Anxious and avoidant: the loop everyone ends up in
This is the most common painful pairing there is, and the reason is not that either of you is doing something wrong. Your alarm says get closer. Their alarm says get room. Both alarms fire at the same moment, and each one is the other one's trigger.
Wants closeness and watches for the loss of it, so silence gets read as an answer.
Steady alone, and keeps one door half shut without ever deciding to.
What actually happens
In practice it runs like this. Something small opens a gap. You close it, because closing it is what settles you. They feel the closing as pressure and take a step back to breathe. The step back is the exact thing your alarm was watching for, so you close harder, and now they need a bigger step. Neither of you is escalating on purpose, but the loop escalates anyway.
What this one needs
The loop breaks at the top, not the bottom. Once you are already chasing, nothing said inside that conversation helps. What works is naming the pattern when things are calm, and agreeing on what a pause is allowed to look like — how long, and what gets said before it starts. A pause with a return time attached is survivable for you. An open-ended silence is not.
Something you can send
When you need space, can you say "I need a few hours" before you go quiet? The silence is the part I can't do.
Not sure which one you are? The quiz is 16 questions and gives you two scores rather than a single label.
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