#71: Are They Avoidant — or Just Not That Into You?
If you've found yourself asking, "Are they avoidantly attached, or are they just not interested in me?" — you're not alone. This is one of the most common questions I hear, particularly from people with anxious attachment styles who are navigating the uncertainty of early dating.
It’s a question that speaks to a deeper need — not just to understand the other person’s behaviour, but to find some reassurance, some explanation that softens the sting of ambiguity or rejection. But part of the problem lies in the question itself. Because often, we’re trying to slot someone into a category — avoidant or disinterested — as though those are mutually exclusive or wholly explanatory.
And in doing so, we can miss the more important insight: how we feel in the dynamic, and what that might be telling us about our own relational patterns.
Avoidant Attachment ≠ Disinterest
Let’s start with a common misconception: that avoidantly attached people are inherently cold, emotionally unavailable, or indifferent. That they’re simply people who don’t want closeness, who push others away from the outset.
That’s not quite right.
Avoidant attachment doesn’t mean a person isn’t capable of connection, or that they’re emotionally stunted or devoid of interest. In fact, many people with avoidant attachment styles deeply desire connection — they just experience closeness as threatening, particularly when it begins to feel emotionally demanding or high-stakes.
In early dating, those attachment fears often aren’t activated yet. There’s little pressure, no expectation, no real emotional investment. And so, many avoidant people can actually be quite engaged in the early stages of a relationship — often even more so than anxious types, because their fear of engulfment hasn’t yet been triggered.
This means that if someone is behaving in a way that feels detached, inconsistent, or like they’re not putting in much effort right from the start — it might not be about avoidant attachment. It might just be that they’re not that into you.
What If You’re Asking the Wrong Question?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: sometimes we turn to attachment theory not to understand someone else better, but to find a more comforting explanation for behaviour that already feels hurtful or confusing.
If someone is sending one-word replies, flaking on plans, or giving you mixed signals, it’s natural to feel thrown off — especially if you’re anxiously attached and prone to spiralling when things feel uncertain. In that state, it can be tempting to tell yourself a story like, “Maybe they’re just avoidant. Maybe they like me but they’re scared.” That feels easier to sit with than “Maybe they’re just not invested in me.”
But that story, however comforting it might seem in the short term, often leads to more pain down the line. Because instead of stepping away from something that’s already making you feel insecure, you double down. You try harder. You over-function. You hope that with enough patience, understanding, and perfectly worded texts, you’ll unlock the version of them who wants to show up for you.
And in doing so, you betray yourself — again and again.
Confusion Isn’t Chemistry
There’s something seductive about the push-pull dynamic that often arises between anxious and avoidant partners. It can feel intense, magnetic, even intoxicating at times — but it’s often not healthy intimacy. It’s a nervous system loop that keeps you caught between hope and doubt, craving connection and fearing rejection.
When someone’s behaviour is so confusing that you’re frantically Googling attachment theory to make sense of it, that’s worth paying attention to. Because clarity and consistency are not elusive qualities in a healthy relationship — they’re foundational.
If you’re already feeling this unsettled in the early stages of a connection, that’s a red flag, not a riddle to solve. And the most important question isn’t whether they’re avoidant or disinterested — it’s why you’re trying to decode confusing behaviour rather than moving away from it.
The Mirror of Self-Worth
This is where things get deeper. If you’re finding yourself in these dynamics again and again — investing your energy in people who are lukewarm, hard to read, or reluctant to meet you where you are — it’s time to pause and reflect.
What part of you believes that you have to earn love?
That your role is to prove your worth, to convince someone to choose you, rather than trusting that the right person won’t need persuasion?
This pattern isn’t just about them — it’s about you. It’s about the version of love you learned to chase. And when we start to see those patterns clearly, it becomes possible to choose something different. To no longer confuse anxiety with excitement. To no longer interpret inconsistency as a challenge. To walk away from dynamics that make us feel not enough, and instead move towards what actually supports our wellbeing and growth.
So… Does It Matter?
Whether someone is avoidant or simply disinterested might feel like the key to understanding your situation. But more often than not, the answer is secondary to how the relationship makes YOU feel.
If you feel unsure, unworthy, or perpetually on edge — if you’re left questioning your own value because of someone else’s inconsistent behaviour — then maybe that’s your answer.
Not about them, but about what you deserve.
You deserve clarity. You deserve consistency. You deserve to feel chosen without having to campaign for it.
And when you believe that, you’ll stop trying to decode behaviour that doesn’t feel good — and start trusting your own sense of what’s right.
Want to go deeper? My course Healing Anxious Attachment is designed to help you untangle these patterns and build secure, healthy relationships — starting with the one you have with yourself.
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Episode Transcript
0:00:00.41 → 0:00:43.49
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg, and I'm really glad you're here. You hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I am answering one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, which is how do I know if someone is avoidant or just not that into me?
0:00:43.66 → 0:01:19.49
So I know that a lot of you listening will relate to this question purely by virtue of how often I get asked. It really is something that I'm hearing all the time from people. How can I figure out, particularly in early dating, whether the way someone's behaving towards me, which might feel sort of unclear or ambiguous or maybe not super interested? Do I put that down to the fact that they're not interested? Or is there something more different at play here that might be their attachment patterns, their avoidant attachment style?
0:01:19.83 → 0:01:41.43
How can I tell the difference and what do I do about it? So that's what I'm going to be talking through today. Before I dive into that, just want to share the featured review for today, which is this is the only podcast I wait for new episodes to be released every week. It's just that good. Even when I don't think the episode is going to be related to me, I find a new way to apply it to my life and be able to better understand the people around me.
0:01:41.47 → 0:02:00.41
I recently started Stephanie's Anxious Attachment course, and it has flipped the way I experience relationships. I can't thank Stephanie enough for this magical gift of a podcast that came into my life just when I needed it. Thank you so much for that beautiful review. I'm so glad that you've been loving the podcast and healing anxious attachment. That is all very lovely feedback.
0:02:00.46 → 0:02:47.69
So thank you so much for sharing. If that was your review, please send an email to podcast@stephanierig.com and my team will set you up with free access to one of my master classes as a way to say thank you. Okay, so let's talk about whether they're avoidant or just not into you. This big question that I always get before I answer it, and I won't be answering it in any sort of yes or no way, obviously, but I do just want to give the caveat and emphasise that there are a million and one different answers to this question depending on context and all of those things. So please don't take what I'm going to say as being true for your situation, but rather as something to reflect upon and to apply to your situation to the extent that maybe it feels insightful.
0:02:47.74 → 0:03:19.35
But if it doesn't, then leave it. There's no need to panic and draw some sort of conclusion about someone else's behaviour based on what I'm about to share. I am just sharing observations and reflections from my experience and what I know to be true. So with all of that out of the way, with all of the disclaimers out of the way, I think that when we ask this question of is someone avoidant or just not interested in me? We are perhaps misunderstanding how avoidant attachment shows up.
0:03:19.47 → 0:04:06.64
A lot of the time, in my experience, dating avoidant people and working with avoidant people and working with many, many anxious people who date avoidant people. Fair sample size. In early dating, most avoidant people are not in their avoidant mode, meaning they haven't been triggered yet. So their strategies of withdrawing or going hot and cold, those sorts of things probably haven't been activated yet, right? That tends to come into play a little bit later when things become a bit more serious, when they start to feel pressure, when they start to feel like there's a bit more reliance on them or dependability or they're expected to do things or all of that stuff that we know can feel overwhelming for an avoidant leaning person when their freedom starts to feel like it's being impinged upon in some way.
0:04:06.67 → 0:05:07.64
But usually it's not at the very early stages of dating and I do tend to find that the people asking this question of how do I know if someone's avoidant or just not interested in me? Are usually asking that at a pretty early stage of dating, right? So I think that if you've been on one or two dates with someone, or you've just been messaging them a lot on an app and their behaviour is such that you're questioning whether they're interested in you and you're going, oh, is it just because they're avoidant because they're being really indifferent and they're not really messaging me, they're not putting in any effort, they're whatever, fill in the blanks. I think in many cases I think a lot of the time when we find ourselves asking that are they avoidant or just not interested in me?
0:05:07.74 → 0:05:28.22
At the very early stages of dating? Perhaps we're looking for an explanation that is better preferable than the thing that we're afraid to hear, which is that they just might not be interested in us. I should also say these things aren't mutually exclusive. Someone could be avoidant and not interested in you. So I think when we're trying to go, oh, is it this or this?
0:05:28.37 → 0:06:05.67
And how do I know whether it's one or the other? We have to recognise that there's a Venn diagram and there could be both, right? That's a bit of a side note. So the first kind of key piece here is that in my experience in early dating, avoidant people tend to show interest in people that they are interested in most of the time. Of course, not always exceptions, of course, but avoidant attachment doesn't usually manifest as being really coy or disinterested or indifferent towards people that you are actively pursuing and actively really interested in.
0:06:05.76 → 0:07:04.26
The avoidant stuff tends to come a little bit later when the relationship feels like it's becoming exclusive or there's other pressure or seriousness involved in a way that then activates some of those attachment fears and their accompanying strategies. The second key piece, and this is more important by a long shot, if you are asking yourself this question of are they avoidant or just not interested in me? And this is the question of does it matter and what part of you wants to go on that expedition of finding out the answer so that you can solve it right? If someone's behaviour towards you is so confusing and inconsistent and indifferent and whatever else that you are already straight out of the gate asking these questions are they even interested in me? Or is there some sort of label I can put on them that makes this behaviour make sense?
0:07:05.03 → 0:07:39.75
Does it really matter what the answer is? Do you want to persist in pursuing that connection when you're feeling like this? And to be very clear, this is not about demonising avoidant attachment and avoidantly attached people. If you're familiar with my work, you know that's not my philosophy at all, but a big part of my philosophy is taking responsibility for our part. And what I see all too often is anxious people going through a world of pain because they persist with people who the signs were there from the beginning.
0:07:39.80 → 0:08:24.92
It's not even a sign, it's just plain to see oh, I was wondering whether it was because you're avoidant or you didn't even like me and rather than just going oh well, if I'm asking that question, that's probably all I need to know. I stick around and I try and be more of this or less of that, or try different strategies and techniques and ways to get your attention and ways to make you happy and make you show up and make you interested in me. Why do we see someone's indifference towards us or inconsistency as an invitation to try harder? That's what we really need to ask ourselves because that's where the growth is. And this is particularly true for you if it's a recurring pattern, if you consistently ask yourself this question of is someone avoiding or just not interested in me?
0:08:25.02 → 0:09:18.24
Whenever we notice ourselves as the common denominator in a pattern in our relationships, that's where we have to look in the mirror and go, okay, what's going on for me here? And this is one where we have to go okay, what is it about someone else's disinterest or someone being lukewarm about me that feels like an invitation to prove myself and to try harder and to make them want me? Because that is our work, that is our worthiness stuff coming up. And if we're doing that with someone who isn't really interested then we are almost certainly just going to strive and strive and strive in the face of someone who didn't ever really care for us all that much in the first place, who was maybe kind of ambivalent towards us. And we made it our mission to change their mind, to convert them to be the one.
0:09:18.61 → 0:10:00.87
And then we feel so hurt and disappointed when that doesn't come to fruition and we make it mean something about us and we fail to see how much of a role we've played in creating that situation and bringing ourselves to where we are. We throw our hands up and go, why does this happen to me? Why do I attract people like this? When really we've been a main character in that story again and again and again. Okay, so this wasn't really meant to turn into me standing on a soapbox and giving you this pep talk, but I think it's an important one because, as I said, I get this question all the time and it breaks my heart to see people who have a blind spot around their part in their pattern.
0:10:01.03 → 0:11:04.20
So if you are someone who is dating and you're feeling this question of why do I always attract avoidant people, why do I always attract people who are uninterested in me or who treat me in this very lukewarm way? I think the better question is, why do I look past the behaviour itself and try and find an explanation for it so that I can then roll up my sleeves and get to work in trying to change them? Or change the way they feel about me, rather than just seeing it for what it is and directing my energy and attention elsewhere towards a person or even just myself and my life in a way that is far more fruitful and nourishing and supportive for my well being. Why do I make it my mission to change someone's mind about me? I think that's the really fertile ground for deep insight about ourselves and our patterns and whatever wounds might be driving those patterns.
0:11:04.26 → 0:11:31.12
So I hope that that has been helpful. It might not be the answer that you were expecting when you started listening to this, but it might be the answer that you needed to hear if this is something that you struggle with. As always, super grateful if you could leave a rating or a review. If you're listening on Spotify, you can now leave a Q and a response at the bottom of the episode. So grateful for all of your ongoing support and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
0:11:31.22 → 0:11:55.98
Thanks, guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating it really does help so much. Thanks again for being here. And I hope to see you again soon.