If you’re avoidantly attached, you may think of yourself as being low-maintenance, low-drama, and extremely self-sufficient; you may feel like your partners are historically the ones who cause drama, pick fights, have hysterical reactions to things, or are generally “needy.” If you primarily date people with anxious attachment, as many avoidant people do as part of the anxious/avoidant cycle, it’s true that your partner’s reactions to conflict or intense feelings might be more outwardly noticeable than yours — these are their protest behaviors as anxiously attached people. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own protest behaviors you’re likely leveraging — and that are at least as much of the root of the friction in your relationship as your partner’s.

 

What’s Protest Behavior and Why Is It a Problem?

 

Protest behaviors are indirect strategies people use to get emotional needs met or avoid distress, and they often damage trust and connection in adult relationships.

 

When we were very young, we needed to figure out ways to get our needs met by our caregivers — needs for food, water, shelter, relief from pain or discomfort, or for emotional care. Some of us could ask and have those needs met pretty immediately.  

 

For those of us with caregivers who may not have been able to be consistently attuned to us or able to provide for our needs, we may have found it necessary to use indirect means to get our emotional and psychological needs met in the home. For instance, if our parent grew impatient with us or told us to stop being a baby when we cried and asked for help, we may have learned to overperform or act out as an alternative means to get their care and attention. Many of us tend to still employ those same moves when we feel like our needs aren’t being met in our adult relationships, a pattern that’s deeply connected to our attachment style. 

 

But while protest behaviors like tantrums or faking illness are developmentally appropriate as kids, they’re less appropriate ways to get our needs met as adults — and tend to have disastrous consequences for our relationships. If you’re caught in the anxious/avoidant cycle with your partner(s), it’s likely that your respective protest behaviors are playing a role in the friction you’re experiencing. One step of moving toward more secure attachment, both individually and as part of a dynamic, is to learn to notice and check your protest behaviors and work on healthier, more effective strategies to get your needs met instead.

What Does Protest Behavior Look Like If You’re Avoidantly Attached?

 

For avoidantly attached people, protest behaviors often show up as withdrawal, shutdown, or distance-taking that protects against shame and conflict.

 

Protest behaviors aren’t something we do to deliberately annoy our partners or harm our relationships; they’re functional attempts at getting concrete needs met or avoiding experiences we experience as dangerous or harmful. Thus, the protest behavior we end up using is linked to the need we’re trying to get met or the experience we’re trying to avoid having. For anxiously attached people, they’re often trying to meet a need for connection, and avoid the experience of having to feel disconnection; as such, many anxious attachment protest behaviors are organized around getting your partner to engage with you in some way. 

 

For avoidantly attached people, protest behaviors are often motivated by the desire to avoid the feeling of shame — our partner is upset with us or wants something from us we don’t feel like we can provide, and this triggers a lot of shame that can be deeply distressing to feel. Many avoidantly attached protest behaviors are about withdrawing from the situation or relationship to some degree in order to avoid having to feel that sense of shame. 

 

• 💛 “Silent treatment” or stonewalling your partner
• 💛 Avoiding difficult conversations or topics even when you know they’re important to your partner
• 💛 Ignoring calls, texts or messages wilfully
• 💛 Blocking your partner impulsively or as punishment
• 💛 Minimizing or dismissing your partner’s emotional reactions
• 💛 Excessive desire for space for days/weeks, with no clear plan to reconnect or return to the issue
• 💛 Avoiding social media or broader social plans, isolating

 

If you find yourself turning your phone off or shutting down when you feel like there might be something difficult to be worked through with your partner, you may be engaging in a protest behavior, whether you mean to or not.

What Are Healthier Ways to Get Your Needs Met in This Situation?

 

Healthier strategies focus on tolerating difficult emotions while staying in connection, rather than using distance as a substitute for communication.

 

While protest behavior comes from a logical place according to our nervous systems and makes sense in context, that doesn’t mean it’s effective — or healthy for our relationships. In trying to avoid shame and the difficulty of conflict, avoidantly attached people generally end up creating much more conflict and compounding shame for themselves than they would if they had been able to face the issue head on in the first place. 

 

While avoiding shame entirely isn’t necessarily realistic, there are strategies you can use to make the experience of difficult emotions more tolerable so you can more easily stay in connection with your partner when they happen. 

 

• ➡️ Build your distress tolerance: practicing staying present and in your body for more mundane difficult emotions and experiences will help teach both you and your nervous system that you can survive hard feelings like shame
• ➡️ Find more compromises: when we feel threatened or ashamed, we often want to shut down entirely or completely cut off contact with our partners. Experiment with taking space for a defined period of time, like two hours, before returning to the conversation. If addressing it in person is too intense, try over the phone or email

 

Practice functional communication: rather than just giving your partner the silent treatment and letting them figure out from context clues that you’re upset or need space, have a few phrases in your arsenal that help them understand where you’re at that you aren’t abandoning them: “I’m feeling really overwhelmed and need to take a couple hours, but I love you and am committed to working this out afterwards.”

How Should Avoidantly Attached People Work on Their Protest Behaviors in Relationships?

 

Moving toward secure attachment often means learning co-regulation skills, so conflict and intimacy can coexist without shutdown.

 

Our protest behaviors are connected to how we approach big feelings in relationships in general, and the degree to which we can successfully move through or cope with intense emotions. Both people with anxious and people with avoidant attachment style struggle to use a full range of strategies to move through their emotions successfully, and this influences how they try to get their needs met through protest behaviors. 

 

People with anxious attachment styles tend to try to ensure connection by any means possible because they struggle with self-regulation, and instead feel they need the co-regulation of their partner to get by. Alternatively, people with avoidant attachment excel at self-regulation but tend to struggle with co-regulation; they have a hard time feeling safe and comfortable experiencing and processing their emotions with another person, whether that’s through verbal discussion or just spending time together. Essentially, people with avoidant attachment find it difficult to experience intense emotions and be connected to another person at the same time; they will often put the connection on hold until they feel they’ve worked through their emotions on their own. This can have a big detrimental effect to the relationship, both by making your partner feel rejected and abandoned and because it precludes any real emotional intimacy or closeness. 

 

To overcome your avoidant attachment protest behaviors, the key is to become gradually more comfortable and competent when it comes to co-regulation: intentionally practicing skills around sharing your feelings with a partner, staying present with them even when you feel upset, angry or ashamed, and letting yourself be more “messy” and “vulnerable” than you might initially feel comfortable with.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Avoidant Protest Behaviors

Are protest behaviors the same as being “toxic”?
Not necessarily. Protest behaviors are often nervous-system driven coping strategies, but they still have real relational consequences and are worth changing.

 

Is taking space always a protest behavior?
No. Taking space can be healthy when it’s time-limited and there’s a clear plan to reconnect. It becomes a protest behavior when it’s punitive, indefinite, or replaces communication.

 

What’s one small change I can start with this week?
Try naming what’s happening and setting a time to return: “I’m overwhelmed and need two hours. I’m committed to talking after that.” Then follow through.

 

What if I don’t meet romantic prospects right away?
Still a win. Treat it like network-building: connect with one person each time, follow up when it feels natural, and let community ties do their job. Many relationships start through friends and familiar faces.

 

If this resonates and you want support practicing co-regulation and healthier conflict habits in real time, our coaching services can help you build skills for communication, emotional safety, and more secure attachment in your relationships.

 

Dr. Frankie Bashan is a licensed psychologist, sex therapist, and professional matchmaker with over 17 years of experience working with LGBTQ+ individuals and couples. She specializes in relational dynamics, communication, and sexual compatibility. She is the founder of Little Gay Book and host of the Love, Laughs and Lessons podcast.

 

Recommended Books:

Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find–and Keep– Love

The Avoidant Attachment Workbook for Stronger and More Secure Connections

Avoidant Attachment Rewired: How to Heal Emotional Wounds, Stay Close Without Feeling Trapped, and Finally Feel Safe in Love

 

For More Articles Check Out These Recent Posts:

How to Heal Your Avoidant Attachment Style

7 Signs of Secure Attachment

Do You Need to Be “Healed” Before You Find Love?

 

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