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.
Avoidants may keep pushing people away but be shocked when they finally leave. As a child their caregiver may have been neglectful or overbearing and given rise to a feeling of emotional abandonment, but they were still physically present.
If your relationship with an avoidant is causing you more damage than providing you with warmth or support, it's time you let go. I understand, leaving an avoidant partner who you dearly love is difficult, but staying in that relationship will scar you and your mental health.
This response isn't to suggest that avoidant attachers don't feel the pain of a breakup – they do. They're just prone to pushing down their heartbreak and attempting to carry on with life as normal.
Yes, the dismissive avoidant misses you, but they miss you later on. In the beginning they're going to be relieved that they have their freedom. They can get their independence back and they get to go and do what they want to do without having to answer any questions to anybody.
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.
Because people with an avoidant attachment style fear not being lovable or good enough, feeling criticized or judged by loved ones can be particularly painful. Especially when it comes to things that they are not so comfortable with, such as their emotions and feelings.
If an avoidant starts pulling away, let them know that you care but do not chase them. It may be very painful to do this, but pursuing them is likely to make it take longer for them to come back. They need breathing space, to feel safe with their own thoughts and unengulfed.
Avoidants believe that no one else gets them, and they need time to themselves to organize their thoughts and feelings. It hurts, but chasing after them when they want to be alone will push them even farther away since they'll feel like their independence is threatened.
In closing, I just want to say going no contact works with pretty much every attachment style, but it's different for the fearful avoidant. You have to give it that time of three to four weeks in order for them to start to feel those emotions for you again and actually get back into their activated state.
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.
Avoidants will shut down if they feel like you're rushing them. Let your partner take the lead in the relationship so things progress at their pace. It might feel like you're going nowhere sometimes, but your partner will slowly grow more comfortable in your relationship. They just need to be sure you won't leave.
At this point, you may be wondering: will an avoidant miss you? The thing is, when you're patient enough to give them a lot of time and space, they will initially get back to their everyday life. They will neither miss you nor demand time or attention from you.
People with an avoidant attachment style tend to cope with abandonment issues by not allowing people to get close to them, and not opening up and trusting others. They may be characteristically distant, private, or withdrawn.
Yes. Some dismissive avoidants feel regret the break-up as soon as it happens, especially if they had formed some form of attachment. Some dismissive avoidants try to get back together right after the break-up and other's offer a friendship out of regret.
What happens when you walk away from a dismissive avoidant? You'll trigger their abandonment wound, and they'll tell themselves their fears were justified. Dismissive-avoidants are highly sensitive to rejection. It's part of why they reject others pre-emptively.
Avoidant / dismissive adults still self regulate in unhealthy ways; they might feel threatened by triggering dating or relationship situations, such as a partner trying to get emotionally close, and they might shut down their emotions in an attempt to feel safe and avoid feeling vulnerable.
High levels of avoidance
They fear closeness to their partners and avoid them because of the possibility of rejection. They don't feel comfortable getting close to others. What is this? Avoidant adults worry about being hurt if they become too close to others.
Avoidants tend to not want to give anything or anybody their time or their energy. If it doesn't serve them any purpose, they won't do it. So if they are with you and they are giving you their time, that is a really good indication that they care about you and they are putting you as a priority.
Rejection, for those who are fearful-avoidant, can also feel terrifying. In fact, many times this fearful style can lead them to perceive threat and rejection all around them. They have often not developed the mechanisms to deal with loss earlier in their lives and therefore struggle to make sense of things.
Do avoidants ever come back? Yes, but let's clarify. Avoidants do sometimes cycle back around to those they have shut out, disappeared on, and ignored. However, just because they come back this doesn't mean this is a viable relationship.