Your Ex, Your Friends: How to Help an Avoidant See Themselves

Why Letting Go Is Often the Only Loving Option

Trying to get an avoidant person to see themselves is one of the most painful and frustrating experiences you can have. Especially in romantic relationships, where it is almost impossible.

If you have loved an avoidant deeply, you already know this truth. No amount of explaining, patience, reassurance, or self abandonment will make them look inward. The harder you try, the more they retreat.

In the end, all you can really do is let go, heal yourself, and allow them to walk the path they have chosen. That path often includes repeating the same patterns, hurting partners, avoiding intimacy, making ridiculous choices, and eventually hitting a point where they can no longer run from themselves.

That moment is not something you can create for them. It is something they have to reach on their own.

Why You Cannot Make an Avoidant See Themselves

Avoidant people are experts at dismissal. They avoid feelings, responsibility, accountability, vulnerability, and self reflection. Looking inward feels threatening to them because it brings them too close to unhealed wounds and fears around intimacy.

If you directly tell them the truth, that they have an unhealed dismissive avoidant attachment style and that it is damaging their relationships, the reaction is almost always the same.

“They will gaslight, block, avoid, scream, ghost you, or do all three.”

You will end up feeling exhausted, unheard, and deeply frustrated. Not because you are wrong, but because they are not ready to face themselves.

Avoidants do not change because someone points out the problem. They change when avoidance stops working.

What About Friends and Family?

It can feel even harder when the avoidant is not a romantic partner but a friend, sibling, or family member. Maybe they are in a disastrous marriage. Maybe they refuse closeness. Maybe they constantly blame everyone else.

You might think that because it is not romantic, they will be more open. Unfortunately, that is rarely true.

They still do not want to look at themselves. And if you push too hard, you risk losing the relationship entirely.

“Telling the truth directly often creates more distance, not awareness.”

As painful as it is, sometimes the most loving thing you can do is step back and allow life to teach them what you cannot.

The Power of Healing Yourself First

Here is the shift that changes everything. When you heal your own wounds, your fear of abandonment, your need for emotional safety from others, something remarkable happens.

You stop chasing. You stop explaining. You stop needing validation.

You become emotionally safe within yourself.

Once that happens, you see how unhealed others are very clearly. Not from judgment, but from clarity.

“When you heal, you see clearly. They still cannot see themselves.”

In friendships it may be subtle, but it is there. You notice the avoidance, the blame, the emotional shutdown. You simply no longer participate in it.

How to Gently Suggest Help Without Triggering Defensiveness

If you want to say something, keep it light and indirect. This is as far as you can safely go.

“I did therapy and I found it really interesting. I think you might too.”

That is it.

Anything stronger risks triggering defensiveness and denial. At this stage, it does not matter whether they take your suggestion or not. You are no longer responsible for managing their reactions.

If they speak badly about their partner or blame them entirely, you can gently offer one grounded truth.

“I am saying this from a place of love, but in every relationship both people have to take responsibility.”

After that, let it go.

They will likely dismiss it, avoid it, or suddenly become very busy. Booking another trip. Rushing out for another crazy purchase. Staying late at work. Binge watching Netflix, Anything to avoid self reflection.

You have done what you can.

Why Letting Go Is an Act of Love

Letting go does not mean you do not care. It means you respect their autonomy and your own peace.

At this stage of healing, you no longer fear abandonment. You are your own emotional safety. Whether the friendship fades or you create distance, you will be okay.

And that is the point.

“Distance from dysfunction is not cruelty. It is self respect.”

You can relax now. You do not need to fix anyone. You can observe from the fringes, grounded and whole.

The Bigger Picture

Paradoxically, you needed the avoidants in your life. Not to suffer forever, but to reveal your own wounds so you could heal them.

Through them, you learned boundaries. Through them, you learned self trust. Through them, you learned emotional safety within yourself.

You have come a long way.

And for that, I am proud of you.

TR