Can you describe avoidant attachment?
I think NFs are all we got! No offense to the other types, but the STs and SJs just don't get me and the NTs just, well, don't know, always been rejected.
There are dismissive avoidant or fearful avoidant varieties of avoidant attachment styles. Psychology Today has several good articles on attachment styles.It boils down to whether or not there was a reliable supply of emotional support available to a child growing up. Too intrusive and needy or too neglectful signals the defensive part of the brain that it is not safe to rely on anyone else, allow them to get too close, or to be vulnerable, which makes it very hard to create an intimate friendship or romantic relationship where both parties can be honest about their needs.
In some contexts, an avoidant person may seek closeness and then find it stifling, avoid it entirely except in a very superficial way, be able to provide but not receive support, or run away when the other person has needs. Often, avoidant people get together with very anxious clingy people, but even someone who is securely attached can become anxious if the supply of reliable emotional exchange is overly scarce or it's feast or famine.
I've found that initially, T types are drawn to the intellectual connection we have and also find themselves telling me things or feeling things they never have with anyone else. This new sense of intimacy is unfamiliar and intoxicating at first. I am generally slow to be attracted to someone and need a strong base of friendship and connection first, so if anything, I'm the one that needs convincing and am happy to take a lot of time for a relationship to turn romantic. Even then, although I'm a pretty open and warm person, I don't open up immediately, which I think creates a sense of safety and leaves them pursuing connection rather than fending it off.
In several cases, I've been talked into rushing over concerns about the fundamental foundation of the relationship and how it not being firm or being out of sync on major issues will affect the future. As a result, I don't want to lose the person, but I also don't feel good about announcing it to the people closest to me until that's been figured out, even as the relationship is getting closer and closer.
This of course erodes trust and is felt as rejection. However, once i'm deeply invested, but that dynamic is in place, people revert to old patterns, or they start viewing the connection more realistically and draw back emotionally, which then makes me feel like I'm always the needy one, even though what I need is not at all over the top.
I've concluded that 1) putting the brakes on at the beginning, no matter how sure the other person is that this is a once in a lifetime kind of connection 2) observing if they have been emotionally intimate or vulnerable in any of their other relationships with people 3) looking at their relationship to their parents, especially their mothers 4) not mistaking intellectual attraction or intimacy for emotional intimacy would probably save everyone a lot of pain and be a good indicator of how successful something romantic is likely to be.
I'm not claiming this to be true of every Thinker, nor are my experiences representative of everyone else's, but I've observed the pattern in my own relationships frequently enough to think it worthy of comment. Clearly, I also am equally responsible for that negative dynamic being allowed to develop, just in case it sounds like I'm placing blame on thinker types generally or even the ones I've dated.
