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.
Avoidant individuals are more likely than any other type of person to withdraw from relationships. This is usually a defense mechanism they use to avoid being hurt. What you can do: Don't take it personally if they need some emotional space for a short time.
The avoidant side demands less fight, says they cannot remain present in conflict, uses abandonment as a tool, a weapon (“the silent treatment”)—the only thing their partner can hear.
Every avoidant is different, but deactivation generally lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Most fearful avoidants will reach out or begin responding again after 2 – 5 days because they want connection and feel happier in relationships.
Communicating with empathy, using “I” statements, and avoiding blaming and criticism are some of the ways to help avoidant partners feel safe enough to express their thoughts and feelings, as well as change their behaviors in time. “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.”
Fearful avoidants often “deactivate” their attachment systems due to repeated rejections by others9. When they are in distress, they deactivate their attachment behavior. Consequently, the more upset their romantic partner is, the less likely a fearful-avoidant adult is to offer comfort and support10.
If you feel that your avoidant partner isn't recognizing your love or reciprocating your efforts, it's time to leave. While you might feel emotions like sadness, anger, fear, or grief, this is all part of the healing process. Allow yourself to feel the painful feelings of your breakup.
Intriguingly, avoidant attachers may only repress their upset and distress in the direct aftermath of a breakup. In contrast to anxious attachers, who typically brood and focus on why a relationship ended when it initially happens, avoidant attachers may only do so after considerable time has passed.
Attachment Avoidance & Social Loneliness
Studies have found that avoidant attachers are less likely to date or seek relationships. In other words, they are more prone to having smaller social circles and, thus, may stay single for longer periods of time.
Someone with avoidant attachment style may overestimate their independence and avoid intimacy. Changing your attachment style is possible, but it does take work. It may help to seek the advice of a professional.
Dismissive avoidants hurt after a break-up but because dismissive avoidants often don't form attachments or strong bonds with their relationship partners, and do not “lose themselves” in relationships, their hurt after a break-up may not be as deep as other attachment styles.
In a Love Avoidants mind, intimacy with another person is equivalent to being engulfed, suffocated, and controlled. Too much closeness can literally cause them to feel like they are losing themselves, and yes, it can even feel like dying. (that is how intense their fears can be).
So avoidants exist in a state of not consciously fearing real loss, only engulfment, and by initiating a breakup they may in fact subconsciously be trying to access that fear of loss - often the only way they can truly appreciate what their partner means them (and just as strategies they use within a relationship to ...
As far as the dismissive more specifically, most likely they'll just fade to black and you won't hear from them after that first month. Around almost a two month mark is when the dismissive avoidant is going to really start to feel things. They are going to start feeling the breakup.
Right away when you go no contact with a dismissive avoidant, if they were the one to break up with you or vice versa, they are going to feel some sort of relief. You have to remember, for the dismissive avoidant, they're taking a gamble by getting into a committed relationship with you.
They have emotions the same way that we do, they just feel them differently and they don't feel them as intensely as a person that is anxious preoccupied. What they miss about the relationship is the togetherness and the closeness. They may not miss the relationship in itself because relationships take a lot of work.
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.
As a dismissive-avoidant, it can take you a while to sift through the pieces of an issue, which leads to “shutting down.” Your instinct is to push the problem out of sight since you cannot develop a concise answer for why it exists. You will often move away from the object or person.
People with an avoidant attachment style believe that they can only rely on themselves for comfort and support because they have learned that others could not be relied upon to meet their critical needs. Seeking help from others evokes a powerful fear of being abandoned, rejected, or disappointed.
Love Avoidants recognize and are attracted to the Love Addict's strong fear of being left because Love Avoidants know that all they have to do to trigger their partner's fear is threaten to leave.
Even with all the support in the world, someone with an avoidant attachment style will still need personal space from time to time. This is because avoidant attachers are driven towards independent experiences, but this doesn't mean that they don't equally value their time with their partners.
The reality is that in the early stages, an avoidant is likely to feel relieved when you stop chasing. But don't be disheartened. That's not because of how they feel about you. It's simply because they no longer feel like someone is making demands of them.