What to Do If Your Wife Has an Avoidant Attachment Style

Hey, Cody Butler here, and in this video I want to talk to you about what if your wife has an avoidant attachment style. Now this is one of the most common things I hear. I've worked with literally thousands of men in marriage crisis, and many will come and say, my wife has an avoidant attachment style or an anxious attachment style. What now? Well, let's go into that in this video. What is it? Is it fixable? Is your marriage over? What are the myths? What's real? What do you need to know about this? To save your marriage, get your wife back, and start living the good life again. So many of you are here watching this video because of the title, right? You figured out that your wife— you've watched some videos on YouTube, you figured out she's got an avoidant attachment style, and now you want to do something about it. So I'm guessing you've probably spent many hours on YouTube watching avoidant attachment, dismissive avoidance, fearful avoidance, anxious avoidance, so on and so forth. The list goes on and on. And right now you're probably feeling a sense of relief, right? For the first time, this is explaining her behavior. It's all starting to make sense to you. And in this scenario, because what you're learning is actually starting to make sense, the label seems to fit, right? She is an avoidant. This makes total sense. Everything that's going on in my marriage now makes sense. But there's some critical pieces of of the puzzle here that everybody's missing, that nobody's really talking about. And if you get this wrong, you misunderstand this, then you're going to have real, real problems. So let's just start out with saying that maybe it's true that your wife has an avoidant attachment disorder or something like that. We're not disputing that. I'm not saying that's not the case, but that's just the start of the story, right? What happens now? How do you fix this? How do you move forward? So Some key understandings to take away here is that it's very probable, and I'm not disputing at all, that your wife may absolutely and probably is behaving in an avoidant way. She's whatever decide, whatever flavor of avoidant, uh, avoidance you've come up with, right? Anxious avoidance, whatever. So avoidant attachment may describe what you're seeing in here. In her. But here's the, here's the thing that you have to understand, and this is probably the most important part of this entire video if you want to fix this problem, right? If you want your wife back, the avoidant attachment describes the behavior that your wife is engaging in right now. It does not explain why she's behaving in it. And if you want to fix the problem, recognizing that she's behaving this way is one thing, but that doesn't change anything. You have to understand Why is she behaving this way? Avoidant behavior is called avoidant behavior for a reason, right? The question is, what is she trying to avoid here? If we can get to the bottom of that, then we got a really, really good chance of actually turning this situ— situation around. So let's look at the difference between description and explanation. So a description of a behavior is not an explanation for that behavior, and that is an absolute critical distinction here. Yes, she's avoiding certain things. That's the behavior that she's engaging in. She's avoidant, but it does not explain why she is avoiding them. The label describes— the diagnosis describes the patterns of her behavior. The causes explain the pattern. What is causing the patterns? So again, you're basically looking at the situation going, "The sky is blue." Well, we all knew that. We all knew the sky was blue, but do you know why the sky is blue? We look at grass and go, "Grass is green." Yeah, I understand, but do you know why grass is green? We have to understand that we need both here. We need to— we need the description of the behavior and we need the explanation of what is going on. So a great analogy to help you understand this is the fever analogy. You're running a temperature, you have a fever, right? So to say my child has a fever, that's descriptive. It's, it's explaining what is going on with them right now. They have— their body is at a certain temperature. It's descriptive of an environment and a circumstance. It doesn't explain why they have a fever. And ultimately, in this case, we're going to say that infection is the explanation. They've, they've been infected by a virus or they've been infected by a bug. So understanding that your child has a fever does not move you any closer to none of your children ever getting a fever or avoiding the circumstances that created the fever or making sure that you don't put the child back into the exact same environment that created that fever. So avoidant attachment is exactly the same. It's very, very similar. Attachment is the description. What is the, what is the infection here? We need to find that out, and we're going to. So some key statements here to understand, some key understanding is a label such as anxious avoidant, etc., it tells you what you're looking at. My child has a fever, it's descriptive, it tells you exactly what you're looking at. What it does not do is tell you what created it. A diagnosis of a situation is not a cause, right? To say, "My wife is divorcing me." Well, that's an accurate diagnosis. She's divorcing you, I understand, but that does not give me any insight into the causation of the divorce, right? A diagnosis is not a cause. So you've identified probably accurately what the mechanism is, what's going on, what the pattern is rather, the avoidant behavior, What you have not identified at this point is the mechanism or the underlying mechanisms that's causing her to behave in an avoidant way. So let's look at what she's trying to accomplish with this behavior. And again, this is subconscious, this is nervous system level stuff, right? This is not a case of she's, she's intentionally choosing this, but when you understand that every human behavior is, is there to accomplish an outcome, to produce a result. Human beings become very, very easy to understand, and their behavior becomes very, very easy to understand. And once you understand the person's behavior and what they're trying to accomplish with that behavior, it becomes very easy. So a great example is a 5-year-old who throws a— who's learnt that throwing a toddler tantrum gets him what he wants, right? Once you understand that he's throwing a tantrum because he wants the iPad or the screen, he's not throwing a tantrum because he's a naughty little boy or something like that, then we understand why they're behaving that way and we can help them accomplish what they want. What are they trying to achieve with the behavior in a much, much more productive way. So every behavior that you engage in, your wife engages in, I engage in, or any other human being, it serves a purpose. It moves you in a direction or away from a direction, right? So any behavior that you or I or anybody else is either— is designed to move you towards the pursuit of pleasure, the experience of pleasure, or it's designed to help you avoid the experience of pain. That is it, right? So when somebody who engages in a behavior such as not wanting to attach, then that, that's a protective mechanism to avoid pain potentially, and it's not irrational. So a big mistake we can make here is looking at the behavior of our wife or anybody else and going, this behavior is irrational. No, it's not irrational. It's only irrational because you don't understand understand why this behavior exists and what it's trying to achieve. Now, it may not be the most effective way to arrive at the, uh, behavior or the outcome that your wife is looking for, in the same way that throwing toddler tantrums isn't the best way for a child to get what he wants. There's more productive ways, but nevertheless, it's functional, right? And the behavior that your wife is engaging in right now, it's protectional. It's protecting her from something. And that is functional. It's functioning and it's serving a purpose. So if you want her to stop engaging in that protective behavior that's functional, then fundamentally it comes down to the behavior that she's trying to protect herself from, or the outcome that she's trying to protect herself from with this attachment disorder attachment style. That is what actually, actually has to be addressed, and that is what is driving the behavior. If we can remove that then we stand a very good chance of moving forward, right? So key understanding here is to understand that all human behavior has positive intention. It's positive. It's either designed to move the person towards an experience of pleasure or to move them away from the experience of pain. Now, you might not understand how that behavior is doing that, or you may not see the end result that they're trying to achieve. They may not even understand understand it because they've learned mechanisms to get what they want as children, and now they're using those mechanisms. But nevertheless, at a level, they're moving towards pleasure or they're moving away from pain. I'm not critical of anybody for either one of those intentions, right? It's what we do as human beings. They— people don't just become negative and nasty and all of these things just for the hell of it. There's a reason if they're doing that, and they're moving towards pleasure or pain. So People— again, this is very, very important, right? This is, this is a myth that, like, if you, if you can look at why your wife is doing what she's doing instead of putting a label on it and making that the problem, makes, makes the solution so much easier, right? It's like people don't protect themselves from experiences that they enjoy. When you understand that this attachment disorder is this avoidant style of interacting with people is fundamentally a protective mechanism to help them avoid more pain in their life. And you understand that people don't protect themselves from experiences that they enjoy. People don't put protective mechanisms in place to shield themselves from pleasure and happy experiences. We understand then that they protect themselves from experiences that they've learned to fear, to resent, or that they no longer find rewarding in their life. So again, if we can just move away for the sake of the outcome and the result that we're looking for from the label, and we move into the behavior and the outcome, and instead of saying my wife has an avoidant attachment style, to say, you say, or you choose to say that my wife is actually— she's just, she's just protecting herself from an experience that she's learned to fear, such as resentment, anger, pain, or just simply experiences that she no longer finds rewarding, then the avoidant attachment style then is not a mental illness or something that needs to be dealt with within the other person. The problem then becomes very objective in the real world and very manageable and very fixable. So What's going on here when we understand this, right? They— that this is a protection from learned experiences towards fear, resentment, anger, etc., etc. Then we have to understand that the current relationship that she is in, that she has now become avoidant to, is that she's avoiding pain within the marriage. So the current belief that you're holding at this point very probably is that her avoidant personality disorder, her avoidant attachment disorder, her anxious avoidant whatever, right, is actually the cause of the problems within the marriage. There's cause and effect, right? We operate in a cause and effect world. Her avoidant personality is creating problems within the marriage. That's probably how we're seeing the situation right now, but the reality is that very backwards and very unhelpful and is not going to solve your problems. A much more useful model to adopt to get the solution that you're looking for is that repeated relationship experiences that she's had within this marriage with you has led her to adopt a protective behavior so she can avoid unproductive, painful experiences, etc. Etc. She had— she's not avoiding the marriage because she has a disorder. She's avoided the marriage because she's learned that relationship experiences within this marriage are painful, and now she's simply engaging in a protective behavior to avoid experiencing any more pain. So if you're not sure about this, if you're questioning this, well, let's just put this to the test, right? Let's put the rubber on the road. Was she ever affectionate with you? Did she ever pursue you in any way, pursue conversation with you, pursue engagement with you in any way? Did she ever engage or initiate intimacy, or even, even just take it one step further and it doesn't even have to be initiate intimacy, did she voluntarily and willingly engage in intimacy, intimacy with you at one point? Did she enjoy having conversations or spending time with you at some some point. And did she ever feel emotionally connected to you? Well, I know the answer to these questions, right? They're hypothetical questions. Of course she did. Of course she was affectionate. She pursued a relationship with you. She enjoyed your company, enjoyed talking to you. So at some point within the relationship, she was not avoidant. She did not have an avoidant attachment style. Quite the opposite. So what we can actually determine from this is that something changed within the marriage. Something changed within her experience of the marriage, and that is the problem, and that is also the solution to the problem. So the key understanding here is that she wasn't avoidant, and she wasn't avoiding you when she fell in love with you, right? So we can go back into trauma, childhood, all that stuff if we want to. It's a red herring, and it's taking us down the wrong path because she was able to have a non-avoidant relationship with you. So we have a history of her being able to function normally within the marriage. So it's not something that's in her past. Yes, that may make her more susceptible and more trigger-shy, and she's going to react faster to problems within the marriage, but nevertheless, she was able to have a normal attachment style with you within the marriage. So the better question to ask here, man, if you really genuinely want to solve this problem is why is she avoidant, right? Not, not how do I fix her. The better question is why is she avoidant right now? Why does she have this avoidant attachment style, right? And the even, even better question than that is what has she learned from being close to me, or what has she learned from being in this relationship that's taught her that an avoidant attachment style is the way to reduce pain or eliminate pain. So what's happened here, the reason that she's gone from being able to actually function somewhat normally at some level within a relationship and have a normal attachment style, she, she's, she's learned, her nervous system now predicts that closeness is dangerous, right? What does closeness predict? So her nervous system is continually asking the question, what happens when I get close to this person? What am I going to experience when I get close to this person, or if I engage with this person? The nervous system is a predictive mechanism designed to keep the person safe. It's predictive, it predicts what's going to happen in the future based on what's happened in the past. And if there's been a large amount of pain in the past that is unresolved, and a new prediction hasn't been installed in this predictive mechanism in this computer, then closeness— when she's going to predict, her nervous system is going to predict that when she gets close to you, it's going to cause pain. And then the nervous system is going to go, avoid, avoid, avoid. She engages in a pattern of behavior that you can identify from your research as being avoidant attachment. And now she's, now she's labeled an avoidant. And avoid it, right? But the question is, what happens? Her nervous system is asking the question, what happens when I get close to this person? Has closeness, has being close to you resulted in criticism, conflict, pressure, emotional labor, feeling misunderstood, disappointment, hopelessness, emotional exhaustion, the feeling of nothing ever changes, right? So when she gets close to you, her nervous system now predicts that these things are going to happen. So again, what's the key understanding that we need to take from this? Your wife doesn't emotionally attach to your intentions going, "I want to fix this. I want to work on myself." I want to— she's not, she's not attaching to your intentions, she's attaching or detaching, right, avoiding her past experiences of the relationship. So what she's actually doing here, she's emotionally attaching herself to her repeated experience of you, the marriage, the relationship, etc., etc. So understand that the human brain is always, always learning. It's always predicting. Is this safe? Is it safe to go in this room? Is it safe to drive this car? Is it safe to be in this environment? This is what the brain does, right? And your nervous system is the specific mechanism making those predictions, and it is determining those predictions of safety or danger today and tomorrow from its past experience of the relationship yesterday. Her nervous system is now predicting that this marriage is a threat, this environment is dangerous, and the avoidant attachment is the best way to avoid pain. So the common questions that I get all the time, and like I say, I've worked with thousands of men. If you want to learn how, how you can work with me, there's some links in the description. I've got some free workshops, I've got some great resources if you're interested in learning how we can work through this together. But the questions I get all the time that are the wrong questions is, how do I manage an avoidant wife? An avoidant wife is not something to be managed. It's, it's a situation to be understood and an environment to be changed, right? How do I communicate with an avoidant wife? How do I stop her from withdrawing? Again, all of these questions are at looking at the fever that's going on and not looking at any of the conditions that have created that fever. Hopefully you can already see by where we are in this presentation right now, that none of these are actually going to solve the problem. None of these are actually really relevant questions if you want to move forward with the marriage. So the better question to ask here is, what has my relationship, or what has our relationship, this marriage, repeatedly taught her to expect? And if she's in an avoidant position right now, the answer is pain. If you— if it wasn't pain, you wouldn't be watching this video, and you certainly wouldn't have watched it to this point. Right? What the relationship, the marriage has taught her is to expect pain. And like any rational, sane, normal human being, she's created a defense mechanism to avoid that pain. She is not mentally ill or has a mental disorder because her experience has taught her that if this happens, she experiences pain. Now she wants to avoid pain. This is a completely normal, healthy, human being. And as long as we're looking at avoidant attachment style diagnoses as the problem, we're going to struggle to come up with a solution. So our key understanding here is you're looking currently probably for the cause in her instead of the relationship. What happened in her past? What trauma is she experiencing? How do I help her through this? So the key understanding is understanding her psychology, her psychology won't rebuild attraction to you, and it won't deal with the avoidant attachment style towards you if her experience of you in the marriage doesn't change. It's not, how do I work on her? How do I help her through this? It's, how do I shift the environment that she is currently in to where she no longer needs to be avoidant to avoid pain? So What we're fundamentally looking to do here is change the prediction that her predictive mechanism, i.e., her nervous system, is making about the marriage, you, the circumstances that she's currently in, right? So we've already talked about this. What does your present currently consistently predict, or, or what does her nervous system consistently predict about your present? Does it predict peace? Does it predict, predict stability? Does it predict emotional regulation, consistency, leadership, emotional autonomy, masculine identity? Does it predict all of these things? Does she think when she gets around you that she's going to experience all of this, or does she believe that she's going to experience pain? The answer is obvious and self-evident. She believes that she's going to experience pain. The situation tells us this. The situation diagnoses this, and what we need to do to get her to reattach, to stop being avoidant, is to change what her predictive mechanism, her nervous system, is predicting about the experience that she's going to have of the marriage. And how do you do that? You change the experience that she's going to have of the marriage. So Does it predict these, these positive things? Or when she thinks about you, or she sees you come in, or she's got a deal with you, does she feel anxious, pressured? Does— do you produce conflict, reactivity, emotional instability? All of these things. The answer is the latter here. Again, our situation tells us this. Is she experiencing someone who's selfless or selfish? Someone who has her best interest at heart, or someone who's going to inflict pain. The situation gives us the diagnosis here. So key understanding from this section here is the protective behaviors, which again, let's change avoidant attachment style to— let's just call it what it is, it's a protective behavior. That protective behavior, or the disorder that right now you believe is destroying your marriage, it disappears when protection is no longer necessary. When she no longer needs to protect herself from these things, the protective mechanism, i.e., avoidant attachment style, disappears. So your job in this situation, brother, to turn this around, isn't to persuade her nervous system of anything. Your job is to give her new evidence through your behavior and through the environment, the culture of the marriage, how you show up consistently, your identity, your behavior, and the rubber that you lay on the road to give her new evidence that she does no— she no longer needs to avoid the marriage, the situation, or you to avoid pain. And quite the opposite, when she comes back into the marriage, not only is the pain going to be gone, but there's, there's pleasure moving forward. So the solution here is ultimately to become somebody who she can become emotionally attached to. So if the problem is avoidant attachment, fundamentally, the solution to that is the exact opposite. Become somebody who she doesn't have to avoid emotionally. Become somebody that she is happy and chooses to attach to emotionally. So some of the things here: become emotionally regulated, emotionally sovereign, stable, consistent, calm under pressure. Self-respecting, independent of her mood, self-regulated. Have we said that? A source of emotional safety and stability within the marriage, right? Or in other words, become the shelter from the storm, not the storm. So the question that men ask themselves in this situation is, how do I deal with this? How do I get an avoidant— a woman with avoidant attachment style to attach Replace that question with, who must I calm for attachment to me and attachment to this marriage to feel safe again? This, this question will get you divorced. This question will get you reconciled. So again, key understandings: for, for, for my wife to emotionally reattach to me, which is what we want, I must become a man a woman can emotionally attach to. What is it going on that she does not want to attach to? Remove that and you remove the reasons for the avoidant attachment style. So the goal here is not to convince her nervous system. The goal here is to become a person whose presence naturally invites attachment, which we just covered, right? Peaceful, calm, stable, predictable, reliable, etc., etc. So again, the key here is to understand that the solution is to stop being the storm and start to become the shelter from the storm. Her avoidant attachment is the shelter from the storm right now, and that storm is you. If you shift from being the storm to being the shelter from the storm, the mechanism of avoidant attachment just disappears and no longer serves a purpose. So stop becoming another source of pressure for her, another source of emotional pain, another storm in her life, and become a stable, peaceful man bringing certainty and stability to the relationship Become the calm, become the shelter, become shelter from the storm. Because guess what? When you do these, protection is no longer necessary. And when protection is no longer necessary, the protective mechanism, i.e., avoidant attachment, disappears. You remove the need for its existence, you make it obsolete. So we're getting close to the end here. So she's not detaching because she's broken, or she's not— you're not experiencing avoidant attachment style because she's mentally ill or she has a disorder. That's simply not the case. Hopefully you can see that at this point. She's simply protecting herself from an experience that she no longer wants to have. If you remove the need for that protection, then the protective mechanism, i.e., the avoidant attachment style or the anxious attachment, whatever it is, that you've decided your wife is experiencing right now, that just disappears and there is no longer any legitimate reason. She has no longer to hang on to that. It no longer serves her. In fact, it serves the opposite purpose to what it once did. And lastly is stop being the storm and start to become the shelter from the storm. So the question that I get at this point is, I see that, Cody, I get that, but can an avoidant wife actually fall back in love after all of this stuff has actually happened. And I've put that into this video here, so watch that. And if you like this video, give us a thumbs up, subscribe, leave a comment, and we'll see you in the next video.