The Age of Avoidance

Sometimes I genuinely wonder if I missed an invitation…like everyone else got secretly added to a group chat titled: “Feelings? Let’s… not.”

Because lately, it feels like we’re all subtly participating in the same silent trend of stepping back, shutting down, and pretending emotional intimacy is an optional add-on rather than the whole point.

Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to remember what healthy, reciprocal love even feels like. These days, a simple, consistent text exchange feels like something I need to light candles for, say a little prayer and manifest under a full moon.

I’m a writer, not an emotional investigator, but somehow ghosting and withdrawal turn you into a part-time detective when it comes to decoding silences and switch ups. Somewhere along the way, avoidance got repackaged as maturity, distance became self care and vulnerability became too hard. 

It’s strange, isn’t it? The tiniest bit of discomfort sends someone running for the hills, and suddenly you’re left examining your own reflection wondering how you became a liability.

Avoidance loves a dress up party and it usually has the best costumes: “I need space.”,“I’m not good at emotions.”,“I’m just protecting my peace.” And yes, for sure, sometimes that’s real. But mostly, its just fear in a big coat, mostly its cowardice with PR and branding. 

I have compassion for it. I really do. Avoidance and anxiety both come from somewhere…childhood patterns, heartbreak, society telling us to toughen up, keep our cool, stay detached. But compassion doesn’t automatically soothe the nervous system. Understanding someone’s wounds doesn’t stop the ache when they disappear into them. Avoidance just punishes the person trying to show up.

When avoidance and anxiety collide, it becomes a modern mythology, a battle royale of the nervous systems if you will. A tragic love story where one partner runs and the other chases, both believing they’re trying their best, both thinking they’re protecting something tender, and both ending up with a nervous system going for gold at the olympics.

But here’s the interesting part…everyone I know seems to be going through the same thing.
Men, women, friends, strangers; different stories, same font and aches.

It’s not isolated. It’s everywhere…quietly humming beneath the surface of our generation.

Vogue even published an article about how having a boyfriend “isn’t cool anymore,” as if love is now unfashionable and is now the emotional equivalent of last season’s shoes.

Which, ironically, only makes me think:

When did caring become something we were expected to hide?

When did detachment become aspirational?

It makes me wonder if this is more than a dating problem. Have we forgotten how actually to talk to each other? Like really…just talk. Unpolished, unfiltered and the ability to drop the masks. Maybe we are avoiding being human altogether. Is it any wonder that our nervous systems are fried when we get left with a blue tick instead of clarity? 

And then, every now and then, I’ll see an older couple somewhere…on a park bench, sharing a coffee, bickering gently like it’s a language they’ve perfected over decades. Two people who have forgiven each other a thousand times, lived through countless emotional seasons, and stayed. That’s not uncool. That’s courage. That’s legacy. They’ve lived through eras, together and somehow still continue to choose each other in this one.

Avoidance might be the trend of the moment, but presence is the timeless classic. And honestly? It’s the only one I care to wear.

I don’t want to participate in a culture where detachment is admired and connection is mocked. I’m not built for lukewarm. I don’t romanticise breadcrumbs. And I don’t want to shrink myself into someone’s convenient silence.

Maybe the Age of Avoidance is just a phase we’re collectively moving through.Maybe we’ll look back at this era and wonder how we convinced ourselves that withholding was a great personality trait.

But it does leave me with one simple question…

If avoidance is everywhere…what does it mean about the few of us still brave enough to choose love anyway?

I refuse to succumb to this epidemic. Nothing about me is nonchalant anyway… I really belong in the age of the 1800’s where I can be a yearning devoted poet. I do not want to be in relationships where neglect gets confused for love, where you build a banquet out of breadcrumbs because you are starved. Where the bare minimum is somehow “needing too much”. 

Love shouldn’t feel like a survival game; it should feel like coming home. Real love is in our ability to stay present with each other, to face discomfort together, to choose connection over ego and to let our nervous system rest knowing we are safe.