worked at that point.

What was the first time they left you on read? Do you remember? If you’re anxiously attached like me, I bet you do.

Alas, Monday scudded in, and he scorched me with affection and attention, and it was again like we were destined to be together.

You know what the sad thing is? I still feel like he’s The One. I can recount to you every high and every low, the mundane, everything to the second, and I cannot accept he is anything but my soulmate—and I don’t even believe in soulmates! There are too many people on this planet for soulmates!

This fated mates thing, though, it’s just our nervous systems. We crave stability and consistency because that’s what our nervous system needs to feel safe and calm, but our dalliance with an avoidant is chaotic and unpredictable and full of unpleasant and random withdrawals. Our nervous systems stay activated because the unpredictability never permits rest. And that constant activation? That feels like destiny. That feels like intense love. But love isn’t supposed to feel like that. Love is calm, predictable, steady, and warm. Your nervous system should be able to rest, and you should be able to exist to enjoy the flowers. Intensity is indicative of instability, not love.

Now, the unpredictability of the avoidant goes farther than that—that intermittent, all-encompassing warmth? The warmth that melts the silence into something obsolete to forget about? That’s dopamine. And since the warmth is meted out in cautious intervals, it spikes dopamine on a cycle instead of giving you a calm, steady supply. And those intense dopamine spikes? It’s an addiction. It’s intoxicating. We have to keep coming back for more. That is how we get to and why we stay in the thorny and painful avoidant landscape I call Avoidant Hell.

I’m here to reassure you, we aren’t truly imprisoned here in Avoidant Hell. We have agency. We have choices. This is one thing we can change. Not by changing anyone else but by changing ourselves, the pattern, and what we’re getting out of loving an avoidantly attached individual.