Opposites Attract? Anxious and Avoidant Toxic Bonds
The anxious and avoidant attachment styles could not be further apart in how they approach love, and yet they attract each other like a moth to a flame.
In this case, it’s often the anxious individual who does the chasing, pulled towards the avoidant by an energetic pull as if they were the human version of a black hole. Once across the event horizon (first few dates), there’s no going back. They’re hooked.
Often these attractions end in the anxious individual’s heartbreak and shame at the realization that they spent a significant amount of time chasing after someone who could never truly give them what they want.
Because the avoidant can’t, not in their wounded state, at least.
And let’s not let anxious individuals get off the hook, either. If you identify with anxious-ambivalent attachment, you’ll likely have a predisposition to place a lot of value in your romantic relationships and possibly even derive your sense of self-worth from them. You might naturally be mistrustful of relationships, and seek overt-levels of validation to feel safe. This is not a healthy place to navigate relationships, either.
But I digress, wounded and unaware anxious and avoidant individuals pull each other in — despite their clear differences in relational strategies. This…
