A Loved One is a person in a relationship with someone who has, or they suspect has, Avoidant Personality (AVP). Typically, the Loved One is a person that does not have a mental health condition themself and is just trying to have a normal relationship with their partner.
Before I go any further, I need to define what Avoidant Personality is. Very simply, people who have Avoidant Personality, avoid.
Now you might be thinking that this definition is way too simple, but it’s really not. Avoidants avoid intimacy, avoid friends, and they especially avoid talking about their issues. I could go on and on about Rejection, Social Anxiety and all those other symptoms, but the best way to sum all that up is to say people with Avoidant Personality avoid life.
Moving on, you suspect that your partner has Avoidant Personality, and you want to learn how to have a better relationship with them.
Well, to be quite honest, it’s not easy. I put my poor wife through the ringer for 20 years. Let me give you a short example. One evening, we were heading out to a restaurant to get something to eat. As we were driving, we got into a huge argument. It got so bad that I told my wife to get out of the car and walk. If that was not bad enough, she was 6 months pregnant, it was getting dark, and it was raining.
When a “normal” person tries to be in a relationship with someone that has Avoidant Personality, they have to take on the lion’s share of the responsibility in the relationship.
What does that mean? Well, I’m glad that you asked.
The one with AVP is struggling to function in a world that does not understand them. The one in the relationship that does not have it, is going to have to pick up the slack and be the strong one.
When stuff (fights and life) go down, as stuff tends to do, it’s the Loved One that is going to have to keep it together. Is it fair? Not at all. In any normal relationship, people fight, life throws us curve balls, and there are always bumps in the road.
Take a normal average relationship with 2 regular people that are not suffering from any sort of mental health issue. There is around a 50/50 chance that the relationship is going to make it. Let’s change up those parameters. The first person is a normal average person that we have classified as the Loved One. The second person in the relationship suffers from Avoidant Personality. A conservative estimate is that those odds are now closer to 5/95. That’s a 95% chance of failure, with only a 5% chance of success. At this point, you might be thinking that a 5% chance of success is not worth it.
I’m here to tell you that 5% is worth it, if you are willing to make the commitment to put in the work.
When my wife and I first got married, she used to say all the time that we were like oil and water. She was saying that as a bad thing, because as far as she, and most of the rest of the world knows, oil and water do not mix. I still bring this up to her often.
I used to be in the Air Force, where my job was to know everything there was to know about jet fuel so I could fuel up jets. One aspect of that knowledge was that in fact, oil and water DO mix, IF you work at it.
In other words, no matter how far apart it seems that my wife and I are, we CAN make it work and form a great union. It just requires that we put in a lot of effort to no only get us there, but keep us there.
In order to survive a relationship with someone that has AVPD, the Loved One has to be committed. It’s just not enough to want the relationship to work. Anything less and when the going gets tough, which I promise that that it’s going to, the Loved One is going to start looking for the first available exit!