FIRST THING I NOTICE IN A POTENTIAL PARTNER? THE AUDACITY.
Hi, me again, and today Iām here to talk to you about dismissive/avoidant attachment style. Get comfortable and steel yourself, because if you have this attachment style, Iām about to make you feel very seen, and this is only because I had to endure this recently when I was bored and idly doing online quizzes about my own brain because I might not be able to emote healthily, but I sure as heck can over-intellectualise the feelings I should be having whilst Iām distracting myself by doing online quizzes instead.Ā
Attachment Theory was formulated and popularised in 1958 by psychoanalyst John Bowby, and supposes that the first attachments we make (with whoever our caregivers may be) will form the blueprint of the attachments we do or donāt form over the course of our adult lives. My therapist said to me that these attachments begin to be cemented into us when we are pre-verbal, and I thought - well that canāt be right, but sure enough before we can speak we are of course seeking attention and affection from our caregivers with smiling, crying, babbling, cooing, clinging, following etc, and how those behaviours have been responded to will tell us how we should or shouldnāt attempt to attach to others. Itās worth reading up on, if youāre interested in that kind of thing, and I recommend the Strange Situation Experiment in which attachment theory was explored in infants depending on how they responded to being with a parent, without a parent, with a stranger, and alone.Ā
So when I was doing all these online quizzes, I learned a bunch about myself. Did you know I have lots of dark triad traits? That I might be a narcissist? That I am possibly a sociopath? I know, news to me too. I had to sit down. I also learned that if I were a tyrant I would be Col. Gaddafi, and that i have more masculine traits than feminine ones. I have an oral-aggressive personality type, and also: I have a dismissive/avoidant attachment style. And thatās what I want to talk about today, because if youāre reading this blog, you possibly either have it or you care about someone who does.Ā
Dismissive/avoidant types typically grew up without a secure base of safety at home. We had to meet our own emotional needs because it was more reliable and less painful than repeated rejection from our caregiver, and we have disconnected from our own needs for closeness as a means to avoid the shame of feeling dependent on anyone but ourselves. I relate to this hugely, and now I know what my attachment style is, I can pinpoint exactly where I have gone wrong in my close relationships, and why I find it hard even now to really get close to anyone. So, what are some things a dismissive/avoidant person might do? Iāve made a list of mine, and Iāll talk you through some examples. I hope this will help you understand yourself, or the sociopath in your life who seems to be extremely stubborn when it comes to guarding their own love in a miserly way. No judgement: I am that miser.Ā
I will undervalue the importance of anyoneās feelings but my own.
I accept I have a complex emotional world, I just donāt find it very easy to access it, communicate it, or assume anyone else has it. Maybe this was because my mother was very cold and emotionally insincere, or maybe itās because I was always told I was, but thatās the truth. Yes, itās selfish, but itās how Iāve always gone about things. Example: arguments in which I rant about my feelings being ignored or dismissed whilst, you guessed it, I refuse to address the emotions of the person who is currently being told how my emotions are being dismissed in quite a heavy-handed way. Not cool.
I have very little space in my emotional world, and I therefore expect perfection in that space.
I live by a secret code of etiquettes and ethics that for some reason I have forgotten to tell anyone else about because I had thought for a long time that the way I thought was normal. I thought everyone had these standards that I have, but really theyāve been tricks and pitfalls that partners have fallen down. Itās never been intentional, I just think that things are done a proper way and a wrong way; acceptable or unacceptable. I didnāt realise this for a long time, but I am really good at enforcing what I believe is acceptable, in a wholly unacceptable way. This is why I nitpick and find faults in others, itās a good way to keep someone at armās length.Ā
I say I donāt want commitment whilst silently fully committing to someone without ever letting them know.
I have refused to move in with a partner until I have had nowhere else to live and it was the only option left. I had a fiancee who proposed to me four times before he got a yes. I wanted to say yes the first time but I didnāt. Why? I didnāt want him to get too close. It felt like an invasion. Traditionally, when I enter a relationship, Iām the asshole who says,Ā ālook, it is what it is, yeah?ā. Iāll talk about my disdain of marriage and cohabiting, and then Iāll casually move in and tell you itās purely logistical. I will be with you for years, maybe a lifetime, and Iāll act completely like this all happened because of chance and circumstance. I will even believe this myself.Ā
I donāt really want to share my feelings with you.
I donāt know what they are, I donāt know how youāll react, I donāt know how theyāll come out and I donāt know what youāll do with them. Itās much easier and safer for me to keep it all in and then just blow up when you havenāt secretly guessed what they are. You had to guess because I couldnāt tell you, because I didnāt know. You think Iām disconnected from you? You should hear how disconnected I am from my own self.Ā
I will dwell on the past instead of focussing on the future.Ā
The future hasnāt happened and I donāt know what it holds. The past is concrete; I have lived it and learned from it. Normally what Iāve learned (perhaps wrongly, because of our old friend confirmation bias) is that all my fears and suspicions are correct and nobody can be trusted. Thatās solid, I can take that to the bank. I will very much live in the past where we were briefly unhappy instead of looking to a future where we could be endlessly in love because it feels unrealistic to me -- love feels unrealistic to me.Ā
Iām much better at sexual closeness than emotional closeness. The sex will come first, then the feelings, perhaps.
You wanna bone down? Nice. Me too. Do you have any fantasies you never explored before? I bet I know what they are, and I bet Iām into it because thereās a reason I sought you out. I could sense it. I want to never get out of bed, I want to do all of it all the time. For some reason it is much easier for me to feel extremely close and connected to you whilst we are having sex than it is moments later when you are lying next to me wanting to cuddle. I have a healthy relationship to sex, let me be clear -- Iāve always felt perfectly fulfilled in casual set-ups, even one-night-stands. Early on in relationships weāll do it all. Our relationship will survive for a very long time if the sexual connection is good, even if the emotional one is a shit-show. This is a closeness I feel safe with. Find another time to tell me you love me. You probably donāt even mean it, is what Iām thinking. By this point Iāve fooled myself that youāre in some kind of sex-trance, that Iāve merely fucked you into a relationship you didnāt want to be in. So Iāll tell you that youāre free to leave. Iām told this is hurtful, because if youāve developed feelings for me, I never saw that coming. I promise. In fact, when Iāve had myĀ āfirst timesā with people I know I might end up loving, Iāve had to be some level of drunk. Not blind drunk, but enough to ease my nerves. I canāt be sober in that environment, I need Dutch courage. And, once the sex disappears on any level, Iāll begin to pull away completely because after that, I begin to believe we are merely friends, and if we are merely friends, then whatās even the point?Ā
I will sabotage a relationship when vulnerability is required of me.
This one is quite standard and kind of explains itself. When I find Iām getting very close to someone, when talks need to be had, I make a lot of jokes and when the jokes run out or the person Iām having this intimacy with isnāt laughing, Iāll just dip out in any way I can, and itās much easier for me to frame myself as the villain because then youāll hate me and thatās a good job done -- if you hate me, you wonāt want to get anywhere near me ever again. Iāll get drunk and say awful things, or Iāll stay out with my friends all night, or stop answering the phone. For this same reason, I donāt tend to love personal displays of affection because then Iām being vulnerable with you in front of everyone. Again, I donāt think any of this is warranted, and Iām not making excuses. Iām just explaining.Ā
I am prone to pining after a partner I have already discarded and have inexplicably begun to idealise.
Okay, this is a very hard one to write but Iām going to just write it and Iām going to give an explanation from a personal experience I had that I regret and do feel remorseful about.Ā
I used to date someone I fell in love with. He was the first person Iād ever really felt immediately attracted to, someone I could identify very quickly that I was in love with, and that hadnāt happened to me before. I had been in two very long, very serious relationships before him, with people I never felt especially close to. They were a fine example of what they describe asĀ āparasitic lifestyleā in the DSM-V criteria for ASPD: itās not that I didnāt care about them, but the benefits outweighed the costs - they gave me a place to live when I had nowhere to go and gave me the basic affection I craved. But they both felt like some kind of arrangement after not very long, and whilst I did initially care, I stopped caring, but didnāt leave. I had nowhere else to go so I played the part. Itās worth mentioning too that the first person turned out to be horribly abusive.Ā
Then this new man crashed into my life and he was everything I didnāt know I wanted. Our connection was immediate and he had very real, very sincere love for me that he had no issues whatsoever communicating. Heād write me poetry and songs, he was happy to slip into a submissive role completely consensually as I took the dominant role. On paper and in life, it was perfect.Ā
We broke up a few times and the first time was because... I canāt explain it. I was head over heels in love with him so one morning when we woke up together after a night of cuddling and talking and laughing, I asked him to leave and not come back. I feel pained about this on reflection, because I remember the look on his face. He left. He got drunk. He drunk-called me. His brother reached out to me. His friends started looking at me with contempt because I had hurt someone they really cared about just months after he told them how happily in love with someone he was with someone he felt was perfect for him, and after I had been making it known that I felt the same. I just told him to leave, and he did, and for whatever dumb reason, he came back. And we were happy again, for a time.Ā
He ended up sleeping with someone else after about a year of me doing everything to push him as far away from me as possible on an entirely subconscious level, because I really thought at the time that we were vibing really well. I know the night he did it, and it was the night I told him to leave me the fuck alone and never speak to me again after an argument that we were both raging through (Iām not going to pretend he wasnāt also without his demons, itās why we were attracted to each-other, after all), the argument was specifically to do with my tendency to push him away after all heād done for me. And he was right, completely. Heād done a lot for me. And for some reason, I had a massive problem with that. I had become suspicious to the point of paranoia, accusing him of all sorts. I remember telling him how stifled and suffocated I felt, I wanted to know why he was moving so fast (and was he? Really? No, not at all). So, after a long weekend of yelling and crying and frustration andĀ āis this the end?ā talks, it reached a peak and I told him to just get the fuck out of my face and stop with all this pressure and bullshit. He went out. He got blind drunk. He fucked someone else. And that still somehow came as a surprise to me, after all, the sex was non-stop, so what could we possibly have had to really worry about?
But he had a point when he said I was talking fucking nonsense with all this talk of being stifled. Because when I ended up moving in with him, he gave me my own room because he understood my need for solitude. We would spend most nights together but sometimes Iād need to slope off to my own space, he was seemingly fine about it. When he drove me places I would sit in the passenger seat sometimes on the phone, sometimes just listening to my music with my earphones in. He understood. He said he knew I was an anxious person. Iād sit there ignoring him and occasionally letting him know I was still there with a smile and heād smile back. Sometimes when we went out walking to the shop or whatever, I felt I had to walk a little bit in front or behind. Not because I didnāt want to be close to him, but I was falling so hard for him that I needed to protect myself via isolation and any desperate grabs for independence I could find.
We argued a lot. I started most of those arguments, and sometimes when he fought with me out of sheer frustration, I saw this as petulance and dismissed it completely. When he did cheat, I felt heartboken, but weirdly vindicated in walking away. This was the break I needed from loving and being loved. We broke up for good this time, and what followed was two years of me and him sneaking around behind future partnersā backs to continue sleeping together. And hereās the kicker -- when we were no longer in a relationship and merely having affairs together, I had no issues whatsoever telling him how much I loved him and how much I wanted to be a positive influence in his life, help him through his own neuroses, hold his hand through his own mental health struggles, care for him and protect him. So long as we had this casual relationship, I could finally reveal to him how I felt. I ended up in a terrible relationship after him and I was much happier staying in that terrible relationship with someone who also was very avoidant (though he was also fearful, so had bouts of clinginess and neediness whereas I was more likely to run away). In fact, the person I ended up settling with was also high-key abusive, but so long as I had my ex to run to, I didnāt mind. I had my cake and ate it too -- I had the fucked up security of settling down with someone completely inappropriate, and the escape route of sleeping with someone I was absolutely crazy about. And whenever he, the real love in my life, asked me if we could start again, I was able to play my trump card, the thing that got me out of the commitment: you cheated on me. It was almost too perfect, that I had this perfect excuse to never get close to him again and, in doing so, I could be as close to him as I liked. He took this opportunity too, and we just went on being in love for another two years. Weād go away together, talk about our future, name our kids, plan the wedding we were never going to have. I proposed to him when I was dating someone else. He said he couldnāt take that offer if I wasnāt going to be with him (which is... extremely reasonable). I saw this as another vindication: aha! You just rejected me! I NEVER have to commit EVER AGAIN!
And what did I do when everything went to the shit? I idealised him. I pined. My God, I lived in my memories. I never stopped thinking about him. I wrote a fucking book about how much I loved him and had it published. My biggest writing credit to date, dedicated to this one person. This weird bout of romanticism I suddenly had for someone I had spent years pushing away and, someone who inexplicably took this pushing away for what it was. Heād even say things to me like,Ā āwhy are you so frightened of loving someone?ā,Ā āwhy wonāt you just let me love you?ā,Ā āwhat happened to you?ā,Ā āwhat can I do to support you?ā. He understood the small things, like the time he wanted to take me away for the weekend and said to me: āIām just going to leave you in charge of planning where we go to eat for all the mealsā because he knew I needed to have that control and he was fine with it, and when I was endlessly boring the hell out of him thinking out aloud about why this restaurant would be good but this one would be bad and this one doesnāt have a menu available online and this one is okay but itās too far from the hotel and all of that relentless, constant meaningless babble revolving around ultimate control, he just laughed and said: āIām being patient with you because I understand youā. And he did. And I loved that. And sure enough, I hated that. Time to do something unpredictable, probably. And the wily fucker always saw it coming. The burden of reciprocated understanding, love and patience, right? What a bother.Ā
And I hinged on this lost love for a long time. It felt like pain, it felt like a void. I felt like, with him gone, I might never love again. In my head weād had this windswept romance that never faltered. I seemed to forget all about the non-stop arguments, I began to understand his infidelity, I excused it, I loved it, I loved him unconditionally once it had all crashed and burned to the ground. So then why did I love him this much after it was all over?
So I could continue this cycle of dismissiveness and avoidance. If I was in love with the past, Iād never need to love anyone ever again or let anyone love me. I could resign myself to a lost history and refuse to get close on the grounds of being hung up with my emotional baggage. I used the disaster of that relationship to sabotage future attempts at closeness. I used him as the benchmark to how lovers in future should treat me -- with what, a masochistic acceptance of my push-and-pull approach? Itās terrible, and I hate it. But thatās how that went down. I think a lot about the love I gave to him in spades right before it all went away, and whilst I know in my heart he knew that I really did love him, I will never stop regretting that I didnāt just make it easier on us both.Ā
***
I know deep down that my mistrust and disdain for personal relationships, romantic or otherwise, is borne of a fear that I donāt truly believe my own needs are worthwhile or even real. I find myself doing it with friendships, I get close to someone and in my head I start finding fault with them, and I have to stop and ask myself: has this person really done anything that bad, or am I looking for excuses to just not like them? And why am I doing that? Is it because yet again I pride my solitude over anything else in the world? Because my inner monologue is always going crazy with thoughts such as: you donāt actually need anybody, where has needing anybody ever got you before? Youāve got to protect yourself, nobody else will do it for you. Keep some of yourself to yourself, itās unwise to share who you are with anyone. If you get too involved you will end up disappointed. And, whilst weāre on it, why is this person demanding all my time and energy? Whatās wrong with them? Whatās their game? I donāt love me, so why do they? What do they want from me?Ā
And I know itās because I was over-controlled and under-loved as a child, teenager, into adulthood, by my mother. She didnāt like me having friends or partners, would chide me for spending time with anyone but her, and whenever I loved anyone else (such as my father), she would go to great lengths to try and blacken that personās name to me with lies and accusations, try to give me reasons that this person was in fact perverse, hateful, not to be trusted. I carried that into my adulthood, I let it control everything about me. It made me extremely suspicious of any intimacy and closeness and, just like my relationship to empathy, there is a large part of me that will always believe the expression of interpersonal love is some kind of scam designed to catch idiots like me out, and I must always be on my guard. For years I had a folder on my phone full of incriminating screenshots of conversations Iād had with those close to me, people I actually loved, because I never knew when I would need to hit back against them. I needed to have evidence that anyone who loved me was as my mother told me they were -- perverse, hateful, not to be trusted. I deleted that folder when I began therapy, and when I resume therapy again very soon, I have a new goal:
I need to learn how to love people and let them love me. No pretending this time, no mask. Teach me how to actually do it. Because I cannot keep hurting the people I love just for loving me, or worse, because I love them. There is no goodness or acceptability to lashing out at those who love you, itās abusive. Itās completely wrong. Thereās no excuse good enough. But now I know why I do it, and I can go fuck myself if I think Iām passing this onto my children. I would never push them away or treat them as my mother did, but they still cannot learn from my example.Ā
So, there it is. My dismissive/avoidant attachment style, and how it looks, and what itās done. I hope this helps anyone with this attachment style understand themselves, and anyone who loves anyone with this attachment style to understand them -- not so you can put up with it, but so that you can just leave if you need to. After all, if someone is pushing and pushing for you to go, then we should not be surprised when you go. Itās what weāre aiming for.