When does distance become a way of managing discomfort?

Sat down to write this blog with Rita Ora’s Let You Love Me playing in the background- absolute banger of a song btw and quite fitting for discussing attachment styles! Listen here: https://youtu.be/02YSbpqB9kc?si=m2frjPOrDbt3-9hd

The Overfunctioning Role

I’ve always found avoidant attachment compelling because much of my relationship history has been in the overfunctioning role. When emotional distance appears in a relationship, it can be easy to respond by doing more: initiating more conversations, trying harder to resolve things, offering reassurance, or taking greater responsibility for keeping the relationship emotionally connected. Looking back as someone who has developed a lot of inner confidence and security, I’ve become increasingly interested in what happens when one person starts doing more and more of the emotional work while the other increasingly creates distance.

This is one reason attachment theory has become so interesting to me. Not because it provides a simple explanation for why someone withdraws, but because it offers a way of thinking about what might happen when emotional closeness, vulnerability or conflict become difficult to tolerate.

When Closeness Becomes Uncomfortable

Attachment theory is often presented online as a collection of fixed personality types: anxious people want too much closeness, avoidant people don’t want enough, and secure people somehow get everything right. Real relationships are much more complicated than this.

Attachment avoidance is generally associated with greater discomfort with emotional closeness, dependence and vulnerability. People higher in attachment avoidance may place a strong value on independence and self-reliance, and may be less comfortable relying on others for emotional support.

That doesn’t mean someone with avoidant attachment doesn’t want relationships or cannot experience love. Rather, closeness itself can sometimes become difficult to manage.

Relationships require vulnerability. We allow another person to become important to us, share parts of ourselves that we might not show to everyone else, and navigate conflict, expectations, and emotional needs. For some people, this closeness feels reassuring. For others, it can create discomfort.

When emotional intensity increases, someone with stronger avoidant tendencies may respond by creating distance, becoming more self-reliant or reducing their engagement with the emotional side of the relationship. These responses are sometimes described as deactivating strategies. Creating distance can reduce the intensity of uncomfortable emotions and restore a sense of independence.

The important point, however, is that understanding why someone creates distance doesn’t automatically make the distance harmless.

The Cycle of Pursuit and Withdrawal
This becomes particularly interesting when different ways of responding to relationships interact. One person may experience distance as threatening and respond by seeking reassurance or trying harder to resolve the issue. The other person may experience that pursuit as overwhelming and respond by withdrawing further. The withdrawal then increases the first person’s anxiety, which leads them to pursue more strongly, which can make the other person want even more distance. A cycle develops.

I’ve become particularly interested in this because I’ve recognised the overfunctioning side of that dynamic in my own experiences. When something feels unresolved, it can be tempting to believe that doing more will eventually create resolution: more communication, more explanation, more reassurance, more attempts to repair.

But relationships can’t always be repaired by one person working harder. Sometimes, trying harder can actually become part of the cycle.

When Avoidance Is Disrupted

Now, with these blogs, I enjoy adding a bit of personal reflection because I feel it can be more relatable, and it makes the writing a lot more personal. In my own life, I’ve experienced a situation where I calmly confronted a previous partner about their behaviour, which involved dishonesty and a relational betrayal. There was no anger at all, just me describing what I knew and its impact.

For my personal growth, that day was a masterclass in boundary-setting haha! But what stayed with me was how difficult it seemed for them to remain in the conversation once the behaviour had been brought out into the open. They eventually shut down before quickly leaving the conversation. I obviously can’t know exactly what they were experiencing internally, and I wouldn’t want to retrospectively diagnose their reaction as shame. But the experience made me think about what happens psychologically when someone is suddenly confronted with a version of their behaviour that is difficult to sit with.

There is a difference between knowing intellectually that we’ve done something wrong and actually being able to remain emotionally present when someone we’ve hurt tells us what that experience was like. These are quite uncomfortable things.

Exposure, Shame and Accountability

One thing I find particularly interesting about avoidance is what can happen when that avoidance is disrupted by some form of exposure. When we can maintain emotional distance from something uncomfortable, we don’t necessarily have to confront it fully. But when our behaviour is reflected back to us, or we’re confronted with its consequences, emotions that were previously easier to avoid can become much harder to escape.

One of those emotions may be shame.

There is an important distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt can sound like, “I did something wrong.” Shame can become something closer to, “There is something wrong with me because of what I did.” That distinction matters because guilt can potentially motivate someone to repair the harm, whereas overwhelming shame can make someone want to hide from it. The same exposure that creates an opportunity for accountability can therefore also trigger another attempt to escape.

Someone may recognise that they have caused harm and genuinely regret it, yet find it incredibly difficult to remain present with the person they have hurt. This is one reason I find accountability so interesting. It isn’t necessarily just about recognising that something went wrong. Sometimes it means tolerating the discomfort that comes with seeing ourselves as someone who has caused harm.

Why Regret Can Come Later

This also makes the aftermath of relationships particularly interesting. Someone who appeared very certain about creating distance during a relationship can later experience sadness, regret or even a desire to reconnect. That doesn’t mean that everyone with avoidant tendencies eventually regrets leaving, nor does it mean that someone who expresses regret necessarily wants, or should have, another relationship with that person.

But emotional responses can change when the immediate pressure of closeness disappears. Distance may initially provide relief. The conflict has stopped, the emotional demands are no longer present, and there is space to breathe. But with that distance can come something else: the opportunity to reflect. Someone might begin to remember the positive parts of the relationship, recognise things they could have handled differently, or feel the consequences of a decision that initially felt necessary.

This can create a particularly complicated tension when attachment to the other person remains. Someone may still miss a previous partner while simultaneously finding contact with them uncomfortable because that person is also connected to the memories, consequences and emotions surrounding what happened. In some cases, the person we still feel attached to may also be the person who knows the version of ourselves we most want to distance ourselves from.

This could help explain why behaviour after a relationship can sometimes seem contradictory. Someone may want some form of connection while also avoiding direct conversations about the relationship. They may experience regret while struggling to face the person they hurt. They may want proximity while simultaneously wanting to escape the exposure that comes with it.

Of course, there can be many explanations for behaviour like this, and we can’t know what someone is experiencing internally simply from what they do. But psychologically, I find the tension interesting: attachment can pull someone towards a person, while shame and self-protection can pull them away.

This is where I think regret and shame become particularly interesting because regret can be experienced privately, but accountability has to be experienced relationally.

You can regret something without having to sit across from the person you hurt. Accountability is different. It may require listening to their experience, tolerating your own discomfort, acknowledging the impact of your behaviour and accepting that an apology doesn’t necessarily undo what happened.

Perhaps, then, regret is sometimes easier to experience at a distance than accountability is up close.

Understanding Isn’t Excusing

This is where I think attachment psychology needs some caution.

It’s tempting to use attachment styles to explain everything a person does. Someone cheated because they’re avoidant. Someone withdrew because they’re avoidant. Someone came back because they’re avoidant. Human behaviour isn’t that simple.

Attachment can provide a useful framework for understanding patterns of closeness, distance, and emotional regulation, but it doesn’t tell us everything about an individual or their motives.

More importantly, understanding why someone behaves a certain way doesn’t remove responsibility for the impact of their behaviour. Someone may have learned to cope with discomfort through withdrawal. They may genuinely struggle with vulnerability. They may experience intense shame when confronted with their behaviour.

None of that makes the harm disappear.

Understanding can create compassion without requiring us to abandon accountability.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps avoidant attachment isn’t really about whether someone wants love. Perhaps the more interesting question is what happens when love requires vulnerability, accountability and emotional exposure?

For someone who has learned to feel safest through independence and distance, closeness may sometimes bring emotions that are difficult to tolerate. Creating distance can provide immediate relief, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying emotions disappear. Sometimes they may simply emerge later, when the relationship is no longer immediately in front of us.

And perhaps this is one of the most uncomfortable parts of relationships: we can understand why someone behaved the way they did without deciding that their behaviour was okay.

We can recognise that shame may make accountability difficult without allowing shame to become an excuse for avoiding it.

Ultimately, the goal probably isn’t to become perfectly comfortable with vulnerability or never experience the urge to withdraw. It’s whether, when things become uncomfortable, we can stay present long enough to face what happened, recognise the impact we’ve had, and take responsibility for what we do next.