Did my DA try hard enough?

No….that isn’t at all what I said….but this is not the first time that you have misinterpreted my words.  

To wade in here (at the request of several members):

I think all of you on this thread have good points. Dullboat123 is not very politic in expressing them, which some valued members react to. As usual, it takes two to have an argument, and if you find someone's words unpleasant, you are advised to block them (which is not rude, and thanks to Alexandra for pointing that out.) I see where you all are coming from, and we all need to work more or less on our own attitudes. Extreme avoidants could be viewed as tests of our own security and groundedness; they are not "bad" because they fail to participate in whatever dance we wanted to dance with them, but unconsciously and *irrationally* strike out at threatening intimacy. Typically they can't control this behavior, but we can modify our own once we understand their behavior has much less to do with us than it does them and their early childhood experiences. Their defense mechanisms are deep and resistant to change, even when they want to change them.

So, everybody, try to be kind to each other. This is a valuable discussion and learning to ignore bait ("you're wrong on the Internet, let me correct you...") is a valuable life skill we should all cultivate.

Our son is 4 months old now, so forgive me for not participating much! I am doing everything I can to teach him security. Just learning to soothe his screaming without getting angry is a challenge for me. I can now understand fully why some parents give their infants the wrong signals and leave them insecure...

Thank you Jeb for jumping into the fray. I agree mainly with what you say. However what grinds my gears is the dehumanizing of us victims of the domestic abuse we endured from an avoidant. After going through domestic abuse and coming onto here to have another avoidant so called "valued" member completely invalidate my abuse experience and then turn the blame back onto me, isn't cool.

"Can't control their behaviours" is not a good excuse for domestic abuse. 

 

My therapist suspected that she has BPD but then again, as you said, without proper diagnosis, we are all just speculating. But yes she did mentioned that she know herself to be high functioning depressed and have manic episodes. 

And yes, from the stories she told me and from her behaviour, she definitely has anger issues. She is extremely quick to anger where she will physically lash out (she physically hurt a lot of people when young) or as now she mentioned that she is more mature and mellowed out, engage in extremely damaging stonewalling or other passive aggressive acts. Her "sister" aka childhood friend whom she treats as God and Gospel, would steal my exe's make up or even socks....but instead of confronting her, my ex would passive aggressively hide the laundry powder etc. A lot of passive aggressiveness which I thought is an avoidant's way....

See that's the catch 22 here. If I were to trust the opinion of my therapist that there is something more to my ex than avoidant attachment, then I should trust the professional opinion of my therapists and psychiatrist that there is nothing wrong with me. So I've cancelled my psychiatrist appointments because it basically has nothing more to 

As many of you suggested on introspection, which I did, I found that I've always been secure whereby my relationships with friends, family and colleagues have been fantastic. I make friends easily and many work colleagues became my personal friends. 

So yes, never have I ever been in a relationship that throws me so much off my center quite like the avoidant did. Thus, upon further introspection, I would not be involved in any avoidants in the future anymore, now that I have a PhD in recognizing avoidant AND narcissistic behaviours. But then I might be goddamn lonely for a long time because I'm over 40 now, so the pool of potential secure partners are shrinking by the minute so to speak. Did someone say ignorant is bliss?  

I agree. For her, there seem to be more than her avoidant attachment at play here. It was just all over the shop, which will throw anyone off their center unless its like her ex boyfriend before me where he literally game and hang out with his housemate 90% of the time. But even that is not good enough for her to stay with him. 

For me, I guess it boils down to lack of relationship experience, not knowing attachment styles earlier to not identify the red flags and age. I go into and hang onto the relationship with nothing but good intentions whereby I wanted nothing but for the relationship to work. With the flip flopping of the avoidant and carrot dangling, it made things 100000% harder and more complicated. I don't think its much of my attachment style that I attracted 2 damaged goods. I'm just an honest, lonely person looking for love. I honestly think I am preyed upon as both cases, I was subjected to love bombing. These 2 women I was involved in, I can see now that they are predatory. They pick their partners very carefully and they can because they are attractive looking.