They Cared, They Left, Now What (The Truth About Avoidant Regret)

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Yes, they regret the breakup.

[00:00:02]And no, that would probably not change anything. If you're waiting for your avoidant ex to send a message late at night, an apology, um I made a mistake. Let me tell you something.

[00:00:14]I used to be dismissive-avoidant. When we pull away, it's usually when we care the most, not when we care the least. And yes, we feel the regret about it. But the way an avoidant regret a breakup is fundamentally different than the way you regret a breakup. And this is why you're stuck. In this video, I'm going to show you exactly how regret will look like for an avoidant partner, and helping you to see whether this time around things will change in your relationship with this person. And in this video, we're going to look at both sides of this. The anxious, the avoidant.

[00:00:47]As I said, I used to be dismissive-avoidant. And now when I look back the relationship when I was in my 20s, and I was not not like a player, only having one night stand. I had long fairly long-term relationship, but at some stage, when I say long-term, when you're in your 20s, 6 months is a long-term.

[00:01:05]I felt I couldn't give you what you want.

[00:01:08]I felt, and I know you're going to hate what I'm about to say, "It's not you, it's me." I really felt like this. I really felt like this person is genuinely a nice person, loving person, caring person, probably the person that I need, but I couldn't give that to her. I couldn't give of being fully present in a relationship, fully invested.

[00:01:28]And I know the regret.

[00:01:30]And I've regretted many breakups when I was younger.

[00:01:33]And also as a therapist helping people dealing with avoidant uh patterns, I can also understand what you're going through.

[00:01:41]And the point is not to focus too much on the psychology of the avoidant, cuz I know you want to do that.

[00:01:46]And also, that's what we're going to do in this video, also looking at how to make sense in your reality, not the potential in your life here and now.

[00:01:57]And trying to draw the picture whether this time around this relationship is something that you can materialize with this person.

[00:02:08]Um so there are pretty probably few questions you're asking your There are [clears throat] probably few questions you're asking yourself right now.

[00:02:14]Do they miss me?

[00:02:16]Do they realize what they lost?

[00:02:18]Why did they go if they cared? Cuz sometimes you might feel like we had an amazing time. They said I'm the most important person in their life and then they disappear.

[00:02:28]Asking the question and trying to understand these elements obviously keeps you stuck because they don't give you the answers. And somehow a lot of people think, "I need to have that conversation. I need to have this sort of gain that closure from them."

[00:02:43]First of all, there's nothing wrong if you have these questions. It is normal.

[00:02:48]A breakup is in a way something where you have to fill the gap of the narrative. A breakup is usually something quite brutal because you your mind your body, your nervous system is attached to something not only to the relationship but to the future. And so you have to reconstruct everything at the same time. And this is why it doesn't make sense, especially with dismissive avoidant or fearful avoidant.

[00:03:12]But the thing is these questions, again, totally valid that you have these questions.

[00:03:18]They are the wrong questions.

[00:03:21]The real question is not these questions. It is Beyond the regret, what would that create?

[00:03:31]If they regret the relationship, if they regret the breakup, then so what? What do you gain from that?

[00:03:38]What are you doing about it? And this is what I want to uncover today in this video. Now if you're watching this and you're asking yourself well whether this regret is real, maybe they're faking it, maybe you're making assumptions or in you're in total denial of this relationship, I put together an assessment that is totally free um that helps you get a snapshot of your specific situation and based on the results, you'll have tips and recommendations on what you should be doing next. The quiz is in the description of this video, you can access it and it's totally free.

[00:04:08]And yes, we regret. If this relationship mattered, if this relationship was special to you, for them, they will regret for sure.

[00:04:18]For sure. The thing is it could be real heavy.

[00:04:23]Usually it's quiet for an avoidant.

[00:04:24]They're not going to cry out loud, they're not going to vent on social media. It's going to be very hard for you to see that they are in distress.

[00:04:34]First thing is that this aftermath of the breakup comes after. The timeline is different compared to someone who has an anxious attachment style.

[00:04:43]If you have an anxious attachment style and you break up with someone, you will feel right away the grieving. Right away you'll feel depressed and anxious.

[00:04:52]For an avoidant, right after a breakup, you don't feel that these negative emotions. You feel a sense of relief.

[00:05:01]And so for few weeks, depends how long and how long the relationship was, you're in that phase of like I feel great, right? And so again, something that I experienced before, you you feel relieved by the pressure of the relationship.

[00:05:16]And what happens is that the regret will come when distance feels safe after a while.

[00:05:22]When they see that you're independent, when they are at home and now they have sort of the pressure of the relationship is gone, what's left of the relationship is obviously what they enjoyed.

[00:05:34]Right? So they do feel it. And I put a little mark there because feeling is not the same as doing.

[00:05:43]You can feel something, you can have this sort of information.

[00:05:48]Feeling is an information.

[00:05:50]Then what you do about it? That's the only thing that matters at this stage. So, how does it look like for an avoidant partner?

[00:05:58]Could be a random text, thinking of you.

[00:06:00]Could be even a meme.

[00:06:03]Could be I've seen that uh recently um when you share a playlist and you have like new songs being added to the playlist.

[00:06:10]You see moments of warmth, of movements, uh emotional beats toward you, and then they pull back, they're not sure.

[00:06:19]Again, these feelings, it's always translated for avoidant partner who care the regret.

[00:06:26]But it's not necessarily followed through.

[00:06:28]And so, the pattern might end up in and out.

[00:06:32]In and out.

[00:06:34]And from your point of view, each message can be perceived as some form of progress.

[00:06:41]Why? Because you want to get them back.

[00:06:43]Because you want them to sh- show you you can trust them. Because you really want to save this relationship.

[00:06:49]And so, anytime they come to you, this is progress. This is probably the first step of us getting back together.

[00:06:54]That's not a strategy.

[00:06:57]Right? What they are doing is that testing things and deactivating.

[00:07:02]Right?

[00:07:03]So, when they send something nice, when they are warm with you, when they are caring, when they send you something nice and so on and so forth, they mean it.

[00:07:13]So, don't think, "Oh, they are narcissistic and they just want me to suffer." They don't understand that you're suffering.

[00:07:19]They just feel like, "I have these regrets. I need to do something about it, and I'm going to use my unhealed ways of dealing with relationship, and therefore do something, and then feel pressure, then retract."

[00:07:33]All right. And this is where you have this nervous system response.

[00:07:36]Where they pull back. And so, this in and out push-pull dynamic.

[00:07:41]So, for example, if I take the example of my uh 3 months after the breakup, about 2 months after the breakup, um he started to get in touch with her ex.

[00:07:51]And she was really, really excited about them getting in back in touch.

[00:07:57]Um he was really, really apprehensive of breaking the contact.

[00:08:01]Um oh, actually, he reached out. Um and actually, oh, he reached out, therefore, we will get back together. And so, the thing is, what we I say over time is the pattern.

[00:08:12]They're making the first step.

[00:08:14]Um him in that case making the first step, sending her a message. This is great. This is just first and key point, but it's nothing because you want more than that. And so, what we've done is over the next four, six weeks, we looked at the pattern. And the pattern was clear.

[00:08:30]There was always a push-pull.

[00:08:32]Anytime he felt something looked like a relationship, anytime he felt there was an element of commitment, he would pull away.

[00:08:42]And so, what she realized, what we realized, and what I helped her realize, is that yes, the feeling was real on his end, but the action wasn't.

[00:08:54]He was not committed to the relationship.

[00:08:59]And maybe you are okay with a situationship, and there's nothing wrong with situationship, but if it's not what you want, if you want a committed relationship where the other person is committed, in is invested, is involved, then this is where you have to draw the line.

[00:09:13]Because you can be in love with someone who's equally in love with you, but he doesn't want a relationship. And this is where you have to to draw the line. And my approach is always of let's test things. Cuz in many cases, when the relationship is important, is meaningful, the same way it happened to me, the have an partner will try to figure out what to do.

[00:09:39]Right? If you're in By the way, if you're in your 20s, it's harder because the element of commitment is less obvious.

[00:09:47]Just for you to know this tiny um sort of exception. And so, regret is not readiness. As I said before, you can be sorry, depressed, um having a hard time dealing with the breakup.

[00:10:01]If you don't take any action and change the pattern, guess what?

[00:10:06]It's going to be the same.

[00:10:09]They can miss you, but it doesn't mean that they're going to show up in this relationship.

[00:10:15]Right? So, it's important for you to understand it's not whether they feel.

[00:10:19]Cuz if you're watching this video, they uh probably have feelings for you, and I know in a way it's very sad um that you end up in situations where this person has feelings for me, and they're not doing the work.

[00:10:34]Because for you, if I have feelings for someone, I'm going to fight for this person. When you have an avoidant attachment style, it's not that obvious.

[00:10:41]Because there's the nervous system has mapped as a blueprint of relationship, intimacy, commitment is danger.

[00:10:50]So, unless they do this work, and what is the work? And the same work that needs to be applied if you have an anxious attachment style, you work on the emotional element.

[00:11:02]That's the stage one of the my of my approach.

[00:11:05]You uh find ways to be So, for avoidants, it's not necessarily to be calm, but it's love.

[00:11:11]Being aware of your emotions, being able to name your emotions. When you have an avoidant attachment style, your emotions is happy, sad.

[00:11:18]And you feel like, "I'm fine with that."

[00:11:21]When you have an anxiously attached when you are anxiously attached, you have all the emotions. It's about managing the emotions. Once you've managed that, it's about the cognitive reframing.

[00:11:30]So, how do I see the world? Why do I keep continuing see to see the relationship as something difficult and painful and where I have to really by default detach?

[00:11:41]Once you have these two elements, then you can show up in your relationship.

[00:11:45]So, unless your partner has done the work of emotional regulation of cognitive reframing, doesn't matter.

[00:11:53]Because you need to be the same page. So, when I work with my clients, they do this work, stage one, stage two.

[00:12:00]They work on their emotions, they work on the cognitive element.

[00:12:04]They are equipped to build a secure relationship.

[00:12:07]And then they show up with their partner. And so, sometimes what happens when they do the work and their partners are not doing the work, they feel like, "I don't want this relationship."

[00:12:16]Because now I feel this is not what's right for me.

[00:12:21]Right?

[00:12:22]So, be aware of getting back together.

[00:12:25]So, some people measure success of like we got back together.

[00:12:28]I don't care if you get back together.

[00:12:30]If it's going to be the same pattern, if you're going to break up 6 months later, there's there's no point.

[00:12:36]What matters is the actions over the words. Is the reality over the potential.

[00:12:42]What matters is that when you show up in this relationship or when they show up in this relationship, you can measure that they are creating a relationship that you deserve. That's the only thing that matters. So, how do we do that? We check the pattern.

[00:12:56]We not one moment, we check a pattern the same way I explained with Maya.

[00:13:01]Um one good week, that's not enough.

[00:13:05]What you have to look is like the baseline, you establish the baseline. Where are you going to be the week after, the week after?

[00:13:16]It's all about zooming out and looking at the pattern.

[00:13:21]If you uh focus on the one element of especially on the the highs of the relationship, "We went on a romantic weekend.

[00:13:30]Okay, great. Well, so so sometimes I have people telling me like, we've had an amazing 6 months together. We traveled the world. We had sex every day.

[00:13:39]Um and then we started to sort of fight because uh I wanted to us to move in together.

[00:13:47]So you see the 6 months, they don't define the relationship.

[00:13:52]In any relationship, the 6 months are always easy.

[00:13:55]It's all about how can we show up and commit and see and meet the other person's needs and get the relationship to the next level.

[00:14:04]So these are the things you need to assess.

[00:14:06]What you need to replace is hope with certainty.

[00:14:10]Right?

[00:14:11]You need to have a succession of secure moments.

[00:14:16]And ask yourself whether this person what are they doing over time?

[00:14:23]Do I feel it's consistent?

[00:14:26]Do I feel I can trust them?

[00:14:29]Do you think it's superficial or you can go more in-depth with them?

[00:14:35]I had a client the other day.

[00:14:39]His ex came back and said, I've done the work.

[00:14:41]Been in therapy.

[00:14:43]Uh I'm ready to sort of repair.

[00:14:48]Amazing.

[00:14:50]Um and so what followed was 3 weeks of really intense reconnection.

[00:14:55]Um and then very quickly he saw that she was pulling away again.

[00:15:04]And that was brutal for him because he felt like, well, she did the work. She's seen the therapist, etc., etc. But the thing is because he also did the work.

[00:15:15]And he stopped seeing things from a point of the fear of abandonment. I need this person, otherwise I'm no one.

[00:15:23]I'm over simplifying, but when she was displaying this sort of patterns, she was able to take that distance and see, this is the pattern.

[00:15:30]This is the thing I don't accept. I don't want in this relationship.

[00:15:35]And yes, it was brutal, but the he rebounded back fairly quickly. Not that he dated someone afterwards, but like this breakup at this stage, he owned the breakup. He felt in control.

[00:15:48]That was pretty much a clean exit.

[00:15:51]No confusion this time around, because he felt Well, you're not there yet. You think you are, because you're rushing things.

[00:15:58]Because you've seen a therapist for 2 weeks, you think you figured everything out.

[00:16:02]But actually, you're not.

[00:16:04]And if you're not ready, I'm not willing to wait for you to somehow realize something. And so, if you look at the the literature around attachment, um sorry, it's a very wordy, but deactivation strategies inhibit the activation of attachment system, suppressing emotional response to attachment-related cues. In other words, what it means is when you have an avoidant attachment style, you have this ability to deactivate an attachment. We have to be attached to a primary attachment figure.

[00:16:33]This is almost in our DNA.

[00:16:36]And so, the thing is when you have an avoidant attachment style, you suppress this. And so, what happens is as soon as the person pulls back, pulls away, there's distance, you're going to get back to them. But as soon as you feel close, you feel activated, this is where you're going to start having these deactivation strategies, which will force you to pull away.

[00:17:00]This is to explain that it's a nervous system response.

[00:17:04]So, if they don't do the work at that nervous system level, they will continue doing the same pattern again and again and again. And by the way, not only with you, don't feel it's because you have an anxious attachment style.

[00:17:19]They would probably do it with every single partner they will meet.

[00:17:24]Now, obviously, when you have an anxious attachment style, the only thing you can do is to work at creating a secure base and see whether by creating the secure base, that person who has avoidant traits can actually display secure traits. Cuz sometimes people are not fully avoidant or fully anxious. What needs to happen is for them to find a way where the relationship doesn't feel as threatening as the they assume. Remember, regret is a feeling.

[00:17:53]What you need is change, and change is a behavior.

[00:17:58]This is super important when you going to assess potential of this relationship.

[00:18:03]And if you have any questions, let me know, obviously.

[00:18:06]If you want more content on this specific topic, you can subscribe, like this video as well, obviously. That helps help me and also helps the algorithm to share the love.

[00:18:17]And remember, master your attachment and you'll master your relationship.