Fearful-avoidant partner - how long to wait?

Known a girl online since April. Both of us pretty self-aware about weaknesses and histories, found it easy to avoid labeling our relationship or setting expectations. She developed feelings for me, I took it a bit slower. I tend to be insecure/secure attachment, she seems to be fearful-avoidant. She says she is very much focused on going slow, building connection first.

End of June she vanished for a week, unannounced - before she had warned me in advance. I didn't worry or chase, but a couple of weeks later she vanished for ten days, unannounced. By now she had told me she was in love, made the 'I'm independent' statement etc. Last week we video called for the first time and had arranged to meet up in November. Just before that I had chased her once which led to very productive discussion of the situation, and commitment from her to work on her issue of ducking out or zoning out of things for a while because of whatever.

She's now vanished for 8 days and counting again. I haven't contacted her - I did some reading about dealing with this stuff and combined with my past experiences (last relationship was also of this nature but ended when she repeatedly lied to me) I've left her alone. I don't want to enable a push/pull mechanic and I need to let her return when she sees that the relationship is secure. She told me she had been abandoned and I know that in childhood she was oftentimes the parent to her mother.

I would like to get opinions/advice on quite how long one should persist in trying to heal this attachment style issue. Until my reading the other day, I would have felt entirely justified in cutting her off immediately, because what good is a relationship where one person vanishes and culls the flame with the draft of the door. However I imagine it takes a bit more than a few months' work to solve this sort of lifelong problem (I only just started to react securely now at 33 to these sorts of events, albeit I have a history of being abandoned, lied to, cheated in relationships, every single time). It is hard for me to reconcile the dissonant ideas that someone can and does love / care for me if they repeatedly fail to warn me of long spaces, knowing what that does to me. It is hard to think she couldn't have prepared messages, or send pictures, etc, ways of maintaining our bond/flame whatever you call it, to use as fuel during these absences which she still justifies consciously as independence, more than admitting the insecurity.

My inside intuition (I have had dreams about relationships ending before and always been right, I tend to read someone's core very well very soon after knowing them) says she isn't ready for a relationship, I have had more than one intuition that she will deflect our closeness by getting with someone else. We are not officially together but if she did that I would have to leave, it would be too much of a sign she is unwilling to change. But if she remains intent on me, how long should I reasonably give it if she keeps vanishing and putting us back several steps in closeness?

Hey man,

I have no answer to your question, but wanted to throw out a 90 degree thought that may help you answer for yourself...

One way to answer your question is to try and remote navigate her every thought/feeling, guess, and try to come up with an answer. Problem is, we really cannot know what others think/feel except very vaguely. She could be avoiding a commitment for weeks, months, years, a lifetime, only she knows and she may not know either.

So a different question is 'how long do you want to wait?'

The point behind that question is just to make it clearer, if you aren't clear yourself on how long you want to wait (and this is your own mind, which you do have complete access too, sans your own ambivalence, quandaries, etc.), what hope is there of figuring out her mind?

That written, you also have the option of not trying to answer how long you are willing to wait. Just see how it unfolds day to day. Today you wait, maybe tomorrow you come to a point where you don't (or the day after that, and so on).