Dismissive-Avoidant: Does this make sense?

Hi purpleninja . I'm sorry for what you've been through. It sounds to me like your ex is Fearful Avoidant, not DA. Are you familiar with that? Based on your background I'm assuming you've come across it and may have at points fallen on that spectrum yourself.

An unaware FA can do exactly what your ex has done. Going on and off with someone and ending things and reconnecting, having a "phantom ex" (which you were for him before you saw each other again) to allow you to stay stuck on a fantasy version of someone so that you can avoid intimacy with someone more attainable, running hot and cold, and not communicating properly when something is wrong -- perhaps just cutting off the connection and wanting to avoid further discussion and do things on their terms even if they started off hot (this is because FA can shut down similarly to a DA when triggered avoidant, even if they started off in hot pursuit earlier similarly to an anxious AP).

The truth is, he did you a favor. After all the work you've done on yourself, and leaving an abusive husband, you don't need someone else to project and dump their intimacy issues on you and make a stable and healthy relationship impossible. When people have sudden changes of heart with little explanation, and their words and actions (and feelings) don't seem to align and agree, it's a huge red flag and it's best to encounter that information about someone sooner than later. His history has been that he can't have a long-term and healthy intimate relationship. If you are looking for one, he's shown you who he is now and you won't be able to change him after he's reinforced his own patterns over and over no matter who his partners were. It's also a red flag when someone tells you everyone they've dated is crazy... because the problem ends up being just as much with the person saying that (since he chooses crazy partners / is attracted to drama / possibly is nitpicking on people in an unrealistic way to conclude they are crazy so he can avoid commitment) as it is with the partners.

While it is nice of you to want to help him, there's a couple things that make this tricky rather than altruistic.

First, huge kudos to you for starting and sticking with therapy and wanting to confront and sort out your problems. It's not easy to take the initiative to actually do. I'm assuming you wanted to change and get out of these painful cycles you'd experienced over the course of your life, take some control over aspects of your life that weren't your fault as a child but which you have to choose to want to heal as an adult anyway. It takes an enormous amount of strength of character and determination to do what you've been doing so far. But you did it because YOU wanted to, you stuck with it because you wanted to do it for yourself and improve your life. Many people can't get there. They are determined to instead stay in their comfortable (though dysfunctional) coping habits, which for avoidants (especially unaware avoidants) means avoiding confronting their uncomfortable pain and perhaps not ever dealing with it. Avoidants are actually wired this way within their nervous systems too, which doesn't help -- avoidance was the childhood defense mechanism that developed to keep a kid attached to an adult caretaker that wasn't fulfilling their needs... but children need adults in order to eat and survive. So with avoidance, the nervous system will numb out and shut down when overwhelmed. This disconnection from self is one reason that avoidants may not even realize there's a problem. So what this all means is, you cannot help someone change who does not want to change. Nervous systems can be rewired to overcome this, but it takes a lot of conscious and deliberate work and self-motivation.

There's a very big difference between sensing someone wants connection and relationships (and even the person saying it out loud), and someone being willing to take the action to align those words and feelings and want to confront and deal with their issues. Someone who is not both saying they want to deal with their issues AND is following up in actions (even if it's baby steps) does not actually want to or at least isn't ready to start their process to awareness and security.

The most you can do is let him know that attachment style exists and that since you'd dated the first time, you'd been through a lot and found x, y, and z helpful to your journey. If he's interested in any more information, he can look into it himself or ask you for more information. And then, that's it. You can't do anything more. My inclination is he will politely reject or not respond to your outreach, especially since he has shown that when facing the potential for intimacy (even with someone he's looked for for all these years), he quickly shut down and ran off. That's not someone ready to heal, grow, or change. If he isn't seeking the help himself, and you are offering it to him uninvited (which, again, I think is okay if you're just telling someone hey, there's a body of research that exists on our issues if you are ever interested in a starting point), there's zero reason to expect you can help or that he's ready to hear it. It will likely trigger him to hear, as his inclination is AVOID these issues at all cost, and if he does engage in the conversation and isn't ready, he'll get very defensive and not take what you're saying seriously.

Second, it's very common for people with anxious-leaning AP or FA tendencies to want to "help." And you need to be careful with this. All insecure attachment styles have lousy boundaries, and anxious-leaning have often been conditioned by their childhood dynamics to be co-dependent if they let someone in. So do explore why you want to help this person, who has shown that you cannot put your trust in him and has not shown you that he's looking for help. There's no reason to be resentful of him or what he did, because he very clearly has major issues that are unrelated to you and I don't believe he did anything to you on purpose or to be malicious. However, you don't need to over-function or over-extend yourself either after he's been pretty clear that he wants to keep your interaction at arm's length. It seems to me like it would be a better exercise for you to wish him well, maybe keep him at a distance yourself if you decide you do want to keep in touch, and practice strengthening your own boundaries to keep them healthy (because giving him the responsibility to keep boundaries healthy on his side isn't going to do you any good).

So you can send him some attachment information if you want, as long as you expect no or a negative response and aren't doing it to try to keep this connection going in hopes it'll change into something more. But mind the many, many red flags, as he has told you exactly who he is, what his history is, and where he's at, and put yourself first now that he's shown you his capacity to be in a healthy romantic relationship.