Breaking the Cycle: How Avoidant Attachment Creates Distance in Love and Fatherhood

Avoidant attachment looks like independence and strength on the surface—but in relationships, it creates walls that push loved ones away. In this episode of 15 Minutes with Dad, host Lirec Williams dives into how avoidance develops, often from childhood homes shaped by trauma, silence, addiction, or harsh discipline.

Discover how avoidance shows up in modern fatherhood—dads who are physically present but emotionally absent—and in partnerships, where the anxious-avoidant cycle leads to conflict, silence, and disconnection. With honest reflection and practical tools, you’ll learn how to stay present in conflict, rebuild intimacy, and model emotional healing for your children.

This episode offers fathers and partners the roadmap to break generational cycles, reclaim emotional intimacy, and create a legacy rooted in connection, not distance.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Avoidant Attachment
• 3:17 Origins of Avoidant Attachment
• 5:38 Impact on Relationships
• 7:09 Effects on Children
• 8:13 Breaking the Cycle
• 13:00 Challenge and Next Episode Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Welcome back to this special series of 15 Minutes with Dad. I'm your host, lyric Williams, and today we're going to talk about a pattern that shows up in so many fathers, husbands and partners, sometimes without us even realizing it. It's called avoidant attachment. This episode is called Breaking the Cycle how Avoidant Attachments Create Distance in Love and Fatherhood. We'll explore what avoidant attachment looks like in everyday life, why so many men learned avoidance as their survival strategy, the impact of avoidance and what it has on a marriage, co-parenting and kids, and how to begin breaking the cycle so you can build real connections. And how to begin breaking the cycle so you can build real connections. This episode is for the man who's ever heard you don't open up, you don't talk to me, you're distant. It's for the father who's present in the room but feels miles away. And it's for every man who wants to love fully but keeps pulling back when it matters most. Before we get started, if you haven't listened to our last episodes or the last couple episodes, make sure that you go back and check out the attachment mirror how childhood scripts shape men, fathers and partners, so you can really have at least a basis of where I'm going with this episode when I'm talking about the attachment or the avoidant attachment. So avoidant attachment doesn't always look like a problem on the surface. In fact, some people admire it. It looks like independence, strength and self-sufficiency. But here's how it plays out. And self-sufficiency, but here's how it plays out. You shut down when your partner wants to talk about their feelings, or you distance yourself when things get too close. You pride yourselves on not needing anyone. You avoid conflict by going silent, walking out or staying emotionally unavailable. And when your kids cry, you tell them to shake it off, not because you don't care, but because emotions feel overwhelming. Sounds familiar. That's avoidant attachment at work. It's not that you don't love deeply, it's that love feels dangerous. Closeness feels like losing control, so you build walls to stay safe. Selflessness feels like losing control, so you build walls to stay safe.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Most men didn't choose avoidance. It was chosen for us by the homes we grew up in. And if you grew up with parents, if your parents are from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, you know what I'm talking about. And if you grew up in the 80s, slash 90s to early 2000s, fathers were providers and not nurturers. Mothers were expected to carry the emotional weight. Mental health wasn't discussed. Addiction, depression, bipolar disorder. Disorders were hidden and not healed. Love was conditional, based on obedience, achievement or silence and discipline, often physical belts, switches and backhands those things were normal for us. So what did boys learn? We learned that emotions are unsafe, vulnerability invites punishment or rejection and the only way to survive is to shut down, stay quiet and stay strong. And the only way to survive is to shut down, stay quiet and stay strong. And when you involve addiction and all these other environmental, cultural, socioeconomic aspects, it can get even more complex. But that's why so many men walk into adulthood emotionally guarded, inept or emotionally unavailable. We learned avoidance as a survival skill and survival turned into our identity.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Avoidance doesn't just protect you, it pushes others away. Like as a husband or boyfriend, you can't protect yourself. It shows up in different ways. So your partner says something like we need to talk. You may instantly feel attacked and you may shut down. They might say I don't feel close to you and you hear or think like I'm right here, like what more do you even want? Like I'm right here. Or they ask for reassurance. You think it's weakness, so you dismiss it. Or conflict arises and instead of leaning in, you go cold or you go silent.

Speaker 1: 5:24

Over time, your partner feels invisible, unloved, alone in the relationship. Here's the tragedy. Your avoidance confirms their fears. If they're anxious, they push harder, which makes you withdraw further, and the cycle repeats until intimacy. Intimacy feels absolutely impossible and for men this often feels unfair because deep down, you love your partner. You want closeness, but the script you inherited keeps whispering closeness is unsafe. Protect yourself. Don't let them in too far, you know. And avoidance doesn't protect relationships. It slowly suffocates them. It slowly suffocates them.

Speaker 1: 6:18

But now let's talk about the kids. When fathers are avoidant, children can experience a dad who's physically there but emotionally unavailable, Affection that feels inconsistent or missing altogether. Or they may feel love tied to performance. I'm proud of you when you win, but I don't know what to do when you cry. You know like silence instead of safety during emotional moments. And here's the heartbreaking part. Kids internalize that distance. Daughters may grow up believing they have to earn love. Sons may grow up thinking masculinity means emotional detachment. And this is how generational cycles continue. The same avoidance that protected you as a child becomes the wound you pass down to your children and unless you break it, it becomes their script too.

Speaker 1: 7:16

So how do you break the cycle of avoidance. How do you move from shutting down to showing up? I'll give five practical tips, and I've learned this either from my therapist or research myself. The first step is awareness. Notice when you're pulling away. So the next time you feel the urge to shut down in conflict, pause, name it and check in with yourself. Tell yourself I feel myself pulling away right now. Awareness creates a choice. The second is communicate, even briefly. If you need space, even briefly. If you need space, say so, but with clarity. Say I need 15 minutes to calm down or 10 minutes to calm down, but I'm not leaving the conversation. You can build trust that way, and I mentioned this in the past episode as well.

Speaker 1: 8:21

But you need to practice emotional presence and with your kids don't always rush to fix just because they're crying Sometimes. Just sit with them, put your arms around them and say I'm here, I see you, I love you, we're going to get through this. Presence matters more than solutions. The fourth is rebuild trust through small repairs. When you withdrawn, come back, circle back and tell your partner or your child come back, circle back and tell your partner or your child look, I'm sorry I shut down earlier. Look, I want to do better and you have to actually go. Try to do better. Don't just say these words. Try to actually do better.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Every repair strengthens connection, and the last one I'm going to leave you with is you have to get comfortable with being vulnerable. Start small, share one feeling per day with your partner or kids, and it doesn't have to be deep. It could be I felt stress at work, you know or something as simple as that. Vulnerability is like a muscle the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Breaking avoidance doesn't mean becoming someone else. It means becoming your whole self the father, the husband, the man who can love with courage and not fear fear. And this is something that I've. I'm learning, I've learned and I am still learning to navigate, even right today, like I spoke about in the previous episode, like I've been the guy who shuts down instead of leaning in. I've wanted to protect myself and keep myself from being hurt and trying to avoid giving someone the power to hurt me again.

Speaker 1: 10:27

And what I've learned is that being able to have a vocabulary about your emotions helps those around you be able to identify those emotions and not internalize them, the more that you withdraw and keep from expressing in your relationships with your kids or your family or your loved one, the more likely they are to distance themselves from you and internalize it and then infer how you might be feeling or what you may be thinking. But you have the power to have input on the narrative of how you feel. But when you don't input on the narrative, there is a judgment call coming from the people that love you for them to avoid being hurt by you as well. And I know that when I started talking about my emotions more freely, regardless on how it made anybody feel, it allowed me to navigate my emotions easier. It allowed my family to deal with how I'm feeling easier and it helped me overcome those feelings a lot quicker, because I said what I felt and what, and it may have been wrong. It may not have been in on good information, I may have been misinterpreting. There's different ways that I've felt things. Different times I felt things that were probably out of line, but it was. We were able to work through it and talk through it in those moments. But I stopped letting it run my life. My relationships with my kid and my partner felt safer at times With the kids. It felt safer With my partner.

Speaker 1: 12:07

There was other things that we had to work on, but the old script doesn't disappear overnight. It's an ongoing thing. So avoidant attachment may have been your survival skill, but it doesn't have to be your legacy. So just to recap what we've talked about today avoidance looks like independence, but it's really fear. It distances your partner and leaves children feeling unseen, and it's almost always the product of the home we grew up in.

Speaker 1: 12:46

But you are not bound to that script. You can break it. You can build connection where there's been distance. You can give your kids and your partner what your parents couldn't give you and I know we say this statement all the time. I've wanted to give you the life that I never had.

Speaker 1: 13:04

This is where it starts. It's not the money, it's not the things, it's here. Give your kids and your partner the connection that they need to to work through and navigate life. Revise their script. So here's your challenge this week the next time you feel yourself shutting down, take a pause. Stay present, even if it's uncomfortable, even if all you say is I need a moment, but I'm not leaving. That one choice will start rewriting your script and that script will change everything for your partner, for your kids and for the man you are becoming. So next week we'll get practical. We're going to talk about love skills 101, learning the tools men were never taught. Make sure you subscribe to 15 Minutes with Dad, follow us on all social media platforms at 15 Minutes with Dad and let's keep doing this work together, because your presence is most powerful gift you can give.