Here is why avoidance can cause otherwise “honest and truthful men” with an initially healthy desire to relate to engage in post-relationship escalation.
When you invest in someone by demonstrating transparent intimacy, ventral-vagal soothing and bonding, and by disarming all masks and surface structures, you introduce the tone and premise of the interaction. If she responds by declaring, through speech and behavior, that she wants this mode of relationship creation, you expect her to be the person who can do this.
This means she can:
Those are the tools necessary to move love from a state of “emotional intensity of nervous system activation” to “integration.”
If instead she responds by:
It means she is not capable of completing the circuit.
This is where the pain you feel is not “love lost” or “you gave away love and are a tricked dummy.” It is the death of the illusion of her. The person was a brochure for a product that, in reality, had not been manufactured.
This is where nervous system activation in men (love attachment) can become stalking, obsessive texting, angry attempts to convince her she is not who she thinks she is, and throwing items in heated moments of perceived betrayal. What is happening is that her avatar is revealed to be a projection that does not reflect her actual capabilities in a relationship. If you respond by attempting to “force-code” this realization into her consciousness by persistently explaining, demonstrating logical coherence, or showing cause and effect, you are engaging in escalation.
The only thing that can be done is, perhaps, to send your concerns and evaluations in a burst of messages to get it off your chest, and then shut it down. The second she evades instead of meets, the frame shifts from “we are relating” to “I must make you see / admit / become what you claimed to be.” That shift is not your invention. It is the direct consequence of her avoidance.
It is one of the harder lessons for men because if you believe the projected appearance and attach to this possible or hopeful future of a person, it causes you to want to save something that never existed. This is where the unresolved loop can circle and cause obsessive attempts to “educate” the person about their complete misunderstanding of themselves (i.e., what they say they are is not who they are).
There are times when such behavior can be directly malicious. However, I think it is the result of a self-created system in which their priority is to manage their perceptions selectively in order to create a worldview that produces the emotional state they want to achieve. What happens is that they draw others into the wake of the lie construct they projected for the sole purpose of serving themselves. Then those who are drawn into it, hoping that she is real, end up feeling as though they have been lured under false pretenses in order to extract something vital from them.
This can happen, but I think the structure itself is mostly a self-serving coping mechanism that reinforces itself across a lifetime of always choosing to evade the emotional consequences of perceiving the reality of the self.
So it isn’t that love was lost; it is still in you. The pain of loss is the vanishing of an illusion you were attached to. The real person is revealed, and then the mission of “I need to show you how your true appearance is nothing like what you said of yourself” is adopted. That mission is itself the basis of having the story flipped on you.
If you persist and insult her childishness, she will say it is bullying and abuse (i.e., “You are fake, no one really knows you, and you are a series of fragmented performances with no stable center of self”). Sadly, the only move that can be made is complete withdrawal and acceptance that you are not a victim; you are someone who wanted to believe that she was who she portrayed herself to be.
Once who she is surfaces, that is the moment you have to leave and accept what is seen. Otherwise, you end up in a relationship where escalating battles for truth and control are the baseline. Those who evade and avoid can only produce a relationship defined by a never-ending fight for control and a relentless attempt to persuade the other of their incongruence. This is the trap of trying to force-code maturity into a person.
This arrangement easily lends itself to escalation of anger, which hands her the trophy she wants: “My crazy ex is calling me a lot and insulting me,” or, “He got revenge by _____, and that proves he is the offending party.”
There is no way out of it. The punishment for such a person is already built into the system she has chosen. She can only experience “love nervous system activation,” not “love intimacy integration” that can be sustained. Once she hits the wall of needing to be a unified, present self, her system rejects it and engages in narrative management to reframe reality, avoiding the shame of being incompetent at communication and relating.
If you get revenge (I did twice, once in 2007 and once in 2014), it never teaches her anything. It only amplifies her narrative. There is no need to punish someone whose system of relating is itself kryptonite to intimacy and love. It is a nervous system entanglement that can loop unless you realize what the feeling is actually saying: you are fighting the loss of a projection you had hope in, and you cannot force the actual person who appeared to become what she portrayed herself to be. If you try, you will fall into escalation of anger.
Grief for the lost projection.
You attached to the avatar — the version that seemed capable of completing the circuit. When the real person appeared (incompetent at sustained intimacy, masterful at perception management), that avatar died. The pain is mourning the death of a hope, not mourning a real, substantial relationship that was taken away. You didn’t lose her; you lost what you were hoping would appear.
Anger at the false advertising.
The brochure promised one thing; the product delivered another. The nervous system registers that as betrayal, even when it wasn’t maliciously planned. That anger wants to force correction (“see what you did,” “admit who you are,” “match your words”). But forcing correction is itself the trap — it keeps you on the battlefield, keeps the circuit open, keeps the escalation alive.
The only move that actually works:
You become the “crazy guy” if you try to force-educate her about her immaturity, lack of development, and reckless willingness to drag other people’s nervous systems into her self-created fantasy worlds. Not only that, everyone around her will be quite happy to agree with that assessment if you are visibly agitated and upset.
Since this is the game they mostly play, the only thing you can do as men is to understand how these dynamics hook your nervous system and accurately name the feelings and experience. Then you can align your gut with your mind and end the loop.
The majority of “end-of-relationship evils” are caused by attempts to “fight for the truth” and “force-code” maturity into the other person. You hit the brick wall of avoidance, which forces you either to give up or to escalate until you become the villain.
When they avoid all accountability, they are essentially trashing the love you have shown and saying, “My own feelings are more important than acknowledging how I am behaving in our shared reality.” You want to “save” the version of them you thought would show up when it came time to be present. This desire often manifests as urgent communication, insults born from the abyss of betrayal, repeated explanations, and mounting frustration.
However, all of these responses are weaponized against you. You have reached the end of the simulation: who they are has appeared, and you cannot make them realize or admit that who they portray is not who they actually are. Grieve the lost illusion; it is the nervous system entangled with a projection.
HOME