Today we’re going to be talking about if you can expect an avoidant to come back to you after they ghost you. Over the past few years my team and I have had the opportunity to study avoidant individuals in depth and I think the answer we came to might shock you.

First things first though, I’d like to cover the following topics in this article,

• Help you understand why avoidants ghost
• Introduce you to the avoidant relationship death wheel
• The phantom ex seduction

Let’s begin!

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Understanding Why Avoidants Are More Prone To Ghosting You

So, what is the avoidant attachment style?

Simply put, you have an avoidant attachment style if everything in your life revolves around independence and self sufficiency. In other words, if you get into a relationship (of any kind) where your self sufficiency and independence becomes threatened you are prone to “avoid” the catalyst of that problem.

One of the “avoiding” behaviors that an avoidant will employ is ghosting.

Ghosting: the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.

Now, where this discussion becomes incredibly complicated is when you consider the fact that there are really two types of avoidants.

1. The dismissive avoidant
2. The fearful avoidant

What’s the major difference? Well, if you want to be quick about it the best way to view avoidants on a spectrum.

On one side of the spectrum you have purely avoidant tendencies. On the other side you have purely anxious tendencies.

A dismissive avoidant is going to mostly fall victim to their avoidant side.

However, a fearful avoidant has both anxious and avoidant sides. Which means they’ll be like a leaf in the wind bobbing back and forth between being avoidant and then anxious. This is why fearful avoidant individuals are often confused as having multiple personality disorder.

In fact, one of my colleagues, Tyler Ramsey, discussed this concept in this interview I conducted with him a few months back,

One of the hard truths is that a lot of times a fearful avoidant will attempt to cope with rebound after rebound after rebound. They’re very subject to rebounds because they have that anxious side of them. They can fall victim to that honeymoon phase. They’ll just go from one to the 111th person to the next but after a while they get tired of it. They re-reflect back on themselves and go, “gosh, maybe I had it good for with that one person from way long ago, maybe I’m never gonna find someone, maybe, you know, I’m gonna spend my life alone forever.” Why can’t I stay in a relationship for so long?

So, all of this is to say that usually a fearful avoidant will find it harder to ghost long term as opposed to a dismissive avoidant because a fearful avoidant can fall victim to their anxious attachment style.

How The Avoidant Relationship Death Wheel Relates Explains Ghosting

Over the past few months no graphic has been used on my website more than this one right here,

I call it my relationship death wheel because it basically explains, from an avoidant perspective, the life cycle of their relationships and if you look close enough you’ll find that it can actually help answer the question on if they are going to come back after they ghost you.

There are eight stages to it.

1. They start off wanting someone to love them
2. They start dating you and think they’ve found that someone
3. Then they start to notice some worrying things while dating you
4. These worrying things cause them to consider leaving you
5. Then they actually do leave you
6. Then they are happy they left
7. Then they feel lonely
8. Then they wonder why they can’t ever find the perfect person

And the cycle continues again and again and again.

Now, for our purposes the important things I’d like to talk about are these stages right here,

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I was kind enough to color code the parts we are talking about.

• Red: Your avoidant partner noticing some worrying thing
• Grey: Them deciding to leave the relationship
• Orange: Them happy they left
• Green: Them feeling lonely

The Red Part Of The Wheel

This is typically where in your relationship your partner begins to pick up on behaviors that will cause them to “avoid.”

Generally speaking it can be lumped into these categories,

• Your anxious side comes out triggering their avoidant side
• Their avoidant side gets triggered because the relationship is taking a step forward
• You do something that “threatens” their independence

Whatever it is it ends up causing them to leave the relationship

The Grey Part Of The Wheel

So, your partner actually leaves the relationship but the one thing they want to avoid at all costs is confrontation.

This grey part of the wheel is the place where they are most likely to begin ghosting you (hence me using the grey in the color coding.)

Yet it’s the orange part of the wheel that is perhaps the hardest pill for many of our clients to swallow.

The Orange Part Of The Wheel

Your ex is actually happy they left. They feel liberated without you. That threat to their independence is gone and they are just basking in the glory of it. This is also the part of the wheel where they are most likely going to go on the rebound as a way to distract themselves.

Yet it’s usually pretty hollow pursuit. Soon, they’ll find themselves reminiscing about you. The one thing they are trying to avoid.

The Green Part Of The Wheel

This is where they are most likely to fall victim to “the phantom ex syndrome.”

It’s also the point in time where they are most likely going to reach out to you and end their ghosting or at the very least be open to communicating with you again.

One of the things I’ve learned from doing this as long as I have is that when you are dealing with avoidants you sometimes have to take the lead. So, that means that you might end up having to end your ghosting yourself by reaching out to them.

It’s the green part of the wheel where they are most likely to respond.

Diving In A Bit On The Phantom Ex Syndrome

In my opinion, one of the best websites for learning about avoidants is Free To Attach. In fact, it’s where I first heard the term “phantom ex.”

According to them,

An avoidant person often has a story of a perfect ex in a relationship that wasn’t fully realised, the ‘one that got away’ to whom no one else can measure up. In reality the idealised relationship was often lacklustre or insecure and unlikely to be highly functional.

So, after about a decade of studying breakups I noticed an interesting trend happening with our clients exes who are mostly avoidant,

Given enough time and space our clients exes slowly began to paint them as “the ones that got away.”

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Our clients essentially became the phantom ex for their avoidant partners. Of course, there’s a big stipulation I’ve sort of glossed over. You have to give the avoidant time and space which is something highly anxious people have a hard time with.

But if you buy in and do exactly that then… well, then the phenomenon I talk about in this video can come to fruition.

Essentially I argue in this video that an avoidant needs a perfect storm of things to occur before they’ll “miss you.” Yes, yes, we’re talking about ghosting in this article but you know what needs to happen for an ex to “unghost you?”

They need to miss you but I’m getting off topic.

Three things must occur,

1. Time has to have gone by
2. Your ex needs to feel they have moved on from you
3. Your ex needs to feel you have moved on from them

If you take one thing away from this article it should be this.

Highly avoidant individuals don’t prefer commitments. They prefer fantasies.

This is why the phantom ex is so seductive. It’s a relationship that can give them the warm and fuzzies without needing a commitment.

Everything revolves around a contradiction in their lives.

They want love but won’t let anyone close enough to give them that love.

Phantom exes seem like a pretty great way of doing that and so they unghost you. They give in to nostalgia for nostalgias sake. Of course, 90% of the people I deal with never see this play out because they don’t give their avoidant ex those three essential things.

Time is a give.

Most avoidants have no problem moving on

But getting to a place where you personally have moved on… when you want them back. Well, that’s the great challenge.