Why the Avoidant Must Hit Rock Bottom to Heal

For someone with an avoidant attachment style, emotional safety is everything – but not in the way most people think.

It’s not the kind of safety that comes from genuine closeness and vulnerability. It’s the safety of distance. Of control. Of keeping people at arm’s length behind emotional walls so thick that not even they can fully access what’s inside.

But here’s the difficult truth: if you’re avoidant, staying in a relationship that feels “safe” simply because your partner never pushes past your emotional defences will slowly become painfully dull. The kind of dull that aches.

The relationship might appear calm, predictable, even “easy” – but eventually it becomes empty. Numb. Lifeless. And ultimately, intolerable.

That’s because true intimacy – the thing avoidants both long for and fear – cannot grow in a space where walls are never questioned, let alone dismantled.

Why Rock Bottom Matters

Avoidants rarely seek change when things are comfortable – even if that comfort is built on distance and avoidance. They tend to hit a turning point only when their usual strategies stop working. When the very mechanisms that once kept them feeling in control begin to leave them feeling isolated, disconnected and emotionally starved.

Rock bottom for an avoidant isn’t always dramatic. Often it’s subtle. A creeping sense of boredom. A relationship that once felt “safe” now feels dead. They may find themselves wondering, “Is this it?” – even though they got everything they thought they wanted: no pressure, no demands, total independence. And yet, it still hurts. Not because anything went wrong, but because nothing ever truly came alive.

Why Challenge is Essential

Avoidants don’t heal by being left entirely unchallenged. Growth doesn’t happen in perpetual comfort – it happens when something disrupts the illusion of safety.

It’s often a partner who does challenge the avoidant’s emotional walls – who gently but firmly calls out the distance – who becomes the catalyst for change. Not by being demanding or dramatic, but by daring to expect depth. By refusing to settle for surface-level connection.

This is where the avoidant is forced to make a choice: stay safe and emotionally starved, or face the fear of intimacy and risk being seen – truly seen – for the first time.

That “safe” relationship, where no one expects emotional presence, might let the avoidant stay the same. But it also guarantees a slow emotional death. The kind of relationship that challenges them, though? That’s the one with the potential to crack the armour and ignite transformation.

That's the one they had with you... And that's when the avoidant finally begins to break.

Rock bottom isn’t failure. It’s a doorway.

It’s the moment the avoidant realises:

“I built these walls. And now I’m trapped inside them.”

Only then can they begin to choose something different. Only then can they begin to truly heal.

It's most often the empathetic, emotionally intelligent ex that works all of this out - and what a gift that is! The intelligent ex cared enough to really see the avoidant for the unhealed person they really are.

But there's a sting in the tail... by the time the avoidant wakes up to the mess they've created the empathic ex is long gone. They've healed, they've worked it out, they've suffered and sat with the devastating pain for long enough that they know they'd never put up with being an 'option' or with an avoidant who can't go all in ever again.

Unless... in those very rare circumstances when the avoidant finally goes to therapy, (NB - empathetic ex - do not hope or wait for this) when they finally see what they've been doing and the reasons why.

It's the rarest outcome, but also the most beautiful - when both parties heal individually, then come back together from a place of truth, understanding and wholeness.

TR