Love Avoidance in Relationships: Why You Feel Pulled Toward Someone Who Pulls Away
- Keith York LMFT
- Mar 18
- 6 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
Understanding avoidant attachment, emotional distance, and relationship patterns.
By Keith York, LMFT Couples Therapist in Orinda, CA
The Painful Dance of Pursuit and Distance
If you’ve ever found yourself chasing a man who pulls away just when things start to feel real, you’re not alone.
Many women sit in my therapy office wondering, “Why do I keep attracting emotionally unavailable men?”
And if you’re honest, it probably doesn’t feel like a coincidence anymore.
Quick Answer: Love Avoidance in Relationships
Love avoidance in relationships happens when one partner feels overwhelmed by closeness and pulls away—while the other pursues connection more intensely.
This creates a repeating cycle of pursuit and distance that feels powerful but often leads to disconnection and frustration.
5 Signs of Love Avoidance in Relationships
If you’re caught in this pattern, you may notice:
You feel drawn to emotionally unavailable partners
Closeness increases—and then they pull away
You find yourself chasing, explaining, or over-functioning
They shut down, withdraw, or create distance during conflict
The relationship feels intense—but unstable
This isn’t random. It’s a patterned dynamic shaped by early emotional experience.
Love avoidance in relationships often shows up as a painful cycle of pursuit and distance.
This pattern — the love avoidant man and the woman who loves him — isn’t about bad luck or poor choices. It’s about early emotional conditioning, the silent lessons of childhood that shape how we connect, love, and protect ourselves.
Working with a therapist who specializes in couples therapy in the East Bay can help you understand and change these patterns.
Love avoidance is one expression of a broader pattern.
Love avoidance is one expression of a broader pattern. To understand this more fully, you can explore that here → men, emotional disconnection, and relationships.
Why Love Avoidance Happens
This pattern isn’t about bad choices or poor judgment.
It’s about:
early attachment experiences
emotional conditioning
learned ways of protecting yourself from closeness
What feels like chemistry is often familiarity.
The Making of a Love Avoidant Man
Let’s start with the man.
As a boy, he grew up in a home filled with unspoken pain. His mother may have been depressed — quietly burdened, overwhelmed by a husband who was angry, disconnected, or emotionally absent.
And the sensitive little boy in the middle feels it.
In that emotional vacuum, the boy steps in. He becomes his mother’s confidant, her emotional partner. He learns to soothe her, to make her feel better, to be good. Unconsciously he wants to save her.
At a basic level, young boys are deeply attached to their mothers.
But here’s the cost: he learns that love means responsibility. That his feelings don’t matter — hers do. He becomes enmeshed with her emotions, learning to merge with her pain at the expense of his own needs.
Meanwhile, he watches his father — unpredictable, irritable, distant, maybe alcoholic and philandering. The father becomes the model of manhood: selfish, hard, angry, detached. The boy silently vows, “I will never be like him”.
So, he grows up emotionally fused with his mother and alienated from his father. The message is clear: closeness is suffocating, and manhood means disconnection.
The Legacy of Trauma: Love Avoidance in Relationship
When that boy becomes a man, the old emotional wiring remains.
The moment intimacy deepens, panic sets in. A woman’s closeness unconsciously echoes the engulfing pull of his mother’s emotional need.
So, he distances himself — by working late, overindulging in alcohol, diving into pornography, becoming emotionally cold. When she asks for more connection, it feels like a threat. To him, love means losing himself.
For many men, this is also tied to a deeper pattern where self-worth becomes tied to performance instead of connection. You can explore that here → the performance trap in men
Instead of turning towards his spouse, he turns away with angry rebuffs and silence.
This often shows up as emotional shutdown during conflict—you can explore that here
He doesn’t realize he’s not running from her — he’s running from the ghost of his past.
Why Is This So Alluring to Women? Abandonment
On the other side of the dynamic is the woman who chases.
She often carries her own attachment wounds — perhaps from a parent who was inconsistently available, warm one moment and withdrawn the next. She learned that love is something you earn by working harder, being better, proving yourself.
When she meets the avoidant man, the chemistry feels electric. But underneath, what’s really being sparked is familiarity. His emotional distance triggers the same ache she felt as a child. And unconsciously, she thinks, “If I can get him to stay, I’ll finally be safe.”
These are the lasting imprints of early abandonment.
So, she tries to get through to him — calls, texts, complains, pleads. The more she reaches, the more he retreats. And the more he retreats, the more desperate she feels to pull him back.
This is the classic pursuer–distancer cycle — a painful dance that feels like love but is really two people reenacting their childhood traumas.
This dynamic becomes even more complex for couples raising children, where disconnection between partners affects the entire family system.
Why Neither Partner Is the Villain
In this dynamic, it’s tempting to blame — to call him avoidant or label her needy. But both are simply protecting themselves the only way they know how.
He fears being engulfed.
She fears being abandoned.
Both feel unseen. Both long for safety.
Here’s what’s happening underneath: When they try to love each other, what they’re really doing is trying to heal the past through the present. It’s not about fault—it’s about adaptation.
Breaking the Cycle: The Work of Repair
If you want to understand how these patterns are worked through step by step, you can read more here → how couples therapy works.
True healing begins when each person turns inward instead of outward.
For the Love Avoidant Man:
Learn to stay present in discomfort instead of escaping it.
Recognize that closeness isn’t control — it’s connection.
Build tolerance for vulnerability.
Negotiate his wants and desires rather than swallowing them and becoming resentful.
For the Woman Who Chases:
Ask for what you need with loving firmness.
Ground in your own self-worth instead of chasing external validation.
Learn to self-soothe when anxiety rises.
Practice giving space without abandoning yourself.
This also requires learning how to hold healthy boundaries in relationships. You can explore that here
If asking for what you need feels difficult, you can start building that skill here → how to communicate clearly in a relationship
Real intimacy requires both partners to stand on solid ground — to be close without collapsing into each other or running away.
At the core of this is learning how to build emotional intimacy without losing yourself. You can explore that here → how to build emotional intimacy
Rewriting the Story. Rewiring Your Trauma.
That little boy who learned to disappear is still there. He’s not unloving — he’s scared.
In some cases, this pattern is also connected to male depression in relationships, where emotional withdrawal masks deeper pain. You can explore that here → male depression in relationships
That little girl who learned to chase isn’t needy — she’s longing to be met.
When we can see each other’s defenses as survival strategies, compassion replaces judgment. And that’s where the real work begins.
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens in relationship. Love becomes a place of repair, not reenactment.
It’s Not Your Fault
If you recognize yourself in this pattern — as the love avoidant man or the woman who tries to love him — know that you’re not broken. You’re repeating what once kept you safe.
But what protected you as a child may now be the very thing keeping you from love. And with awareness, courage, and with the right therapeutic support, these patterns will change.
If you’re wondering whether therapy is the right step, you can explore that here
Because love isn’t found in the chase or the escape. It’s found in the brave space where two people stay — together — and face what once felt unbearable.
That’s called intimacy.
You can learn more about my approach to couples therapy in Orinda and the East Bay here.
Can Love Avoidance Patterns Change?
Yes—but not through insight alone.
These patterns change when both partners learn to tolerate closeness, communicate differently, and respond to each other in new ways.
Without that, the cycle tends to repeat—no matter how strong the connection feels.
Ready to Break the Cycle?
If you recognize yourself in this pattern—either as the one who pulls away or the one who pursues—you don’t have to keep repeating it.
We can work directly on this dynamic and help you build a more stable, connected relationship.
Start with a free 15-minute consultation to see if working together feels like a good fit.
Written by Keith York, LMFT, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Orinda, California, serving Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, and the greater east bay area of San Francisco. Keith specializes in couples therapy with a focus in Gottman Method Therapy and Relational Life Therapy.
For more information about Keith please click here:
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