“I Can’t Give You What You Need.” Why Avoidants Say This and What to Do About It (Part 2/2)

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]There's a sentence that avoidants say when things have gone on too long, when they've tried and pulled back and tried again, and somewhere along the way quietly concluded that it's hopeless.

[00:00:12]And that sentence is, "I can't give you what you need." It lands differently than anything else they might have said before. When an avoidant says they need to work on themselves or that they're not ready, there's still something open in it, some possibility that things might change. But "I can't give you what you need" feels like a door being locked from the inside, like a conclusion that was reached without you.

[00:00:38]And the painful thing is, they usually mean it. They're not saying it to push you away, they genuinely believe it. In this video, I want to talk about why they believe it, what's actually driving it, and what you can do that changes things.

[00:00:54]And I'll be honest with you, part of this video is going to be hard to hear.

[00:00:58]It was hard for me to hear, too, but it was also liberating, and it allowed me to fix things almost overnight. I'm Carolina, I'm an attachment coach, and I run this channel together with my formally avoidant husband, Gabriel. This is the second video in a two-part series. The first one is about what happens when your avoidant says they need to work on themselves, and if you haven't watched it yet, I'd start there because a lot of what I'm going to say today builds on it. In the last video, I talked about what happens when anxious partners focus entirely on their avoidant, analyzing their patterns, obsessing over what they need to work on, trying to fix them directly or indirectly.

[00:01:43]And how, even though it comes from a real place of love, it ends up making the avoidant only feel more broken, like a problem to be solved rather than a person to be loved. The real turning point is when you stop only analyzing them and start admitting that you're struggling, too. And that's true, that moment matters enormously. Just implementing this new mindset will prevent your relationship problems from escalating, but it won't automatically fix everything because there's another pattern running underneath that also needs to be named. And when you name it, something surprising happens, something that can change the dynamic almost overnight.

[00:02:26]Let me explain. Anxious partners are caring and attentive. They check in, they stay close, they notice when something's off, and they show up for it. And that care is completely genuine, it's not an act, but it's also carrying something else at the same time, loneliness, fear, the need to know that everything's okay between you, the need for reassurance that you're loved. And all those things are tangled up in the same gesture, the same text, the same question, the same reaching out. Both things are true at once. The love is real, and the anxiety driving it is also real. The avoidant feels the full weight of it, not just the care, but the unspoken need underneath it, too. They can sense what isn't being said, even when they can't always name it. And that weight, that constant invisible burden of an unspoken need, is exhausting, even when the person putting it on them means nothing but good. So, the first step in fixing this "I can't give you what you want" problem is to admit that you yourself aren't perfect, either. I did this with Gabriel, and what happened next, I did not see coming. We were having one of those conversations about him, about his patterns, about what was going on between us. And somewhere in the middle of it, a memory surfaced, a very old one. I was in kindergarten, I had some extra music lessons, and I was so anxious during them. I kept walking out to check if my mom was waiting for me in the corridor, over and over again.

[00:04:07]I couldn't settle. I couldn't just trust that she was there. I told Gabriel the story. I wasn't sure why it came up, but it felt connected to who I was then and to who I still was in some ways. I admitted that I still carried a lot of anxiety, that it didn't just go away.

[00:04:27]Sharing it felt like handing him ammunition, like giving him something he could use against me.

[00:04:33]But he had been vulnerable with me, so it felt only fair. He was kind about it, a little amused, actually, not in a cruel way, just in the way you are when something's both a little funny and very human. There was no judgment. And the moment I said it out loud, it felt like putting down something I had been carrying for a very, very long time. A week later, we met up, and Gabriel was frustrated. He said, "I've been thinking about what you told me, and I realized something. You often hover around me and hint at things instead of just asking for what you want. You'll ask me how I'm doing, but it feels like you're needing something, needing constant contact, constant reassurance. It feels like I'm together with that anxious little girl you described to me, and it's frustrating, it's annoying. I want to give you what you want, I just wish you'd trust me that I do." I want to pause here for a second because the way he said this, it wasn't cold, it wasn't cruel. He was frustrated, yes, but underneath the frustration was something else. He was telling me he wanted to show up for me, he just needed me to let him. And hearing that made it possible to actually receive what he was saying because it was painful. I felt defensive. I wanted to explain myself, to justify it, to say that I was just being caring, but I also couldn't argue with it. I knew he was right, I had been caught, and there was no point pretending otherwise. I felt completely seen and completely called out at the same time. So, why do avoidants say, "I can't give you what you need"? It's not because they don't want to. Gabriel told me himself he wanted to give me what I needed, he just didn't know what it was because I was never actually telling him. I was hinting, I was hovering, I was asking how he was doing when what I actually needed was to hear that he loved me and that we were okay.

[00:06:32]If you're anything like me, this is the part where you want to argue back, where you want to say, "But I do ask, but I do communicate, but I'm not that bad." I felt all of that when Gabriel said it to me, too. The defensiveness came up immediately, and that reaction makes complete sense because hinting instead of asking directly isn't something you chose consciously, it's something you learned. At some point in your life, asking for what you needed directly felt too risky. Maybe it led to rejection, maybe it felt like too much to ask, maybe you learned early that it was safer to keep your needs small and hope someone would notice them anyway. Of course you learned to hint, of course you learned to hover. It was the most logical response to what you were working with all the time.

[00:07:22]But here's what it costs you in the present. The avoidant can feel the gap between what you're saying and what you actually mean. They can feel the need sitting underneath every question, every check in, every seemingly casual reach out. And no matter what they give, it never quite lands because you needed something specific that was never named, so nothing they offer fully satisfies it. They give and give and still feel like they're failing. First, they might say they need space, that they need to work on themselves, that they're not in the right place for a relationship. And if nothing changes, it'll become something more final, "I can't give you what you need." It's not a rejection, it's an avoidant running out of road.

[00:08:08]And here's what I want you to hold onto.

[00:08:10]Understanding this pattern is not about putting all the blame on you because that's not true. Avoidants are broken, they make relationships unnecessarily difficult, too.

[00:08:21]But seeing and admitting your own contribution is actually the thing that sets you free because once you can see it, you can change it. And changing it is far less scary than living in the constant fear of being abandoned. After that conversation with Gabriel, something shifted in our relationship, not because I had fixed anything, not because I had suddenly become a different person, but because he named the problem and I had actually heard it.

[00:08:50]And that moment of being seen, even painfully, even uncomfortably, became a foundation we could both stand on because now we had language for it. He could point to it when it happened again, and I could catch myself in it rather than defend it. But an even bigger change came from what I started doing differently. I started asking for things directly, not hinting, not hovering, not wrapping my need in a question about how he was doing, just saying, "I'm feeling disconnected, can we spend some time together tonight?" Or "I need some reassurance right now.

[00:09:27]Can you tell me we're okay?" And I gave him the option and space to say no. That part felt terrifying because for an anxious person, giving someone the option to say no feels like setting yourself up for rejection you've been trying to avoid your whole life. The hinting, the hovering, it exists precisely to avoid that moment. If you never ask directly, you never have to hear a direct no. But what I discovered surprised me completely. Giving Gabriel the option to say no made his yes mean something. A yes that wasn't pressured or guilt trip or painfully extracted through a fog of an unspoken need. It's kind of a yes that lands differently.

[00:10:12]You can feel it. And feeling it, really feeling it, it quiets your anxiety. And the other thing I discovered, asking directly is actually far more effective at getting you what you want than hinting ever was. Because people around you, your partner included, are not mind readers. They want to show up for you.

[00:10:32]Most of the time they genuinely do. They just need you to trust them enough to tell them how. When I started trusting Gabriel enough to ask directly, he started trusting me enough to open up more. The dynamic shifted. Not because one of us had fixed the other, but because I had finally stopped making him responsible for something only I could control and name. So, let's look at the full picture for a moment. When you are focused entirely on your partner, analyzing their patterns, pointing out what they needed to work on, trying to fix them, you are making them feel broken. And that's why your avoidant might have said that they needed to work on themselves, that they weren't ready, that they needed space to figure things out alone. And at the same time, underneath all that care and attention, you were carrying an unspoken need they could never quite reach. A need that was never clearly named. Only hovered around. And that's why avoidants eventually say, "I can't give you what you need." Not because they don't want to, but because they've exhausted themselves trying to fill something they could feel but never find. Both things were asking too much of them. And both things, it turns out, you can change.

[00:11:50]Now, understanding all of this is one thing. Actually changing these patterns in real time, when you're anxious, when you're in it, when every instinct is telling you to hover and hint and check in one more time, that's another thing entirely. In our Attached and Avoidant program, we'll help you work through your anxiety so that it stops running the show. And when it does, something changes on the other side, too. Your avoidant starts to believe that they actually can give you what you need.

[00:12:22]That they're not failing you. That there is a version of this relationship that works for both of you. That's what we're working toward together. The link is in the description. And if you want to understand everything we talked about today from the other side, from an avoidant's perspective, make sure to watch Gabriel's latest video, "What Your Fearful Avoidant Ex Is Thinking Right Now."