There's been a few posts in this sub recently about men who marry women, then confess that they've settled and their 'true love' is an old flame from the past. I wanted to share what I learned about this phenomenon from attachment theory, after my avoidant ex and I split up.

Basically, it's so common for avoidants to do this that there's actually a term for it - "The Phantom Ex". An idealised past partner that all new partners are compared with and fall short of. But it's not that the old relationship actually was ideal, or that the avoidant was really happy with the phantom ex.

Avoidants are terrified of intimacy and closeness. On a deep level, they believe that if they show their innermost selves to a partner, they will be engulfed, rejected, or maybe both. While on one level they want to be in a relationship, on another they are deeply threatened by it. This means that when avoidants are in a relationship, they subconsciously deploy strategies to distance themselves from their partner. They want the idea of love, but the reality of it is terrifying to them.

The phantom ex is one such strategy. After all, if they're still hung up on the idealised perfection of her, then they can't get too close to the person they're actually with. By clinging to the idea of her, they can keep you at a distance. When in actual reality, they probably had the exact same distrust and fear of intimacy with the person that they are pining for. The only reason that they can put her on a pedestal is that she is unavailable to them now.

How does this relate to FDS? Well firstly, if this happened to you, take some comfort - it had nothing to do with whether you were good enough for your avoidant partner, and everything to do with their own issues with intimacy and closeness.

Secondly, I honestly think that women looking for a partner should be vetting for an avoidant attachment style - fear of intimacy, connection, sharing, vulnerability, commitment, that sort of thing. Nobody's perfect, but an avoidant who hasn't recognised and worked on his issues... sis, ain't nobody got time for that.

For anyone interested in learning more about avoidant attachment styles, I recommend reading "Attached" by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller, Thais Gibon's videos on youtube, or the website Free to Attach (in fact look at the section on the phantom ex). They helped me realise why I had such a pattern of being with avoidant men, and I've been doing work to level up my own self-esteem, so that I make different choices in future.

Oh and p.s.... I wound up becoming a phantom ex myself :) *makes ghost noises*