About this episode
Today I’d like to have an in-depth discussion on avoidants specifically as it relates to them falling in love and what that looks/feels like.
Now, most of the time when one of my peers covers this topic they focus on the major signs avoidants love you and what that looks like. In fact, I think I’ve even written an article covering that as well but when you talk about what love feels like from an avoidant perspective the discussion becomes really complicated.
Take for example this little nugget of knowledge.
An avoidant will typically have two big waves of “love” that they’ll feel for someone. We can divide these waves up into two phases,
Love at the beginning of a relationship
Love after a relationship
And that’s exactly how we’re going to divide this article up.
Let’s begin.
Wave #1: Love At The Beginning Of A Relationship
In researching this article I do what I always do, I peruse the forums and often I’ll find myself having two reactions.
Oh, this is a good point, I’ll have to dig in and mention this in my discussion
*eye roll* This person has no idea what they are talking about
For some odd reason I had a lot of eye roll moments in researching this but that’s because a lot of people have a basic misunderstanding of how avoidants operate. For example, the narrative often goes like this:
Steer clear of avoidants
Pursue those who demonstrate they love you
Avoidants rarely change
This is the problem with how most people view avoidants. They think they are incapable of love but that’s simply not true. In fact, one of the worst raps that avoidants get is that most people think they are incapable of love but the truth is that many avoidants want love very badly.
They’ve just never been shown how to “love” in a healthy way before.
And that really transitions perfectly to my next point.
One of the biggest misunderstandings that avoidants have about love is they are convinced it occurs during the honeymoon period.
In other words, they grow addicted to the feeling of the honeymoon period and when it ends they convince themselves that they’ve fallen out of love.
And though I’ve not been able to find exact reputable research to back up what I’m about to say, I do have a theory for why they do this.
The First Time Is The Best Time Theory
Life is set up in a way so that the first time we experience something it usually hits the hardest both positively or negatively. The example I always use is pointing to your favorite movie and asking you what it felt like the first time you saw it. What about the fifth time?
It can still be amazing but since you know everything that’s going to happen it loses a lot of its emotional punch.
This is a rule of life.
