Marriages/Silent Divorce with an Avoidant Personality
by George Hartwell M.Sc, registered psychotherapist and Christian counselor
To schedule a session with George phone or text (416) 939-0544
Introduction
You got married with the deep desire in your heart to have a loving partner. Your spirit was seeking a love-forever safe life-partner to provide the emotional stability you needed to handle life's tough spots in your life, work and family. This was your goal.
However, if you or your partner have Avoidant Personality traits then you may have faced frustration with your marriage. You never seem to get anywhere near what you wanted in marriage. This is not the way you imagined it..
You may not realize that you have been blocked by avoidant traits and patterns. Avoidant traits can stay fairly hidden from view. That can leave you confused with your dissatisfaction with your marriage.
If Avoidant Personality traits are present you may want to find a therapist with deep familiarity with the block of avoidant traits. Such a therapist is more likely to be of assistance in acknowledging, understanding and confronting these patterns that can be so debilitating.
I would want this couple therapist to encourage and support steps of growth out of avoidance patterns and toward openness, sharing of feelings, and acknowledgement of one another's feelings. With a patience and empathic approach, and with enough time, the couple will advance toward the goal of being love-safe partners that are choosing practices that allow the deepening of their love relationship. Plan on having weekly appointments to keep up this progress.
It may be difficult to get agreement on seeing a couple therapist. In that case review the costs of marriage failure. See my blog about the heavy pain and costs that accompany divorce for the couple and the children.
I am a professional couple therapist with experience with the Avoidant Personality and marriage. I am registered Psychotherapist equipped with several methodologies that produce lasting change in life patterns.
Consult me now: George Hartwell (416) 939-0544 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Eastern Standard Time zone). An initial brief phone consult is free.
For more information see the following Question and Answers written my myself on the Avoidant Personality Disorder.
You got married with the deep desire in your heart to have a loving partner. Your spirit was seeking a love-forever safe life-partner to provide the emotional stability you needed to handle life's tough spots in your life, work and family. This was your goal.
However, if you or your partner have Avoidant Personality traits then you may have faced frustration with your marriage. You never seem to get anywhere near what you wanted in marriage. This is not the way you imagined it..
You may not realize that you have been blocked by avoidant traits and patterns. Avoidant traits can stay fairly hidden from view. That can leave you confused with your dissatisfaction with your marriage.
If Avoidant Personality traits are present you may want to find a therapist with deep familiarity with the block of avoidant traits. Such a therapist is more likely to be of assistance in acknowledging, understanding and confronting these patterns that can be so debilitating.
I would want this couple therapist to encourage and support steps of growth out of avoidance patterns and toward openness, sharing of feelings, and acknowledgement of one another's feelings. With a patience and empathic approach, and with enough time, the couple will advance toward the goal of being love-safe partners that are choosing practices that allow the deepening of their love relationship. Plan on having weekly appointments to keep up this progress.
It may be difficult to get agreement on seeing a couple therapist. In that case review the costs of marriage failure. See my blog about the heavy pain and costs that accompany divorce for the couple and the children.
I am a professional couple therapist with experience with the Avoidant Personality and marriage. I am registered Psychotherapist equipped with several methodologies that produce lasting change in life patterns.
Consult me now: George Hartwell (416) 939-0544 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Eastern Standard Time zone). An initial brief phone consult is free.
For more information see the following Question and Answers written my myself on the Avoidant Personality Disorder.
How do you know if you married someone with an avoidant personality disorder?
In the beginning It is hard to know that you married someone with an avoidant personality disorder. Each of us is used to life as we know it. If your parents avoided intimacy, personal talk and discouraged talk about feelings why would we think there is anything wrong?
The Avoidant Personality can be a very pleasant person. They are generally peaceful to be around. Their home is full of soft colours and nothing clashes. They are generally polite and sociable and want to please.
What one may notice in the avoidant is:
However if one is given to self-observation you will notice that something is missing in your couple life. In time it becomes obvious:
So this begins to feel really strange. Things you would expect a person would share with the person they love and who loves them just does not get shared. You realize that you are being left out of their life. You begin to feel isolated and alone. A quiet depression sets in.
It takes time to notice that they don't listen to people in trouble, instead they try to fix them. Rather then empathize they give solutions. Rather then acknowledging the persons feelings, they give answers. They respond to the problem but fail to comfort the person in trouble.
They avoid conflict. They avoid accountability. They may have their say but then disappear. They give and take of intimate conflict never happens.
You might notice that the avoidant also avoids high risk situations as in learning, travel or play.
People who avoid conflict love peace and order. They love peace and order to much that they avoid real discussion, negotiation, expression of needs, expression of feelings. There may be no raised voices but there is also no resolution of issues and minimal conversation or real communication.
In order to avoid conflict and achieve peace and order, the Avoidant Person needs to control. They control:
What few will ever know or realize is that the Avoidant Personality is always avoiding community, intimacy and bonding. In fact, believe it or not, they are avoiding love and marriage. Their life is based on the fear of real the intimate communication of marriage and real bonding and personal attachment.
This is the secret of the marriage to the Avoidant Personality. They want the appearance of marriage for the safety, public appearance and companionship. In their heart they do not want true marriage involving unity and bonding. The result is a strange sick creation - the appearance of marriage without the love and bonding of marriage.
Just as Paul said that the communion service without discerning the Body of Christ results in some sick and some dying. Going through the motions of marriage, including the sexual relationship - the marital sacrament of unity - without real community and connection results in sickness and death in the marital partners.
Like all other life patterns that are rooted in childhood memories, Self-change is frustratingly ineffective. The Avoidant Personality pattern requires professional help even while it is very hard for the Avoidant Personality to pursue help.
In the beginning It is hard to know that you married someone with an avoidant personality disorder. Each of us is used to life as we know it. If your parents avoided intimacy, personal talk and discouraged talk about feelings why would we think there is anything wrong?
The Avoidant Personality can be a very pleasant person. They are generally peaceful to be around. Their home is full of soft colours and nothing clashes. They are generally polite and sociable and want to please.
What one may notice in the avoidant is:
- their refusal to give straight answers,
- to acknowledge people’s feelings,
- to make clear straight requests
- lack of depth in conversation,
- they are always well dressed,
- their home is perfect and planned hospitality extravagant.
However if one is given to self-observation you will notice that something is missing in your couple life. In time it becomes obvious:
- Your partner never expresses or acknowledges feelings.
- Your partner does not talk about personal things in their life.
- Your partner does not share with you when they are in considerable trouble.
- They don't ask for comfort or complain about their pain or sickness.
So this begins to feel really strange. Things you would expect a person would share with the person they love and who loves them just does not get shared. You realize that you are being left out of their life. You begin to feel isolated and alone. A quiet depression sets in.
It takes time to notice that they don't listen to people in trouble, instead they try to fix them. Rather then empathize they give solutions. Rather then acknowledging the persons feelings, they give answers. They respond to the problem but fail to comfort the person in trouble.
They avoid conflict. They avoid accountability. They may have their say but then disappear. They give and take of intimate conflict never happens.
You might notice that the avoidant also avoids high risk situations as in learning, travel or play.
People who avoid conflict love peace and order. They love peace and order to much that they avoid real discussion, negotiation, expression of needs, expression of feelings. There may be no raised voices but there is also no resolution of issues and minimal conversation or real communication.
In order to avoid conflict and achieve peace and order, the Avoidant Person needs to control. They control:
- information - keep things to themselves,
- privacy - don't let others know what is happening in the family.
- conflict - limit the ability of others to respond to you,
- social distance - always maintain social distance even from your spouse,
- communication - keep true communication to a minimum,
- closeness - don't allow feelings of closeness.
- social image - always being careful about appearances.
What few will ever know or realize is that the Avoidant Personality is always avoiding community, intimacy and bonding. In fact, believe it or not, they are avoiding love and marriage. Their life is based on the fear of real the intimate communication of marriage and real bonding and personal attachment.
This is the secret of the marriage to the Avoidant Personality. They want the appearance of marriage for the safety, public appearance and companionship. In their heart they do not want true marriage involving unity and bonding. The result is a strange sick creation - the appearance of marriage without the love and bonding of marriage.
Just as Paul said that the communion service without discerning the Body of Christ results in some sick and some dying. Going through the motions of marriage, including the sexual relationship - the marital sacrament of unity - without real community and connection results in sickness and death in the marital partners.
Like all other life patterns that are rooted in childhood memories, Self-change is frustratingly ineffective. The Avoidant Personality pattern requires professional help even while it is very hard for the Avoidant Personality to pursue help.
What is the impact of the Avoidant Personality on a Marriage?
The primary reason why we have such a deep longing for marriage is our deep need for an emotionally faithful partner. Our emotional survival requires us to have partners who are emotionally faithful to us. They need to become like family; bonded to us like a child is to his mother. Emotional fidelity is committing to keep your partner as the central person in your life—your main source of connection and your primary confidant.
Dr. Kenneth Paul Rosenberg describes the important of this in Infidelity - Why Men and Women Cheat. He writes that 'the most common reason that my patients, male and female alike, cite as why they cheat is because they don’t feel that they can count on their partners. That special emotional connection they once shared has all but vanished.'
Marriage counsellors have heard the intense pain in the partner who observes their partner distancing from them. It is like the cry of an abandoned child. We now recognize that the primary objective a marriage counselling and Christian maarriage counselling is to heal, restore and strengthen the marital bond.
But with the Avoidant Personality the emotional core of the person deeply rejects and blocks all attempts to create that kind of connection. In a marriage with an Avoidant Personality this rejecting and blocking of bonding is continuous during the marriage no matter how long it continues. In most cases being married to an Avoidant Personality shatters all hope of achieving emotional fidelity.
Dr. Kenneth Paul Rosenberg describes the important of this in Infidelity - Why Men and Women Cheat. He writes that 'the most common reason that my patients, male and female alike, cite as why they cheat is because they don’t feel that they can count on their partners. That special emotional connection they once shared has all but vanished.'
Marriage counsellors have heard the intense pain in the partner who observes their partner distancing from them. It is like the cry of an abandoned child. We now recognize that the primary objective a marriage counselling and Christian maarriage counselling is to heal, restore and strengthen the marital bond.
But with the Avoidant Personality the emotional core of the person deeply rejects and blocks all attempts to create that kind of connection. In a marriage with an Avoidant Personality this rejecting and blocking of bonding is continuous during the marriage no matter how long it continues. In most cases being married to an Avoidant Personality shatters all hope of achieving emotional fidelity.
What is Marriage to the Avoidant Personality like? Or What is it like being married to an Avoidant Personality?
The avoidant personality -male or female - is an expert at being peaceful and looking very calm and together. If their partner is not sensitive to the lack of personal sharing in the relationship, then it is quite possible for an avoidant person to end up married and with children.
Like the psychopath the Avoidant Personality creates the persona that accomplishes their life purpose. They can look like they are living when they are just going through the motions. They look like they are getting married when their heart refuses to be married. The Avoidant woman can be the perfect wife but robotic. Think of the Stepford wives, if you know the story.
For the Avoidant to avoid risk it is advantageous to be married and have children. It is a safe place to hide. No one can demand that they change. No one thinks there is anything wrong. They are, after all intensely, focused on keeping up appearances and, therefore, looking the part. But there is something very wrong.
However, if their spouse needs intimacy there will be a growing dissatisfaction. There is sex without bonding, conversations without sharing, live without real connection. Where is the love? The Avoidant Partner can and will prevent the development of a real life-giving marriage. They nurture the appearance but deny the love reality of marriage. To the undiscerning their home is so very peaceful. In the spirit the home is the tomb/womb of the avoidant. It is a hiding place, a retreat, and the peace is not life-giving to the inhabitants. To the visitor all is well. From the outside all is well. Ill health and death linger in the halls where love has not been allowed to settle.
For the sake of both partners in the silent divorce this marriage must end. It must either change to one that is life-giving or you must officially recognize that the Avoidant Personality has already 'set asunder' the marriage bond that God ordained for marriage. A full-blown Avoidant avoids the exposure and intimacy of true therapy or couple counselling. They divert couple counselling from the issue of bonding to some specific problem unrelated to intimacy. The Avoidant who is willing to do couple counselling is not a full avoidant personality and that in itself is hopeful. Be prepared to encourage, support and praise the steps the avoidant makes toward bonding and be patient with the process. This is a deep issue.
The avoidant personality -male or female - is an expert at being peaceful and looking very calm and together. If their partner is not sensitive to the lack of personal sharing in the relationship, then it is quite possible for an avoidant person to end up married and with children.
Like the psychopath the Avoidant Personality creates the persona that accomplishes their life purpose. They can look like they are living when they are just going through the motions. They look like they are getting married when their heart refuses to be married. The Avoidant woman can be the perfect wife but robotic. Think of the Stepford wives, if you know the story.
For the Avoidant to avoid risk it is advantageous to be married and have children. It is a safe place to hide. No one can demand that they change. No one thinks there is anything wrong. They are, after all intensely, focused on keeping up appearances and, therefore, looking the part. But there is something very wrong.
However, if their spouse needs intimacy there will be a growing dissatisfaction. There is sex without bonding, conversations without sharing, live without real connection. Where is the love? The Avoidant Partner can and will prevent the development of a real life-giving marriage. They nurture the appearance but deny the love reality of marriage. To the undiscerning their home is so very peaceful. In the spirit the home is the tomb/womb of the avoidant. It is a hiding place, a retreat, and the peace is not life-giving to the inhabitants. To the visitor all is well. From the outside all is well. Ill health and death linger in the halls where love has not been allowed to settle.
For the sake of both partners in the silent divorce this marriage must end. It must either change to one that is life-giving or you must officially recognize that the Avoidant Personality has already 'set asunder' the marriage bond that God ordained for marriage. A full-blown Avoidant avoids the exposure and intimacy of true therapy or couple counselling. They divert couple counselling from the issue of bonding to some specific problem unrelated to intimacy. The Avoidant who is willing to do couple counselling is not a full avoidant personality and that in itself is hopeful. Be prepared to encourage, support and praise the steps the avoidant makes toward bonding and be patient with the process. This is a deep issue.
The signs of an avoidant partner are the many ways they avoid personal sharing. Without personal sharing, openness, real intimacy and bonding cannot happen.
Avoidant people may not realize how much their communication is avoidant as they may consciously want to have a companion. It is their heart (unconscious) that has shut down to being in a love relationship. As a result the person will give mixed messages.
The causes are hidden just as the person is hidden. They put much energy into managing public perception. You will see how they try to correct any confrontation or revelation about them.
The pattern is characterized by shame - lack of early affirmation of the right to be a person. Look back into their history and mother likely did not have close relationships with her parents. One case is being sent to a boarding school like the English upper class used to do. Missionaries also used to send their children to boarding school so the child only saw their parents at holidays.
Put more simply the mother of an avoidant person is likely an avoidant person. This means during the first year of building the bond with her infant, mother backed out of the intimate moments with her infant. She avoided, because she felt uncomfortable with intimacy, her infant and her infant learned to avoid as well.
You may find that mother or father deserted the child in the early years creating too big a wound to trust again. The possible pain is too much. I am sure you have people like that.
I find the Avoidant Person tends to avoid all risks not just intimacy in love and sharing in personal relationships but where it shows up the most is when their marriage partner withers for lack of life and love in the marriage. This lack of love sucks life, energy and health and can manifest as physical health problems in ones partner.
Avoidant people may not realize how much their communication is avoidant as they may consciously want to have a companion. It is their heart (unconscious) that has shut down to being in a love relationship. As a result the person will give mixed messages.
The causes are hidden just as the person is hidden. They put much energy into managing public perception. You will see how they try to correct any confrontation or revelation about them.
The pattern is characterized by shame - lack of early affirmation of the right to be a person. Look back into their history and mother likely did not have close relationships with her parents. One case is being sent to a boarding school like the English upper class used to do. Missionaries also used to send their children to boarding school so the child only saw their parents at holidays.
Put more simply the mother of an avoidant person is likely an avoidant person. This means during the first year of building the bond with her infant, mother backed out of the intimate moments with her infant. She avoided, because she felt uncomfortable with intimacy, her infant and her infant learned to avoid as well.
You may find that mother or father deserted the child in the early years creating too big a wound to trust again. The possible pain is too much. I am sure you have people like that.
I find the Avoidant Person tends to avoid all risks not just intimacy in love and sharing in personal relationships but where it shows up the most is when their marriage partner withers for lack of life and love in the marriage. This lack of love sucks life, energy and health and can manifest as physical health problems in ones partner.
Are people with avoidant personality disorder misunderstood socially and professionally, and how does this manifest?
Well, yes the avoidant Personality disorder is misunderstood a lot. Their friends and social contacts will not realize they their friend is avoiding sharing anything personal. If a friend is concerned with them, they will invest a lot of effort in correcting and persuading their friend that there is no problem. They are good at staying undercover.
The same applies to professional contacts. They are very good at hiding, following the rules and mechanically meeting expectations.
Only in marriage do you get partners who realize something is wrong; this isn’t a real marriage. This may take a lot of time. The marital partner feels vague dissatisfaction but can’t put a finger on it. The avoidant personality is again very good at hiding while complying outwardly.
Do you know the story about the Stepford Wives? The Avoidant wife could be compared to a Stepford wife - mechanically meeting all expectations but consistently avoiding all intimacy.
One may be confused by their appropriate and friendly outward appearance and the potential for real love and bonding with the avoidant person or in their marriage.
Well, yes the avoidant Personality disorder is misunderstood a lot. Their friends and social contacts will not realize they their friend is avoiding sharing anything personal. If a friend is concerned with them, they will invest a lot of effort in correcting and persuading their friend that there is no problem. They are good at staying undercover.
The same applies to professional contacts. They are very good at hiding, following the rules and mechanically meeting expectations.
Only in marriage do you get partners who realize something is wrong; this isn’t a real marriage. This may take a lot of time. The marital partner feels vague dissatisfaction but can’t put a finger on it. The avoidant personality is again very good at hiding while complying outwardly.
Do you know the story about the Stepford Wives? The Avoidant wife could be compared to a Stepford wife - mechanically meeting all expectations but consistently avoiding all intimacy.
One may be confused by their appropriate and friendly outward appearance and the potential for real love and bonding with the avoidant person or in their marriage.