Is My Partner a Sociopath? The Volatility of Avoidant & Anxious Partners

Slightly clickbaity title, but it is a question I received. Is my boyfriend a sociopath? Let's figure out if we can get to the bottom of this. So I received a great question and it's from someone who's in a relationship and they're wondering why can't my boyfriend not show himself emotionally to me? Why is he so reluctant to be vulnerable? So we'll read down through this question together and hopefully it can help you as well if you're going through something like this. It could be your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife who is reluctant to show themselves emotionally or even if an emotional issue comes up in the relationship, they run away, they can't handle it, they avoid it. So here's the question, it says is my boyfriend a sociopath? So I've been in a relationship with my boyfriend for about a year and a half and when we get on really well, for the most part, there is a major problem. He's so reluctant to show how much he cares for me. He pushes me away all the time. I just get the feeling that if I was gone from his life, he wouldn't be affected at all. When I talk to him about this, I get nothing back. He closes up and gets very frustrated and uncomfortable. It drives me crazy that he won't just talk to me and tell me what he really feels. So I'm beginning to wonder if he is even capable of feeling emotion at all. He's nice to me and respectful but never truly sensitive and vulnerable. His work comes before me, I think. It takes all his attention and I feel that he only makes room for me on his schedule. We are all, we are so different. I sometimes wonder if there is something wrong with him. Is he a sociopath? Is he capable of feeling emotion? While I want to make a life with him, I don't know if I can continue to be in a relationship where there is this much distance between us. I feel like I desperately need to be loved on a deeper level and without this love, I don't know if we can be happy together. Okay, so what I'm going to talk about here is it's great that you're asking these questions. You may be asking the wrong question though and what I mean by that is you're wondering is my boyfriend a sociopath? Now the chances are that he's a sociopath, to be honest, are quite low. There are sociopaths, you know, people who have gone through life experiences and have become a seeming complete loss of empathy. There are psychopaths who are born that way. What's far more likely is, and is going to be helpful for you in this situation, is something called attachment style. So if you can start to understand what attachment styles are, it will make your life 10 times easier. Okay, attachment style, what do I mean? You can have, there are three different types of attachment style and everybody has one of them. Okay, now your boyfriend sounds like he may have something called an avoidant attachment style. So that is somebody who in their early childhood, they were in a relationship with their parents and as a child obviously you're very vulnerable, you can't fend for yourself at all, but you reach out to your parents to have your needs met and the parent is not attuned to your needs at all. Okay, those could be, you know, practical needs, physical needs, it could be enough food to eat, it could be a shelter, warmth, it could be medical needs, it could be anything like that, but also emotional needs, it's more common. So you have emotional problems or emotional fears or things that go on in childhood, you reach out to your caregiver or your parent and the parent does not respond, does not meet your needs. Okay, worse again, they might even ridicule you for having those needs. So not attuned at all. So what that person learns then in childhood is relationships don't work. Okay, they have adept to them emotionally, these people with avoidant attachment styles, but they've learned that to reach out to another person is pointless, it doesn't work and I need to rely on myself. So things you could look for a person, how can you tell if someone has an avoidant attachment style? How can you tell if you have an avoidant attachment style? Someone who devalues relationships, they're not a priority in life. They're very, very independent. They keep their partners at distance, can let them get a little bit close, but then push them away. Very strong boundaries. Sometimes they can be mistrustful of people, especially people who are emotionally, you know, show themselves emotionally. They are very close to people who are close to them, very loyal to people who are close to them. So if someone actually does manage to form a relationship with them, they're very, very protective of that relationship. So, and their difficulty, you know, with emotion, expressing emotion and being intimate. So it sounds maybe, possibly, that that is what you're experiencing here with your partner. It's not that you're a psychopath or a sociopath or anything like that, more than likely. If they were a sociopath, for instance, you would probably know it by now, because I think you said you've been together for a year and a half. And the chances are, if the person was a sociopath, they would have shown themselves, would have shown a level of cruelty. And the cruelty would be followed by a complete lack of remorse or empathy. Okay. And that would have shown itself by now. So he's very respectful. He's very, you know, considerate to you. But there is that lack of emotional depth that you're experiencing. That speaks to perhaps the avoidant style. Now, there are two other types of avoidant style, or of attachment style. Everybody wants the secure attachment style. The secure attachment style is everything's okay. In childhood, you had your needs. When you reached out to have those needs met or understood, they were met or understood with compassion from the primary caregiver or parent. Okay. So you learn that, yeah, relationships work. I can rely on other people. I can trust people. And then that goes into subsequent relationships in that person's life if they're securely attached. The final one then is perhaps, and this could be something that you might want to look at, maybe, is something called the insecure attachment style. Insecure attachment style is kind of between avoidant and secure. So in childhood, your needs were met some of the time, but some of the time they weren't. So what happens is you develop a need and a desire for intimacy and relationships, but you feel like you can't rely on them. Okay. They're not consistently there for you. So what happens with that? Well, what is the signs of someone who might have an anxious attachment style? That would be things like, if you're in a relationship, you find it very, very difficult to let go of the relationship. You crave intimacy in relationships. Sometimes you suppress your own needs. You're obsessed with a relationship. The partner is always in your head. Sometimes you play games in a relationship, or you might get jealous a lot of the time. Okay. You play games to test the other person to see if they really do love me. So again, you can see it's all about, I need a relationship. I want a relationship, but I feel like I can't trust a relationship. So the point of this video is, in answering this question, is to make your life easier in this relationship, all you need to do is understand the avoidant attachment style. Because let's say you have an anxious attachment style and you're with someone who's avoidant. You will perceive their avoidant attachment style as rejection of you. And really it has nothing to do with you. It's more to do with that person feeling like it's not safe, or what is the point of me being intimate? I've tried that in the past. So it develops a greater sense of compassion for your partner, and also compassion for yourself. The work for you on a personal level here might be to figure out what your own attachment style is. And your work in the relationship is to try and understand what his attachment style is, and how that could influence you. So in a conversation with him, it's probably not going to work if you're asking for intimacy or a level of emotional vulnerability. That's probably going to be very, very slow in coming with someone with an avoidant attachment style. What would be probably better would be to discuss with him what his childhood was like, what his past was like, and help him understand where this is coming from, and how it makes you feel. There's nothing at all wrong with what you're doing in terms of wanting the intimacy with him. Because at the deepest level, he actually still wants the intimacy. He's not a sociopath. It's very unlikely he's a sociopath. Far more likely is that he has a depth to him emotionally. It's just that he feels like, I tried that in the past, and his defense mechanism is independence. I learned to be independent because there is no one that's going to help me. Once that happens in childhood, it's difficult to change that style, because it's so deeply ingrained in us. But if you're in a relationship with a person like this for a long, long time, and that's what you intend to do, you're going to need to understand this. Because otherwise, you'll feel like you're beating your head against a brick wall, and it will drive both of you crazy. Think about that. What is his attachment style? It's never a rejection of me or my love. It's more about his coping mechanism, his style of coping, and how he learned to cope with life. And over time, with compassion, you can start to break down those barriers a little bit. But it is important for you to have expectations about what that's going to be like. It will be a slow process. He's not going to open up automatically overnight. It's going to take time. And if you can be compassionate with him and yourself in that process, you will find that you grow emotionally steadily over time. Okay, so let me know what you think of that. Hopefully, it helps other people too who may be going through this. If you would like to work with me, you can send me a message. The link is below. And also, maybe subscribe to this channel, like the video, and all those things. It helps me reach more people. So thank you for watching this video, and I hope it helps. And I'll see you next time.