Love Avoidant? Attachment Styles? Enmeshment? Here’s What It All Means—And What to Do About It

The Avoidance Pattern: How Avoidance Builds Distance

Last week I was on a group call for Better Husband Academy and one guy started talking about how he handles things at home. Then another man shared, and pretty soon I realized that they had both fallen into the same pattern that so many men I've worked with also fell into.

They weren't arguing with their wives, they weren't shutting down completely. They were just stepping back, letting her choose what was best for their marriage, letting her decide what to do with the kids, letting her handle her parents, his parents, whoever needed handling. And from one perspective, you'd call that being easygoing, but what it really was was being avoidant.

I recognize it right away because not only have I worked with men in the same situation, but I've done the same thing, and it creates this slow, steady distance you don't even notice until she does and she can't take it any longer. That's what I want to get into today. The wall that gets built between you and the woman you love.

The two very different ways it gets built and what it takes to start pulling it down. By the end of this episode, you'll know which type of wall you've been living behind and why it matters. You'll see how it shows up in the small everyday moments, the ones you probably overlook, and you'll have a clear next step for how to start showing up differently.

Stick around. This one might just explain a lot about why you are the way you are and why things feel the way they do right now.

Welcome to Better Husband, the podcast that helps you answer the question, how can I be a better husband? I'm Angelo Santiago, a men's marriage and relationship coach, and every week I bring you practical insights to help you strengthen your marriage and become the best husband you can be.

Attachment Labels vs. Real-Life Love Avoidance

Now on that Better Husband Academy call, the conversation started around attachment styles and, and mesh and a few of the guys had been reading about anxious attachment, avoidant attachment. All these labels you can find in a quick Google search.

As they gave examples, I told 'em straight up, I'm not an expert in attachment theory. If that's something they wanted to dive into, I could point them to the people who live and breathe at work. But in my training of relational life therapy, we talk about it in a different way, being love avoidant. Being walled off, looking at how it shows up, where it comes from, and more importantly, what to do about it.

From there, the guys started sharing how this might be playing out in their own lives.

The Quiet Ways Men Disappear in Their Marriage

They weren't talking about big blowups or explosive arguments. They were talking about everyday stuff, how they make decisions at home, how they navigate parenting, how they deal with extended family. And as they shared, I noticed a pattern.

It wasn't that they were constantly butting heads with their wives. It was that they were staying out of the way. Sometimes to avoid conflict, sometimes because they didn't feel like their opinion mattered, and sometimes because it was easier to let her handle it. And I get it. I've done the same thing.

There was a time in my marriage where I thought I was being the good guy by not pushing back, by letting her take the lead, by keeping the peace. But here's what I've learned. When you do that long enough, your wife stops feeling you in the marriage because you've stopped showing up in a way that she can actually feel connected to you.

You've built walls. And she can't get through them. That's what led us into this conversation about being walled off, what some people would call love avoidant, and instead of diving into attachment theory or clinical labels, we broke it down in a way that made sense for them as men, because you don't need a textbook to see your own patterns.

You just need to be honest about how you show up and where you don't.

Walled Off: Why Your Wife Can’t Feel You

Now, when I talk about being walled off, I'm not talking about a guy who doesn't love his wife. I'm talking about a guy who's learned usually a long time ago, that being too close, too vulnerable, too affectionate, too open, comes with a cost, so he protects himself.

Sometimes that protection is obvious. You can feel it in the moment you walk into the room. Other times it's quiet, polite, almost invisible. But the results are the same. The people who love you can't actually get to you. This is what I mean by love avoidance. It's not a personality type. It's not just the way you are.

It's a pattern, a survival strategy that shows up in your marriage, whether you see it or not. For some men, that pattern looks like distance, not making eye contact or offering affectionate touch or hugs, or keeping the conversation short or spending a lot of time in your own head or in your own world.

For others, it looks like cooperation on the surface, but with no real buy-in underneath you nod along, you agree, you go with the flow, but you're not really letting her in. You're just making sure there's no friction. And here's the part most men miss. Avoidance doesn't just protect you from conflict, it also blocks you from connect.

You don't get to choose one without the other.

Types of Love Avoidance

That's why identifying how you do it the way you've learned to keep that wall in place is the first step because not all walls are built the same way from what we know in relational life therapy and from what I see in my coaching practice, there are two main ways a man becomes love avoidant.

Two paths that lead to the same wall, but they're built from different materials.

Type 1: The Simple Love Avoidant

Type one is what we call the simple love avoidant. This is the guy who grew up in a family where distance was just normal. Nobody made a big deal about feelings. You handled things your own. You didn't see a deep emotional connection modeled, so you never really learned it.

It's not that you're actively pushing people away, you've just never seen or experienced what it means to let them in. This is your baseline. This is how you experience life growing up. So anything different feels strange, sometimes even uncomfortable or icky. When your wife asks you to open up, it can feel like she's speaking a language you don't even know.

You might even think, what's the point? Everything's fine as it is, but what's fine for you often feels like distance or absence for her because warmth, emotional presence, and connection were never skills. You had had a chance to practice.

Type 2: The Reactive Love Avoidant

Now type two is what we call the reactive love avoidant. This guy's story is different.

He didn't grow up with too little closeness. He grew up with too much of the wrong kind. Maybe a parent was intrusive, always in your business. Maybe there were no boundaries and you couldn't have a thought or a feeling, or even a closed door to yourself. Maybe you were leaned on to be the emotional support for an adult who should have been taking care of you.

That's enmeshment. In a healthy parent-child relationship, the energy flows from the parent to the child. The child feels the, I've got your back energy and enmeshment. The energy doesn't go from the parent into the child, but from the child into the parent. The child is there to serve the parent's needs or the needs of the family system.

Now there's a lot more to say on this subject, but that's all for now because I wanna stick with love avoidance. So if you're a type two and you experience boundary violations from your family, closeness gets wired in your brain as suffocating. You learn that the only way to protect yourself is to push back, sometimes quietly, sometimes forcefully, but always with the message. Stay out of my space.

And here's what happens. Even when you end up in a healthy, loving relationship, part of you is still braced for that old invasion. So you keep your guard up convinced that if you let someone in too much, you'll lose yourself. Both types end up with the same problem. Your wife can't feel you, but the way forward depends on which wall you've built.

So if you recognize yourself as a type one or a type two, love avoidant. Next we're gonna talk about exactly what to do with that knowledge.

Why Your Path Forward Depends on Your Type

So once you know which type of love avoidant you fall into, the work isn't about changing who you are at the core. It's about reclaiming the parts of you that got left out. And the way forward is different for each type. If you're type one, the simple love avoidant, your work is about learning closeness.

You didn't grow up with it, so you can't expect yourself to be fluent. This is like walking into the gym for the first time. You don't load 300 pounds on the bar. You start with the bar itself. Pick one area of your marriage where you've been hands off and step into it. Share one personal thought in a conversation where you'd normally stay quiet.

Offer your opinion when a decision is being made instead of just defaulting to your regular, whatever you think is best reach for her hand or put your arm around her without it needing to lead anywhere. These little moments are reps. The more you do them, the more natural they feel.

And here's the key. You don't wait until it feels comfortable before you start. You start now and the comfort comes later. But if you're type two, the reactive love avoidant, your work is about trusting closeness and trusting that you don't have to relive the pain of growing up in a Boundaryless family system.

You learned early on that letting people in meant losing control or being consumed. So your reflex is to protect your space. So. But healthy closeness isn't the same as the invasion you grew up with. That means practicing letting someone in and staying grounded, not reactive. Something like saying yes to listening when she's sharing something vulnerable or experimenting, easing some of the boundaries that push your wife away, even if it's uncomfortable, or when you feel the urge to pull back, notice it and stay a beat longer for both types.

The real shift happens when you stop seeing the wall as protection and start seeing it as a prison , because that wall that kept you safe as a kid is now keeping you from the intimacy you say you want as a man.

Your Weekly Assignment: Practice Connection on Purpose

Here's your assignment for this week. Pick one or two that matches your type and do it intentionally with purpose.

If you're a type one simple love avoidant, choose one small moment to engage in the next 48 hours, join a conversation you normally hang back in. Share a thought, a preference, or an opinion or make one physical connection, a hand on her shoulder, sitting close on the couch, something that says, I'm here without any words or notice your default.

When you feel yourself starting to fade into the background, ask yourself, is this about keeping the peace or am I just avoiding? If you're a type two reactive love avoidant, you can let her in. When she asks about your day or your feelings, just answer honestly or attempt to hold a warm boundary.

The next time you feel crowded or pressure speak to it commonly. Instead of shutting down or snapping or stay one beat longer. When you feel that urge to pull back, breathe and remain present for just a few more seconds. Now, for both types, at the end of the week, I want you to do this check-in and reflect on did I feel more present?

Did she seem to feel me more? What was harder than I expected and what came easier than I thought. Remember, these are reps you will improve the more you practice them. So as you go through these actions, I also invite you to reflect on these questions.

Take some time with these, journal them, talk them out, whatever helps you get honest for type one, where in my marriage do I tend to fade into the background? What does being present look like to me, and how is that different from what my wife might need? When was the last time I shared a thought or feeling that was important to me?

For type two, when I feel closed in what's actually happening in the moment? Can I tell the difference between healthy closeness and old unhealthy patterns from my past? What would it look like to relax some of my boundaries for the sake of connection in my marriage? And for both types. What's one way I can let my wife feel more of me this week than she did last week?

And if the wall is my protection, what's it also costing me? These questions are about mapping the territory so you know exactly where the wall is and how to start opening it.

Final Takeaway: Safe Isn’t the Same as Connected

Here's my takeaway for you from this episode. That wall didn't show up overnight.

It was built over years, maybe decades, of learning how to keep yourself safe. But safe isn't the same as connected, whether you're type one or type two. The goal isn't to tear the wall down in one swing, it's to start putting doors in it. Moments where you let her in. Moments where you stay present instead of stepping back

because your marriage needs you. The you who's willing to show up, even if it feels unfamiliar, the you that can stay in the moment long enough for her to feel that you're really there.

And as my mentor, Terry real likes to say, there's nothing wrong with being a love avoidant. If you want to distance yourself, if you want to isolate, if you don't want to be in any deep, intimate connection with others, that's totally okay.

But you've chosen to be in a marriage, maybe even to become a father. And that sort of relationship requires you to lean in.

So if this is something you're ready to work on, you don't have to figure it out alone. This is exactly the kind of work we do inside a Better Husband Academy and in my one-on-one coaching, learning how to spot the patterns, make the right moves, and rebuild connection without losing yourself. You've lived behind that wall long enough, it's time to start letting her in.

Thanks for listening to Better Husband. I hope you've gotten some value from this episode and know what steps to take next. I'm Angelo Santiago and I'll see you on the next one.