I. The Mismatch
Six months into us dating, he mentioned it casually over dinner. "By the way, I'm still married."
I heard myself saying, "Oh. How is that going?" I made space for his explanation. When he pulled back emotionally, I convinced myself this was just how love worked when you were anxious and they were avoidant.
It tracked. I was the pursuer, he was distant. I wore the "anxiously attached" label to explain why relationships felt like elaborate games of keep-away.
But then there was my friend - David (name changed to protect the good and great). David made his interest clear from day one. He texted consistently. He made plans and kept them. He brought my favorite tacos as a treat to my house.
It confused me.
His consistency felt performative. I found myself giving him mixed signals that I couldn't explain even to myself. The safer he made it, the more I wanted to run.
II. Misdiagnosis by Context: When Anxious-Looking Isn't Anxious Being
Here's what I didn't know then: disorganized attachment often masquerades as anxious attachment in avoidant pairings. Someone has to do the pursuing. Hypervigilance looks like a desire for closeness when you're desperate not to be abandoned.
In those relationships, my anxious performance preserved access to whatever scraps of closeness were available. When distance feels dangerous, you learn to chase. The alternative is complete disconnection.
III. Safety as a Threat: The Avoidant Side Emerges
When David showed up consistently, something else surfaced - something I'd never had to confront in my avoidant partnerships.
Distrust. Suspicion that his care was temporary, that he was performing goodness.
Safety unmasked the avoidant pole of my disorganized attachment.
I couldn't afford to be avoidant with avoidant partners. But with secure or anxiously attached people, I didn't have to chase. The buried terror of closeness emerged: the part of me that had learned long ago that people who get too close inevitably disappoint me or are disappointed in me.
IV. The Attachment Style That Hid from Me
The realization hit like a freight train: I was misreading myself.
Other clinicians missed the avoidance because it was masked. My self-sufficiency looked like health. My emotional regulation in the face of inconsistent partners looked like maturity. My ability to rationalize terrible treatment looked like insight.
What I was actually doing was functional masking of attachment style due to relational necessity. I buried my avoidance so deep I forgot it existed.
V. Clinical and Epistemic Stakes
Attachment frameworks consistently fail to account for disorganized presentation in strategic people - especially people with advanced relational intelligence.
Here's what I wish someone had told me: attachment behaviors are not just traits - they're emergent strategies based on perceived relational affordances.
Show me someone who withdraws, and I'll show you someone who's learned that closeness is dangerous. Show me someone who pursues frantically, and I'll show you someone who's learned that distance means disappearance. Show me someone who does both, and I'll show you someone whose nervous system is trying to solve an impossible equation.
With my beloved Wyatt, the equation becomes balanced. Not because he's perfect, but because my nervous system finally believes the ground won't shift.