This is the third in a series of articles focusing on adult attachment styles and how they impact the way we deal with intimacy, how we communicate our feelings and needs and listen to our partners, how we respond to conflict and our expectations in relationships. There are four distinct adult attachment patterns: secure or autonomous, anxious or preoccupied, avoidant or dismissive and disorganized or unresolved.
Do you typically have a hard time committing to your romantic partner? Are you often in need of more space or independence in relationships? Do you want to be in a relationship but then find yourself pushing your partner away?
These are some indicators that you may have an avoidant or dismissive attachment style. Just as with the other attachment styles we have discussed, people bring their past experiences, feelings, expectations and relationship patterns into their adult intimate relationships. Their experiences in earlier relationships create core beliefs and attachment styles, which then determine how they perceive and relate to their partners.
Avoidant or dismissing adults don’t have a coherent state of mind regarding attachment. Their memories and stories of the past are not consistent with the facts. They tend to idealize their parents, deny unpleasant events, do not recall much about early experiences and are unaware of the impact their past is having on their current lives. They minimize and dismiss the importance of relationships and emotional attachments. During their childhood, their parents may have been emotionally unavailable, rejecting and insensitive to their signals and needs. In response, they developed defenses to survive in their emotionally empty families by avoiding closeness, prioritizing independence and denying their needs or vulnerability.
In their romantic relationships, avoidant adults are most comfortable being self-reliant, not seeking or accepting support from their partners. Closeness makes them anxious and they find it difficult to trust others. Often, their partners desire more connection and intimacy, which the avoidant adult is unable or unwilling to give.
Like the anxiously attached adult, the avoidant individual is insecure in their attachment. But their strategies for dealing with closeness, dependence, avoidance and anxiety are different. While the anxiously attached adult’s approach is “hyperactivating” (looking for more enmeshment, reassurance, care and attention) the avoidant adult’s approach is “deactivating” (creating distance from intense connection, intimacy or emotions).
Deactivating Strategies
These strategies include:
- Denying attachment needs and being compulsively self-reliant
- Inhibiting basic attachment strategies like seeking close proximity to their partner. This is the partner who doesn’t show up, lets the phone go to voicemail or doesn’t return texts.
- Avoiding emotional involvement, intimacy, interdependence and self-disclosure. This is the partner who will leave to avoid conflict or explode during a disagreement.
- Suppressing attachment-related thoughts and feelings
- Acting mistrustful. This is the partner who distrusts their partner and fears being taken advantage of.
- Expressing unwillingness to deal with a partner’s distress or desire for intimacy or closeness
- Being dismissive and denigrating. Downplaying their partner’s needs.
- Keeping anger and resentments inside.
- Viewing their relationship as unsatisfying, fantasizing about other sexual partners and having affairs.
Through therapy, avoidantly attached adults can identify the experiences and traumas that cause them to fear connection and closeness, learn new relationship and communication strategies, and eventually come to an understanding that a securely attached relationship will enrich their life and still allow them to enjoy their independence.
This discussion on “Deactivating Strategies” has given me words to describe exactly what I am experiencing with members of my family as well as deeper understanding.
Linda, Happy to hear that was helpful.
I am a dismissive avoidant male. I enjoy the early stages of dating, but it seems like every woman has an agenda that involves engulfing and smothering me. When they start trying to control me, I can easily get them to break up with me by maintaining my independence and not letting our talks go beyond small talk. It’s much better to have them break up with you than vice versa. That way they think it’s their idea and there’s a much lesser chance they will be angry or continue to pursue you.
Hey John, your comment make a lot of sense and confirmed a suspicion of mine. I’ve been dating a DA for 6 years but we also had a history years earlier, so we know each other’s history very well. When I sensed she was trying to pull away last year I asked her about it and eventually she told me that she had started to lose attraction for me. I didn’t really believe this to be the case though as she seemed to cycle through other reasons for her withdrawal first before this one. Also the reasons she gave for losing attraction were questionable as they missed details that offered mitigation or served to the contrary. Plus they changed each time the conversation came up.
She was separated from her husband but he still lived at her house for a while because they had kids, and the divorce was very lengthy. We had enjoyed several years of dating and were very close, with her even saying ILU and talking about fantasy future plans together.
Every now and then she would disappear suddenly and without reason. The first thing I noticed each time was her reluctance to speaking in person or over the phone. It had to be text message or nothing. I have no idea how she’d have operated in the 90s when you could only speak in person, and fixed telephones had no caller ID. I always felt like the I was being censored when texting anything personal or fun, humorous or really anything that expressed my personality and showed any affection. Why? I figured she was trying to create a false profile of me in her mind that was not attractive or alluring or trustworthy or reliable. Is this a fair assumption???
So last year her divorce finally came through and her marriage with her husband was gone for good, along with the convenient barrier that it had provided. The very next day she began a slow fade process and cut comms for 3 months. She blamed work and kept deferring meets for a week and then another week and so on. I never called or texted obsessively before because I knew how needy that was, and I attempted to call her once each week for 3 weeks. I felt she made the weekly deterrence instead of requesting a longer period of no contact (other than text obvs) on purpose as she was counting on me to keep ringing her and to become a pest. Again is this fair??
I feel that her actions were all very strategic and intentional. Would you agree, and do you think it was her intention for me to give up and dump her?
As long as you want to remain alone, continuing as you do will serve you. But please know, your super independence, though it has its true advantages, and kept you safe when you were younger, as well as “safe” from sadness and loss as an adult, is a defense mechanism that your brain developed over time into your identity. Human connection and loving emotion in reciprocity, is one of the best feelings a human can experience. It is a tragedy avoidant attachers nervous systems don’t allow them to experience it long term or in reality (because the first few months aren’t about really knowing the Other. You are just dating a fantasy in your head.) In authentic, healthy relationships that provide emotional safety, there is no chance of actual smothering or suffocation because the two adults talk about their desires/preferences/needs in a relationship.
Also, regardless of who wants to end the relationship, that’s their prerogative. But to slowly fade out or ghost, make someone you’ve been dating feel confused, and not be up front with another human so they end the relation in distress and not hold out hope is most cruel. It shows a deep insecurity on your part that once you’ve made the decision you don’t feel confident enough to maintain a boundary or act in kindness when someone else is experiencing big emotion.
As an avoidant you can grow. If not for a long term relationship, but just to be a decent human.
Love this ❤️
Wow! On point! As I have learned boundaries, it’s so gratifying to feel comfortable being honest about my feelings. And I quickly discovered that cool people can handle honesty with flying colors!! I now try to practice radical honesty and radical acceptance. Hopefully my vibe will attract similar others. I think it does, and it inspires my friends to be the same. Love and be loved!!
Why even bother to start dating when you know you can’t sustain what a relationship entails?