Podcast episode of Being Her (host Margarita Nazarenko) featuring Adam Lane Smith, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in avoidant attachment. The conversation covers whether avoidant men can be securely loved, the biochemical basis of avoidance, a live "good partner / bad partner" exercise, porn use, low libido, and distinguishing avoidant from narcissistic/manipulative behavior.
Smith opens by rejecting the common advice to simply leave avoidant partners:
"Avoidant men can be some of the most devoted, loving, connected partners you could possibly imagine, but only if you understand what he needs from you." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 02:03)
"[W]hat he needs from you is love in a way that he can experience, because biochemically, he's never experienced love before, and he doesn't know what's possible." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 02:18)
Smith describes his own background as anxious attachment "[w]ith a small amount of avoidant mixed in... Disorganized" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 05:17), and traces attachment issues to childhood:
"[I]f you felt that love was given to you and then ripped away, and given and ripped away... it creates a withdrawal effect and then a fear effect and a trauma effect—you actually have trauma from this as an infant." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 05:27)
He splits avoidant attachment into two types:
"Manipulative avoidant, where they believe other people are evil and malicious so they can justify manipulating them and hurting them and abandoning them." and "Ethical avoidant, where they don't want to hurt anyone... but they're very mechanical thinking, they have no oxytocin, they don't know what love feels like, they're purely dopamine-driven in relationships." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 05:27)
Smith runs Margarita through a visualization contrasting a direct, clear partner with one who never states needs and blows up unpredictably. With the "good" partner scenario she answers that she'd trust him, feel good as a partner, and expect the relationship to last (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 11:42–12:11). With the "bad" partner scenario — someone who hints instead of asking, hides dislikes until they "blow up... six months later," and treats good deeds as debts — she answers no to trust, no to self-esteem, and no to longevity (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 14:05–14:24).
Smith draws the lesson: "[M]ost of the people listening to this are probably being the bad partner in their relationship... By trying to be a nice person, you're actually inflicting quite a lot of discomfort and even pain on people around you." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 14:24) He frames this as behavioral, not identity-based: "You are a high-maintenance woman when you don't share; you are a low-maintenance woman when you do share." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 14:24)
Central mechanism claimed: avoidant men track love through delivery on requests rather than spontaneity, because their oxytocin is depleted.
"[A]voidant men, oxytocin is rock bottom... so he will not give you spontaneous displays of affection usually past the first seven months when his novelty dopamine is dead. Instead, he's going to do what you need and what you ask for as a show of love for you." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 16:21)
Smith gives an extended physiological account: childhood trauma keeps the sympathetic nervous system activated, blocking oxytocin receptors; low GABA lets cortisol fluctuate; lack of vasopressin prevents feeling "safe or connected"; inability to enter the parasympathetic nervous system suppresses human growth hormone (slow wound healing, difficulty gaining muscle), blocks melatonin synthesis (insomnia), and suppresses immune function (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 17:59).
Claim [synthesis]: Smith links this chronic physiological state to long-term health and mortality outcomes, stating it correlates with "a 55 to 65-year life expectancy for most avoidant men," attributing depression and anxiety in these men to the same mechanism though "they never call it that" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 17:59).
He also describes a "novelty dopamine" window of five to seven months in new relationships, after which pleasure from the relationship depends on oxytocin bonding rather than novelty (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 25:08). Men who don't fix this, he says, cycle through partners: "That's what most of them come to me when they're 45. They say, 'Adam, I've had a new woman every seven months and I want to get married and have kids and I can't do that.'" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 26:25)
Smith's core advice for women partnered with avoidant men is to become calm, self-regulated, and explicit/transactional about needs rather than expecting spontaneous displays of love:
"[Y]ou make it clear and transactional and measurable, and now he understands the investment required... he could say, 'Really? That's it?'" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 30:36)
He models a script for the woman to use with an avoidant partner, offering to give him "peace" in exchange for a few clear, specific requests (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 28:40). He warns that a dysregulated approach backfires: "A woman cannot go to an avoidant man dysregulated because then you are disaster." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 28:40)
He also describes physical bonding behaviors (scalp/arm/chest touch, "pink rhythm, biorhythm") as oxytocin releasers that help an avoidant man relax and eventually become "biochemically addicted to you on purpose" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 30:36–32:47), and uses a mouse-colony analogy for social bonding as a survival need (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 32:53).
Claim [synthesis]: Oxytocin is presented as a driver of male sexual performance to the point that it is being considered medically as a Viagra alternative: "they're talking in the medical industry right now about replacing Viagra with shots of oxytocin up the nose" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 33:51).
Smith frames porn use as a dopamine coping mechanism rather than a verdict on the partner: "This does not mean the woman is not doing enough... It means that this man does not know how to oxytocin bond appropriately." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 35:11) He recommends asking "What is this doing for you?" instead of forbidding it (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 35:11), and describes a model evening — 20 minutes of talking, foreplay, then sex — as building oxytocin resilience against porn (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 35:11).
For men who avoid sex citing stress, Smith says lingerie and novelty ("dopamine") won't help long-term because the underlying issue is unmanaged stress and low oxytocin: "Lingerie is dopamine. It ain't going to do anything for him." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 40:56) He recommends women ask directly, "What are you going to do about that?" to move the man into an "action phase" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 40:56).
Smith distinguishes manipulative/narcissistic-spectrum avoidants from ethical avoidants by whether the person demonizes others to justify controlling behavior: "If you feel like you're being managed quite often, and it's painful to you, you probably are with a manipulative avoidant." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 43:12) He advises tracking felt experience over isolated good moments: "Don't think, 'Oh, well, he complimented my hair one time in 2017 so he's really a good guy.'" (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 43:12)
Secure people reportedly self-select out of dating avoidant people because early love-bombing or excessive intellectualizing reads as a red flag (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 45:42). Avoidant people, per Smith, don't recognize this selection effect and instead pair with anxious people who "have very no boundaries, they don't ask for anything, it sounds like a free deal" — leading to delayed relational costs (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 45:42).
Smith also names toxic patterns among anxious-attached people — resentment, weaponized codependency, and demonizing avoidant men collectively: "it is a very dark side of... very toxic level of control and resentment, and just as much manipulation as the manipulative avoidant person." (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 48:06) Margarita corroborates from her own coaching DMs, describing a pattern where advice-seekers escalate into surveillance and demand-driven behavior (raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession, 49:27).
[[avoidant-attachment]] · Avoidant Attachment [[anxious-attachment]] · Anxious Attachment [[oxytocin-bonding]] · Oxytocin Bonding
All quotations above are sourced from raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession at the timestamps indicated inline. The episode is Being Her episode 101, "Turn His Avoidance Into Obsession: Make Him Chase You & Bond for Good with Adam Lane Smith," hosted by Margarita Nazarenko with guest Adam Lane Smith (licensed marriage and family therapist).
type: summary title: '101: Turn His Avoidance Into Obsession — Adam Lane Smith on Being Her' description: Adam Lane Smith explains avoidant attachment as a biochemical survival state and outlines how women can rebuild oxytocin bonding to make avoidant men chase and stay. tags: - psychology - dating - attachment - relationships created: 2026-07-23 updated: 2026-07-23 timestamp: '2026-07-23T00:00:00Z' sources: - raw/being-her-101-avoidance-into-obsession confidence: medium origin: ingest resource: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3SSnPjTONAEvwfJzfuhDEz