How to Go from Love Avoidant to Love Available
Here at Black Girls Heal, we regularly talk about intimacy disorders that came from our childhood trauma that now show up in our adult relationships across the spectrum (friendships, romantic relationships, family, co-workers, etc.) Influential in introducing the attachment theory, British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby believed that early childhood attachments were critical in later development and mental functioning.
Intimacy disorders, like love avoidance, impact how we let people in or how we don’t let them in at all. If you desire to become love-available, here are some tools to help you navigate from a love-avoidant relationship.
What does it mean to be love-avoidant?
Love Avoidance is the pattern of persistently putting up walls to avoid being emotionally overwhelmed and intruded upon by other people. People who operate in love avoidance desire their freedom and safety. They want to hold their own identity and environment, which is excellent, but it comes at the cost of not letting others in.
Love avoidants most likely haven’t experienced being in healthy relationships with mutually beneficial people. You have learned that sharing connections with other people means that they’re taking away from you or trying to control you.
Love-Avoidant Behavior
For the most part, love avoidants are very good at caring for otter people. Even if they keep people out, they’re so generous or empathetic. It’s much easier and safer for them to focus their energy on giving, but it also serves as a defense mechanism.
On the other side, love avoidants don’t know how to receive help. It feels intrusive and demeaning when someone is trying to help you. You have learned, for the most part, that if someone does something for you, it has to be earned by you, proving that you deserve it or that it can be used against you later on. You have learned how to be resilient and self-sufficient because you know the cost that comes with receiving help.
Human beings are wired for love and connection, and even as a love avoidant, you’ll crave for them, and that’s not a sign of weakness. Even if you “wait” for months or years to feel ready for intimacy and connection, it can cause more resentment, bitterness, and loneliness.
So here are a couple of truths that you need to hear. It can be very true that you’ve had real interactions and traumas every time you put yourself out there. You’ve learned that YouTube burned every single time. It can also be true that you’re sick and tired of having these experiences.
But I want to tell you that there can be another option where you can learn how to be available so that healthy people can come in and love you. To be fully loved and seen by somebody else, flaws and all, is not only stripping and exposing. But it is the most healing, cleansing, relieving, heart-touching, and fulfilling experience that you can have.
Three Factors on How You Can Go from Love Avoidant to Love Available
#1 Love Avoidants have an extreme fear of being suffocated. Love Available people move towards healthy connections with healthy people.
I see across the board that love avoidants don’t want to share their time. You have unspoken rules on when other people should spend time with you. It’s important to create a full and healthy life with healthy people. The question is, are you intentionally creating space for it? Are you open to sharing time? Are you open to fully integrating these healthy connections into your life?
On the other hand, someone who is love available is going to move towards other people for connection as long as the other person is showing green flags.
#2 Love Avoidants rarely share something about themselves. Love Available People are open to deep conversations.
Love Avoidants are very loosely connected to other people if they’re connected at all. When other people ask them to share something about their life, they tell that there’s nothing really going on or even if they share, they focus on the story, not on themselves. They’re very good at keeping things about themselves.
On the other hand, Love Available people will openly share with healthy people. They appreciate moments where they can have fun and shallow conversations with others but ultimately, they prefer deep conversations with people on the same wavelength as them.
#3 Love Avoidants are attracted to people who will hold the emotional energy in the relationship. Love Available people are only attracted to people who give and receive mutually.
Love Avoidants and Love Addicts often get together because the latter is willing to overgive while the former can just sit back and receive. After a while, though, love avoidants can get emotionally overwhelmed by the attention of the love addict and will start to resent them.
A Love Available person is looking for someone who is going to meet them where they’re at. They’re going to initiate connections with people who are going to show up in the same respect and depth as they are.
Getting over your fears of love avoidance
How can you incorporate some of these skills into your everyday life to help you become more love-available?
If you’re looking for more help, The Love Addiction Recovery School is an online self-coaching program where you will take a deep dive into healing the trauma that has caused love addicted and love-avoidant behaviors, clear you of relationships where you are overattached and codependent, make way for healthy love, and teach you how to move towards love versus away. I hope to see you there.