About Saska
I was the anxious one. He was the avoidant one. This is the part nobody told us.
Three breakups. Three months of silence. A coffee place. And then the slow, unglamorous work that turned the couple everyone warns you about into the most secure relationship either of us has had.
Ex-anxious, with my ex-avoidant. Four years. Still together.
How it started
The perfect night, and then nothing.
Days of silence, right after the closest we had ever felt. I spent two years running the same investigation: what did I say, what did I do, which version of me had scared him off.
A slow reply, a quiet evening, him needing space, and my whole body went into panic. So I double-texted. Asked if we were okay. Over-explained. Reread our chats looking for the mistake. I thought I was loving him. I was drowning him in my own fear.
And the more I chased, the more I confirmed his deepest fear, that closeness meant pressure. So he pulled back harder. And the more he pulled back, the more I panicked. Round and round.
I made myself smaller and called it being easy to love. Then I resented him for not noticing what it was costing me.
Two days. Then a week. Then three months.
Our breakups got longer every time. By the third one, everyone in my life had the same verdict: let him go, he is not coming back.
The third one, I ended. I had started my own healing and he was not ready to face his, and I refused to stay in a relationship held together by breadcrumbs. I chose no contact with no plan of coming back.
He told me much later what those months were like for him. Part of him had hoped I would reach out first, so he would not have to risk rejection or reopen everything we had not repaired. He was writing messages and deleting them. Missing me privately felt safer than creating contact.
I did not reach out. Not to punish him, and not to make him miss me. That is just anxiety in a different outfit. For the first time, I was not willing to chase someone through silence while abandoning myself. I stopped refreshing his last seen. I stopped rehearsing what I would say if he called. I stopped treating his silence as a verdict on whether I was enough.
A coffee place. He walked over.
No text ever broke that silence. Three months in, life did what life does. We ran into each other, and he came to me.
And here is the part that matters more than the coffee: nothing was decided that day. I did not hand the relationship back over a nice conversation. Words after a breakup are cheap, and I wanted to see change, not hear about it. So I watched his behaviour for months. He found someone whose peace did not depend on him any more, and he had to decide what to do with that.
We had both been making the same mistake, and he was the one who finally named it: I mistook relief for readiness. Every time we broke up, the pressure stopped, he could feel the love again, and he read that as being ready. I did my own version. The moment he came back, my fear went quiet, and I read the quiet as proof we had fixed something. We had not. Nothing had been repaired. The pain had just stopped, for both of us, at the same time.
What he did. Because this only worked because he did it too.
- He started the work himself. Reading, real self-examination, none of it asked for by me. Change done to keep me would have ended the day it succeeded. Change done for himself has no finish line.
- The pattern broke at its own trigger points. In the exact conversations he used to disappear from, he stayed. Badly at first, then better.
- Repair without prompting. When he messed up, he came back on his own to fix it. Nobody fetched him.
And the truth nobody wants: I never had certainty. There is no certainty, only evidence accumulating over time while you keep your own standards intact. I gave the possibility room. He filled it. If he had not, I was already whole enough to leave again, and that, more than anything he did, is what made trying again safe.
Today we are still together, and it is the most secure relationship either of us has had.
Not perfect. Not free from every trigger. Secure enough that he tells me when he is at capacity before he goes quiet, and I can hear it without my body deciding he is leaving. Secure enough to take space without it threatening anything, and to come back without fear making the decision. There was no fourth breakup. That is the whole point.
Why I do this
Because I know exactly what 2am feels like, and I know what it took to stop living there.
I started sharing our story on Instagram because the advice I found while I was inside it was useless. Half of it said leave him. The other half sold techniques to make him text. Nobody said the true thing: that two people can miss each other and still stay silent, that understanding his fear and respecting yourself are not opposites, and that the only version of this that lasts is the one where both people do their own work.
Millions of people have now watched his side of our story. Hundreds write to me every month from inside the exact loop I was in. I have worked with more than a hundred of them, one to one, through breakups, no contact, silence, reconciliations that kept collapsing, and the slow business of becoming secure.
By day I am a software engineer, which is why I do not do vague. I want to know what actually happened, what it means in attachment terms and not in hope terms, and what you do next. You will leave every conversation with me knowing all three.
What I believe
Avoidant people are not villains. Anxious people are not too much.
These are protective responses, not personality labels, and they change with awareness, responsibility and practice.
Understanding his fear is for your peace. It is never a reason to accept less than you need.
You can have compassion for someone's wounds without making those wounds your responsibility to carry.
Missing you can stay private. Repair has to become visible.
Returning proves attachment. Repair proves readiness. Watch for the second one.
What working with me feels like
Warm, direct, and I will not tell you what you want to hear
I will help you understand the behaviour that is confusing you, from his side, in plain language. I will not romanticise inconsistency and I will not tell you he is coming back. Nobody knows that, and be careful of anyone who says they do.
We look at what is happening in the relationship and what is happening inside you, and then we decide what you do this week. Not in theory. The actual words, the actual boundary, the actual plan for the next fourteen days.
The goal is not to make you need less, feel less or become more convenient to love. It is to get you grounded enough to ask for what you need, hear the answer clearly, and choose your next step without abandoning yourself. Whether he stays or goes.
Being clear about what this is
Honest about the limits, because it matters
What I do
I am a relationship coach and educator specialising in anxious-avoidant dynamics and the journey towards secure attachment.
My work is informed by lived experience, extensive personal study and supporting more than 100 people through these patterns in practical, emotionally honest language.
What I am not
I am not a licensed therapist, psychologist or medical professional. My coaching provides educational guidance and personal support. It is not psychotherapy, diagnosis, medical treatment or crisis care.
I cannot guarantee reconciliation or control another person’s choices. What I can do is help you understand the pattern, regain clarity and stop losing yourself inside uncertainty.
You do not have to keep decoding this alone
If you are in the silence right now, or in the loop of reconciliations that keep dissolving, or still together and tired of losing yourself: there is a next step, and it does not require you to abandon your heart or your self-respect.