I have received several emails lately asking me for help. They have all been from people that are in some sort of relationship with a partner that is an Avoidant. In some cases, they are not sure, but suspect that their partner is an Avoidant.
My heart goes out to anyone that lives with, or is in a relationship, with an Avoidant. I wont blow smoke up your you know where. Its ruff putting up with an Avoidant. I takes the patience of Job and the understanding and wisdom of Solomon. I have been married for 10 years now.
I try to tell my poor wife as often as I can that I love her and appreciate her. When I am in full blown Avoidant mode, I am impossible to live with. I am a Christian and used to be a Youth Pastor. I love God, pray, read and talk to him daily. But even with all this on my side, its still not easy.
I cant even imagine how anyone could possible cope with being an Avoidant and not be a Christian. Just being normal is hard enough without God. But being an Avoidant takes this to a whole new level.
I really have no idea how my wife and I have made it this far. Other than to say that it has to have been God. We have been on the brink of divorce many many times. We still have our bad days. I tell people that being an Avoidant is like a form of Schizophrenia. Its like a computer that was given 2 conflicting sets of instructions. Like in the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey.
I think if someone wants a glimpse of what being an Avoidant is like, Id have them watch this movie. In the movie, the on-board computer is called Hal. Hal has a directive to always tell the truth no matter what. But in secret, he was given orders to lie to the crew about the tru nature of the mission.
These orders are diametrically opposed to each other. Hal cannot complete either order. So the result is that he goes nuts. This is what Avoidants deal with each and every day. We want to love and be loved. We want to be accepted by others. We want to have friends and relationships.
But the Avoidant part of us gives us another set of orders. These orders say that we hate people. People are the enemy. Everyone is better than us so we need to shun them all. We cannot be loved because we dont deserve it. We deserve to live alone and be unhappy.
These 2 sets of orders are always fighting against each other driving us nuts.
To live with an Avoidant takes extreme patience, extreme understanding and extreme patience. Did I mention patience? When you have come to the end of your patience, be patient some more. And when you have gotten to the end of that, be patent some more. And when the end of that comes, be patient some more.
Its a tuff life that I would not recommend to the faint of heart. But there is hope! There is always hope. If you love that person, stick with them. It will take time, but they will come around. I think that once you get through the muck and mire of being with an Avoidant, there are very good things on the other side. Avoidants have the capability of making excellent mates because once you get through, your in.
Avoidants, perhaps more than just about any other personality type, will be there through thick and then. Fiercely loyal and protective to a fault. We love deeply. You just have to get through all the ruff exterior.
This is my log of my issues with living to Avoidant Personality Disorder. My hope is that in writing this, it will help myself and perhaps others that are also struggling with this disorder and others like it. I have set up a survey on AvPD. Click here to take it. I am trying to get more information on this disorder so that we can find commonalities. Perhaps if we can learn more about this, we can figure out how to combat it and get better lives for us all.
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