The Deactivating Strategy Inventory
Recognize the unconscious tactics that keep avoidant partners from connecting
Deactivating strategies are the avoidant attachment style's equivalent of the anxious style's protest behaviors. They are unconscious mental and behavioral tactics used to suppress the attachment system and maintain emotional distance from a partner. Unlike protest behaviors, which are loud and visible, deactivating strategies are often invisible even to the person using them, making them harder to identify and change.
Common deactivating strategies include mentally cataloging a partner's imperfections, focusing on 'the one that got away' or a phantom ideal partner, emphasizing differences rather than similarities, valuing self-sufficiency to the point of not allowing any dependency, pulling away after moments of closeness, and using work or other activities to avoid intimacy. These strategies protect the avoidant person from the vulnerability of depending on another person but come at a steep cost: chronic dissatisfaction and an inability to sustain deep connection.
The inventory teaches avoidant individuals to recognize their specific deactivating strategies, understand the attachment need they are suppressing, and experiment with allowing more closeness. It is harder work than recognizing protest behaviors because the avoidant person often genuinely believes they simply have not found the right partner or that they just 'value independence'—when in reality, their attachment system is actively sabotaging connection.
- Deactivating strategies operate below conscious awareness—the avoidant person genuinely believes their rationalizations.
- These strategies serve an important protective function but prevent the closeness that would actually satisfy the underlying attachment need.
- Focusing on a partner's flaws, an idealized ex, or radical self-sufficiency are the most common forms of deactivation.
- The discomfort avoidant people feel with closeness is a signal their attachment system is activating, not proof they are with the wrong person.
- Recognizing deactivating strategies creates the possibility of choice where previously there was only automatic avoidance.
- Learn the full catalog of deactivating strategiesStudy the complete list: focusing on small imperfections in your partner (the way they chew, their taste in music), longing for an idealized ex or imaginary perfect partner, flirting with others to create distance, pulling away after a particularly intimate moment, emphasizing differences ('we are so different'), valuing independence above all else, keeping secrets to maintain separateness, avoiding physical closeness, and using work or hobbies to limit availability.
- Audit your current and past relationships for these patternsHonestly review how your relationships have ended or deteriorated. Were the reasons genuine dealbreakers or were they deactivating strategies? Did you pull away after your happiest moments together? Did you fixate on flaws that did not bother you initially? Track which strategies you use most frequently.
- Catch the strategy in real timeWhen you find yourself mentally criticizing your partner, fantasizing about someone else, or feeling suffocated after a close moment, label it: 'This is a deactivating strategy. My attachment system is activated and I am trying to create distance.' Sit with the discomfort rather than acting on the impulse.
- Experiment with not deactivatingInstead of pulling away after a moment of closeness, stay. Instead of focusing on your partner's flaw, consciously recall what you appreciate about them. These experiments will feel uncomfortable because they go against your wiring, but they are the path to deeper connection and ultimately greater relationship satisfaction.
Every time Greg's current girlfriend did something slightly annoying, he would mentally compare her unfavorably to his ex, Emily, remembering only her best qualities. After learning about deactivating strategies, he realized he had done the exact same thing when he was with Emily—comparing her unfavorably to the girlfriend before her. The 'phantom ex' was not a real person but a deactivating strategy.
Levine and Heller compiled the deactivating strategies inventory from decades of attachment research, particularly studies on avoidant adults' cognitive processes during relationship conflicts. Research by Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver demonstrated that avoidant individuals actively suppress attachment-related thoughts and feelings, and brain imaging studies show they expend significant mental energy maintaining this suppression. The inventory names and categorizes these strategies to make the unconscious conscious.