Addicted to the Beginning: 

In the beginning, it feels perfect.

The connection is intense. The chemistry is undeniable. The messages are constant. The attention feels endless. They tell you they’ve never felt like this before. They make plans. Big plans. Future plans.

And for a while, you believe you’ve found something real.

But for some emotionally avoidant people, the beginning is the only part they truly know how to do.

The honeymoon phase gives them everything they crave — excitement, dopamine, unpredictability, passion, validation. It feels safe because it has no real weight yet. No deep vulnerability. No responsibility. No emotional maintenance.

It’s the fantasy stage.

But relationships cannot survive in fantasy forever.

At some point, every relationship shifts.

The excitement settles.

The routine begins.

Real life enters the room.

And this is where the cracks often start to show.

For someone with avoidant tendencies, stability can feel uncomfortable. Predictability can feel boring. Emotional closeness can feel suffocating.

What most people see as safety, they may experience as pressure.

Instead of leaning in, they pull away.

Sometimes it’s subtle:

less affection,

less communication,

less effort.

Other times it’s more destructive.

They start seeking the feeling they had at the start — but instead of rebuilding it within the relationship, they look for it elsewhere.

New attention.

New admiration.

New excitement.

A new person.

Not because the relationship was bad.

But because the high had worn off.

This is one of the most painful things to understand if you were on the receiving end.

Because you keep asking yourself:

What changed?

Often, the answer is nothing.

The relationship simply became real.

Healthy love is not built on adrenaline.

It’s built on consistency.

It is built in the quiet moments.

The hard conversations.

The ordinary days.

But if someone is constantly chasing the emotional rush of “new,” they may never stay long enough to build something lasting.

That is not your failure.

It is their pattern.

And patterns only change when someone is willing to face themselves.

I explore these patterns, emotional withdrawal, love bombing and trauma bonds in The Narcissist Handbook and more deeply in my upcoming book Everything Looked Like Love — a story about what happens when the beginning feels like everything, but the ending reveals what it really was.