Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD) and Silent Divorce
If your spouse is dealing with Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD), it will leave you with feelings of disconnection and loneliness within your marriage. As a professional Christian psychotherapist, I specialize in helping individuals with APD by addressing the root causes of their personality issues through trauma healing and an internal family systems approach. For spouses, I provide guidance to help identify the extent of the condition and offer strategies to cope effectively and supportively.

Symptoms of the Avoidant Personality Disorder
Avoidant Personality Disorder insists upon extreme privacy and avoidance of personal sharing and emotional openness within their marriage. If your partner consistently avoids intimacy, shies away from eye contact, or struggles to share their thoughts and listen to yours, they are displaying signs of intimacy avoidance. If you in a marriage relationship with and avoidant personality you may feel like a failure because nothing works to overcome your feeling of emotional isolation. You may blame yourself and feel something is wrong with you.

This will make it challenging to build true intimacy and connection, leaving you feeling dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Christian psychotherapy can provide comfort and support for you and help stop the feeling that you are going crazy. 

If you have a full-blown avoidant personality disorder you will avoid anything and everything that leads to bonding your marriage into a close and nurturing love relationship. You do not feel any urgency to heal your marriage or change your participation. You are comfortable with a companionship relationship which is really a silent divorce. You may be better with non-intimate relationships, and that fact can be very confusing for your husband or wife. Eventually they will, in frustration, express anger toward you.

​ It is unlikely that the spouse with the avoidant personality disorder will enter or stay in couple or individual therapy because of the deep resistance to the intimacy and openness needed for good therapy. If therapy was undertaken, we could aim to heal the early traumas that lead to the deep inner decision to avoid love relationships. If we could we would foster a more secure emotional core. If you are married to someone who is, I am here to provide the support and tools needed to navigate these challenges with compassionate and deep understanding.

​Symptoms of the Avoidant Personality include:
1.  A rigid compulsion to avoid close connection and thereby to avoid bonding within one's most intimate relationships.
2. Difficulty dealing with conflict. One will avoid and even lie to avoid connection and accountability.
3. A lack of empathy and difficulty comforting others, preferring to offer solutions instead of acknowledging feelings.
4. A reluctance to step outside of one's comfort zone and avoid taking risks in various areas of life, particularly in matters of love and personal communication.
5. Refusing to give straight answers or expressing one's needs to one's spouse, making it nearly impossible to plan together.
6. They fail to express their own feelings and also fail to acknowledge your feelings.
7. They avoid making clear requests or giving you clear answers.
8. You will notice a lack of personal depth in conversation.
9. There is a preoccupation with appearance and maintaining a perfect image so others do not understand what you are going through.
10. Difficulty with spontaneous hospitality and, on the other hand, going overboard with planned events.

Treatment for avoidant personality disorder in marriage:
1. It is important to make a full assessment as to whether there is a tendency to intimacy avoidance or a full-blown Avoidant Personality Disorder, which is quite resistant to treatment. A professional assessment is necessary to determine if an individual meets the criteria for an avoidant personality disorder. I offer that assessment.
2. I offer support for the non-AVPD spouse to fully understand if they are living in a silent divorce with a broken love connection.
3. If there is a silent divorce—a companionship relationship—then I offer supportive counselling, which is imperative to assess the cost of staying in this broken relationship.
4. I offer individual therapy for the members if they are struggling with a silent divorce and a possible separation. 

I suggest you book an individul professional consultation to help you understand the marriage relationship and if the full pattern of the Avoidant Personality Disorder is present.

​Phone (416) 939-0544 for George Hartwell M.Sc. Registered Psychotherapist

​The professional fee per hour consultation is $160.00 (as of 2025) and payment is due at the end of your appointment. Payment by e-transfers to [email protected] or PayPal. A receipt is issued.

To Hell with Playing it Safe!
A song for the avoidant personality

There's a parable about the talents we're given
The risk-takers thrive, while the fearful are driven
To bury their gifts, and hide from the light
They fear the unknown, and avoid the fight

Chorus: But the true wealth lies in love and growth
Not in hoarding and playing it safe, both
We must partner with God to become our best
And share our light, to help others find rest

Like the caterpillar who's meant to transform
e must shed our old selves, to weather the storm
We may face a breakdown, as we emerge anew
But it's worth it, to become what we're called to

Chorus: For the true wealth lies in love and growth
Not in hoarding and playing it safe, both
We must partner with God to become our best
And share our light, to help others find rest

Bridge: Let go of fear, and embrace the risk
on't cling to the past, or you'll never be whisked
nto a new life, where joy and peace abide
nd the light of the spirit is our guide

Chorus

Outro: So let us embrace the transformation
And use our talents for a greater nation
Let us love and grow, and find true peace
nd become all we were meant to be.

Conditions and Issues:

Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD) and Silent Divorce: Healing from Avoidant Personality Disorder and Silent Divorce.

People Pleasing: The harm caused by, root causes and healing of a People-Pleasing Personality.

Emptiness, empty feeling, Something is Missing: Understanding the cause and path to healing of the feeling of Emptiness.

Deliverance from Evil: Deliverance ministry through healing of trauma with a Christian Psychotherapist.

Codependent: Understanding and therapy for Codependency. Gain a Clear Perspective on Codependent Behaviors

Christian perspective on the Psychopath or sociopath: Understanding prospects for therapy with Personality Disorders. Understanding the Psychopath and other Personality Personalities.

Nervous Breakdown and Mid-Life Crisis: What is a Nervous Breakdown or mid-life crisis? What therapy is appropriate for this? How to transform a painful identity crises into a growth experience.

Depression Therapy: Understanding and Healing of Depression - finding hope and renewal in dark times.​