Kantors Types

In Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder Martin Kantor describes four types of avoidants:


Type I SHY/SOCIAL PHOBIC AVOIDANTS
The classic avoidants, are withdrawn. There are two subtypes of withdrawn avoidants. The first is the shy individual who cannot seem to tolerate, flinches in the face of, and pulls back from any form of social contact. They are seriously isolated individuals. The second suffers from a Social Phobia, which is a delimited pull back from a situation or event that symbolizes relationships, for example, from public speaking or eating in public. Though shy and social phobic avoidants are the main and virtually exclusive focus of today's scientific literature, these avoidants may not even be in a majority, but may represent only the tip of the avoidant iceberg. Type I avoidants who fear the new can quickly progress to type II avoidants who feel discomfort with the old.


Type II ‘MINGLES’ AVOIDANTS
The avoidants shift from relationship to relationship afraid of closeness due to a fear of commitment ("mingle" avoidants such as the perpetual bachelor or femme fatale). They are therefore the opposite of withdrawn. These are hyper related individuals who can relate easily, widely and well but have difficulty sustaining the relationships they form. Theirs are unstable relationships, marked by a tendency to abandon relationships before they fully develop, especially when closeness threatens and commitment looms. There are sub types:
The Anxious Type
Are too fearful to maintain relationships because they are too highly attuned to the possibility of being criticised, humiliated and rejected and because they take actual criticism, humiliation and rejections too seriously. Some are rejection sensitive because they expect too much from the world.
The Ambivalent Type
They are too uncertain to pursue relationships without serious vacillation. Among them we find bachelor who can never be captured, at least for very long or the seductive women who breaks of the relationship as soon as it appears to be getting serious.
The Masochistic Type
Prove the Freudian formulation that behind every fear is a hidden wish. While they manifestly complain about fearing rejection, they secretly desire it, because they fear acceptance even more, and with it the success that acceptance brings. They might arrange to fail by pursuing quantity over quality. Or they might arrange to fail by joining groups of other avoidants with the same similar problems.
Or they might arrange to fail by selecting distant unavailable people to relate to, or people with a fatal flaw, such as those who dislike them or those who are already taken, for example married.
The Dissociative Types
When faced with danger, as they see it, of being accepted and getting what they want, go into an trance or enter another one of their multiple personalities.


Type III ‘SEVEN YEAR ITCH’ AVOIDANTS
Avoidants form lasting relationships only to disrupt them after months or years of apparent functionality. They form what appear to be solid relationships -- only to tire of them after a shorter or longer period of time, then leave them with little warning. That is, they abandon their relationships after some time has passed, and they often do so suddenly and without warning.


Type IV THE INDENPENT/CODEPENDENT AVOIDANTS
Avoidants hide out in a codependent relationship with one person to avoid having healthy relationships with many people. They sink into one relationship to avoid all others. Some are dependent on their family. Others are dependent on a lover with whom they form a merger relationship that protects them from the anxiety associated with relationships outside of the primary relationship.



He writes that the avoidants distancing is the product of multiple social relationship anxieties - not just one. In addition to the anxieties about criticism, humiliation and rejection (the official avoidant dynamic), avoidant suffers anxiety about being flooded by out-of-control instincts rushing out should they open Pandora’s box full of dark sexuality and anger; anxiety about being depleted life-energy as a result of letting go of their feeling; and the opposite of anxiety about rejection, anxiety about the possibility of acceptance. This latter anxiety - a most important, and often down played, anxiety - is in turn due one or more components anxieties; anxiety about becoming dependent; anxiety about being controlled and as a result being overwhelmed by, trapped in, and engulfed by closeness and intimacy of a committed relationship; and anxiety about both winning (fear of success) and about losing (fear of failure).

I would say I’m type II ‘Mingles Avoidant’ - The Ambivalent Type. Most times when I go out at night I meet someone, start a relationship only to bail after a few weeks before it starts to get serious. I feel a lot of guilt about this, like I just mislead or use people.

I think narcissism and insecurity go hand in hand. People who think their better than other people will then come to the conclusion that not many people will understand them or 'get them'. So they may feel very self conscious or shy around people. Thinking that they will be ridiculed for being so special and unique.IMO

Ambivalent Anxious here. Hahahah..... It fits me pretty well. The codependent/independent one a little, too.

Codependant describes me really well. For the last ten years I took care of my father. Before that I was in a relationship with a diabetic girl who was dying from the disease. I'm constantly looking around for emotionally disturbed women. It seems to me that they are the only kind I could attach to.

The Codependent type fits me best. It took me a long time to recover from a break-up years ago. Now that I am in a new relationship, (partially to help me feel more 'normal'), I can rest easy in my little retreat in the basement. When social activity starts to get me a little freaked out upstairs, I retreat downstairs to my own space. I can go to work and talk about my family if asked, and then when someone invites me over to their house for some social event, I can make up some excuse that I have obligations at home that keep me from going. It makes me feel safe.

Up...

Shy/Social Phobic fits me the best i guess

I think I'm somewhere between all of those catigories.

One note is that I can see a possible trend of manifestations of the type 2.c(the masochist) in several people's threads.