For those working towards secure

Mary, I am a long way toward secure as well but there are some reflexes so deep they confound me and cause a great deal of hurt for me and my partner when they surface.

If i can’t tget a secure partner yet,I prefer avoidant type partners to anxious, for reasons i have heard you iterate here. Even secure, I feel i will always need more space than most are comfortable with so i really appreciate a partner who does also.

I don’t have the long term need for space of a week or two, but I can relate to feeling kind of a block or dead space when i do get a more prolonged space than usual and realize i need to reconnect.

I told my (DA) partner once that if he doesn’t reach out to me consistently then I go into this kind of out of sight out of mind mode where I just kind of blank out and I feel like I could leave or stay and neither would matter because i just feel ok and might even prefer to be alone. It’s weird, i don’t know, almost dissociated. It kind of makes me sad when I look at an episode like that in retrospect. Because when we were together it was like home, very warm and affectionate and emotionally intimate. So it made me feel sad like my heart and mind were betraying him. But, it also felt like it was a change in blood pressure or something- not voluntary but a physiological process. It just happened.

So he and I tried to work out a good middle ground- I needed more checking in and contact than he did and he would call me just so I could stay out of that dead zone. Boy I appreciate that. I used to tell him “I need you to push my reset button because i can tell I am malfunctioning “ and he would laugh and make me feel connected with him.

He and I had a bond based on camaraderie with our quirks. He was more deeply avoidant than I, and appreciated that when I would reveal my inner workings to him ,he would get it and seem to be very thankful to have found a like mind. He wasn’t as far along in healing and i may have just outgrown him as my capacity grew.

One thing I realize is weird is that in a year of dating (push pull even as two DA’s haha! we knew we would always end up back together) he never asked to come to my apartment and i never invited him. The idea would just shut me down and I am glad it never came up. He probably was too hahaha!

His house was the natural choice as I live with my children, and didn’t involve them in the relationship. They knew and were glad for me but I didn’t need to mix the two. When they left to their dads for the weekend I would go spend time with him and that’s was just the unspoken rules we spontaneously agreed on without ever discussing it.
We only spent a night a week together, maybe with a lunch visit at his office in between. That’s what worked with his workaholic avoidance, and it worked for me. we would text or call in between but nothing big.

So, here’s the quirk.
I thought recently before i left him that I would like to invite him to my home and allow him into my sanctuary. But I didn’t. and then we had a bad fight and reacted avoidantly, so it didn’t happen. He never saw where I live.

I don’t know if i really could have gone through with it, it sounded like a huge step (monumental. like sealing the deal! which i thought i wanted but apparently didn’t. )
It sounded good on paper and like a natural progression but I think i was more comfortable with the idea than actually doing it.

I would fantasize about him sitting in my furniture or eating at my table and then it would dissolve like a weird unrealistic dream that I didn’t really want to happen. It just seemed like a step we should take that I didn’t want to yet.

As to the why? I feel so safe and enjoy my solitude here. I am so peaceful in solitude, I feel wonderful with my own thoughts and feelings and mind. Even if i feel pain about something I know in my sanctuary is where I heal. This is where I am just me. I have my healing practices with myself and I take my healing seriously. I never have anyone over to my house, hardly ever. It just doesn’t occur to me as a possibility - it’s like I forget it’s an option. I am a great hostess when I do tho- and I enjoy visits from those closest to me, except for my intimate partner! With a partner, I feel like inviting them to my home makes me vulnerable—- in a way that somehow would damage my security of knowing that my sanctuary isn’t connected with any person that might hurt me in some way. I don’t want to have vulnerable memories of loss connected with my personal space. It sounds strange even as I type it but it’s deep deep deep and I just accept and love this about myself.

I love my solitude so much and I am certain I will never be lonely. I used to be , achingly. But I have so much healing and love in my life, I still don’t need anyone like most marriages work. I can’t tolerate the idea of a live in relationship. I have had them but always got abused and was much more avoidant then anyway, that’s probably how i survived it, by just not being there. I went into those relationships dissociated it feels like.

So even if I accomplish a long term monogamous relationship (the only kind i want) I never want to live with them. So someone will have to love and trust that life too and he did.

I feel proud that I have a safe sanctuary that I created, it makes me feel content and blessed. No one can ruin it.
Some of my tendencies are FA, some DA, depending on the dynamic of the relationship I guess. As i move more toward secure those diagnostic labels get blurrier. But I’m definitely avoidant.

Anyway, it turned into a super long post because I love your question and I love being able to share with people who probably get it and maybe even appreciate it like i do.
it made me feel good to type this. Most people in my life don’t know it about me. Maybe no one does, i haven’t thought about it. But people who love me are surprised when i tell them he never came to my home.

haha, iit makes me chuckle , the weirdness. I get it tho. ha.

I'm wondering myself if I'm also Avoidant as I can identify with what many DAs have posted - needing my own space, being extremely cautious about inviting acquaintances into my home, etc.

It has a lot to do with being entangled with very intrusive and sometimes unpleasant, judgmental people in the past and present.

Once, not too long ago, I bought and took home a fish I saw thrashing on the ice counter at the supermarket and kept it in a bucket at home, thinking I would release it into the river in spring.

I went swimming with a recent acquaintance who was low on funds and as she implied she had no plans for lunch after our swim, I impulsively invited her home for a simple salmon pasta I had prepared the night before.

She immediately commented that my place would look so much better if I had tidied up (I had books and stuff lying on the sofa) and declared that I was immensely cruel upon seeing the fish in the bucket, even when I explained to her that it's a temporary arrangement until winter is over and the fish was in semi-hibernation mode anyway. She said if she were a fish she would rather be eaten than be kept in a bucket.

I felt really horrible and violated and I wish I never invited her home. I didn't invite anyone (except a friend of my son) after that to my home.

I'm now trying to distance myself from another narcissistic intrusive friend who had been critical of another friend's apartment. To me, her apartment was fine, quirky, not too neat but had touches of this friend's personality on display. I tend to look for qualities I can appreciate, rather than to criticize, compare or judge.

The two ladies I described seemed to me to be AP needing a lot of attention but with strong narcissistic traits. They really dislike solitude but feel entitled to cross boundaries. I wonder if having had so many experiences with such friends (others push religion on me to "save" my soul, etc..) has made me somewhat Avoidant myself.

I don't think anyone not somewhat Avoidant would have accepted my exDA's extreme distancing.

I am wondering if there's a yardstick for measuring Avoidance, eg. is once a week dating the acceptable "norm" and once a month an outlier, etc.

This is what I think a lot of people don't understand.   I look so collected on the surface I guess even in times of pain.  I don't want people to see my pain, but it's disappointing when people assume you don't have feelings. Part of me wonders if that's why I was abused as a kid and in some relationships.  Because I can "take it" and I seem to bounce back?  I need to work on freeing my past as well.  It's definitely tough.

i am loving this thread and will be back to respond when i can do it thoughtfully.
Thank you everyone for being here

Part of me wonders if that's why I was abused as a kid and in some relationships.  Because I can "take it" and I seem to bounce back?  I need to work on freeing my past as well.  It's definitely tough.[/quote]




People dont abuse other people (and especially not children) "because they can take it" - they do it because something is wrong with them [the abuser]... and it has nothing to do with who is receiving the abuse.

People dont abuse other people (and especially not children) "because they can take it" - they do it because something is wrong with them [the abuser]... and it has nothing to do with who is receiving the abuse. [/quote]


Thank you for this.  I look at what I wrote and I know it looks absurd even to me.  Looking back, it just seemed the more stoic I was in the face of it, the more it enraged my mother, so then the verbal became physical.  I don't think I caused it, but perhaps prolonged or escalated it by my lack of response.

As a AP/Closer to secure now this thread is very eye opening into how DAs see things and I love reading them because it helps me understand so much. The one thing that stands out to me SO much though which was such a mystery to my though with my last partner is the following. (This is directed to Mary and TGAT). When I read through your experience and everything you've both written it is parallel to my ex DAs mentality and I can't understand the following: When talking about your relationship with your partner it seems that the "pros and cons" and everything else are about "being in a relationship/having a boyfriend" etc. It seems like it is never about the actual feelings you have towards the person you are dating. But more about the logistical reasons for a relationship or about being in the relationship itself.

My ex DA would say things about being uncomfortable with "a relationship" etc, it was never about "I want to be with this person (me) because I love them and want to have them as a big part of sharing experiences and life with." I think that is how secure or APs feel when we choose we want to get serious with someone. Our mentality is "I like this person and want to make a commitment to them because they are such an amazing and special person and I want to get closer and have an amazing partnership with them to share experiences and grow with one another." Do you not see or truly "feel" the same way? Is it more of and agreement for you about "having a boyfriend or partner?" For us it is never about that but choosing to get closer with someone because we feel like they are the right person to get closer to and to bond with. It's about how I emotionally feel about them, not about the fact that they give me enough space or that the relationship works in a logical manner. It's an emotional reason, and emotional only. Certainly logic comes into play only when we see that our partner may not be good for us.