3 Reasons Dismissive Avoidants Look for the Perfect Fit in Relationships

The guide to navigating your relationships as, or with a DA.

Do you or your partner have a hard time investing in a long-term commitment?

Maybe you or your partner feels enjoyment from too much independence in a relationship?

Sometimes you or this person seems to shut down and ride the waves of emotional highs and lows.

These are all signs that you or your partner has a dismissive-avoidant attachment style. In my attachment style series, I break down the four different attachment styles, giving you insight into working with your partner to grow and find the solutions to issues that ultimately create roadblocks in your relationship.

As I focus on the dismissive-avoidant, you will be able to understand yourself or your partner through a new lens and finally break through the barriers that prevent DAs from being the partners they are capable of being.

While there are many reasons why a dismissive-avoidant can have a hard time being fully present in a relationship, three core factors prevent them from seeing the value their partner brings to their life.

Helplessness

Take yourself back to your childhood. Imagine when you saw your parent’s relationship and they often had difficulty resolving a conflict.

Silent car rides home, sleeping in separate areas, and arguments carrying over to the next day.

• The dismissive-avoidant most likely grew up in a home with these issues. Due to that, they feel that it’s hard to bridge the gap between differences.
• Differences = problems. Problems don’t equal harmony, which a dismissive-avoidant relies on heavily for a sense of security.
• As a subconscious strategy, a dismissive-avoidant sees differences as issues they can’t resolve quickly, so they instinctually pull away.

They try to assess the potential for future risk before it can hurt them emotionally. Since DAs viewed two people who could not mitigate an issue, they believe the same will happen to them if they don’t eliminate the problem before it can grow.

The issue goes back to their need for independence. DAs have a hard time giving trust to another person until they can rely on them.

How to eliminate the issue as the DA:

Talk to your partner about issues you see as soon as they arise, and don’t relay the problem as a criticism of one person. Talk from the sense of how a change can help your relationship grow. Nothing is one-sided.

While your instinct is to shut down, use that as a mental trigger to express the issue. Whether talking or writing the problem down, make sure you find a way to bring it up.

Fear of the future

A dismissive-avoidant looks far into the future of conflict or problem resolution.

The internal battle for a dismissive-avoidant is an issue they see now is one they also see themselves dealing with forty years from now.

• Low optimism viewing relationships building strength over time.
• Tries to avoid thoughts that they will be wasting years of their life if they allow a flaw to exist rather than speaking about them and aggressively trying to kill it.
• DAs couldn’t trust in the past, so the “push” you feel is them avoiding trust being built and broken in the future.

A dismissive-avoidant tries to do what their name says, avoid and dismiss. DAs’ are always looking for a way to avoid conflict by not allowing it to become a part of their life. They struggle with the thought that fears are fixable without detaching from the source.

How to eliminate the issue as the DA:

The first step to eliminating this issue is to be present. Becoming present is not only in your relationships. You do so much future casting that it causes you to bypass what is in front of you today.

You are also setting an unfair expectation of somebody who isn’t aware that you had an issue they cannot fix at the snap of a finger. Be patient. Trust me; I know how hard that is for you.

Vulnerability

Dismissive-avoidants show emotional highs and lows and have difficulty settling on emotions that “meet in the middle.”

It can result in them having hesitancy building a core connection in a relationship; intimacy.

Most people only view intimacy through the lens of love and its physical components. Intimacy also includes being emotionally open and naked with somebody.

• DAs have a hard time being vulnerable as they learn to rely on themselves to resolve issues in their lives.
• If they have perfection in their relationship, they can trust and let down the wall they have built up.
• Look for perfection so they can calm their fears around committing to a trusting, emotional relationship.

Being vulnerable is difficult for anybody. It makes us feel weak and incapable of fending for ourselves.

How to eliminate the issue as the DA:

A relationship is about trusting that someone will build you up and not use your vulnerabilities against you. There is no quick fix to this issue. Once you are in a committed relationship, you have to decide to commit to being vulnerable.

To those dealing with a dismissive-avoidant:

The ultimate fear of a DA is to end up in a relationship they saw growing up. The irony is that they can bring those same fears into your relationship and become the exact person they wanted to avoid. At their core, they are hurt and have trauma that they have not challenged.

They are not shutting down and pushing you away because they want to hurt you. DAs feel the pain they struggled with in their childhood when issues arise in their relationships. The strength they find in independence is why they “won’t work with you.”

Be patient. The more you show you can gain trust, the more they will meet you there.

Conclusion

You are not in this battle alone. If you are in a relationship with a dismissive-avoidant, you have to be patient and understand that the issue is at their core and not your core.

It also is not your responsibility to wait for this person to change, and as the DA, understand their patience can only last so long.

Whichever person you are in this relationship, you have to work to move past these barriers, or they will subconsciously ruin your relationship. Untreated, the issues above can leak into your relationships outside of dating as well.