Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's Ask Steff episode,

I'm answering the question of what makes an avoidant partner feel safe enough to open up?

So this is something that a lot of anxiously attach people ask themselves, ask the internet.

It's actually one of the most Goog Google search queries that drives a whole lot of

traffic to my website is like how to get an avoidant partner to open up. So clearly this is front

of mind for a lot of people in anxious avoidant dynamics, which makes a lot of sense because

of course if you are more anxious, you have that craving for connection, but you also feel

very disconcerted by the sense that you

can't reach someone or that part of their inner world is out of bounds to you. And so there can be

this really strong impulse to try and pry them open, to try and break down the walls and get to what's on

the other side of it. And I think the pursuit of that

can be almost addictive. We can bend ourselves into all sorts of shapes to try and get through

to someone and to try and unlock them so that they reveal themselves to us. And of course,

I think there can be some shadowy parts to that drive within us. Sometimes we can pin our

worth to getting someone to open up or getting someone to feel safe because obviously the

corollary of that is they feel safe enough with me. That must mean I'm so amazing. So I do think we

want to watch that and just get a little bit

curious as to what our motive is. And the truth is, I think, you know, someone asked me this

question on Instagram the other week and my short answer was, what makes an avoided partner

safe to open up is probably when you stop trying to open them up. The visual that I always call

to mind is like a tortoise and they've

gone into their shell and you're like banging on the shell and like poking at them and trying

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