The Deactivating Strategies of My Dismissive Avoidant Ex
There are always signs
I thought I was in a healthy relationship. It seemed good. People told me all the time that we made a great couple and how wonderful he was.
But he wasn’t wonderful.
He left me high and dry when I needed him and abandoned ship before I even knew there was an inkling of a storm.
A one-sided relationship with a dismissive avoidant is exhausting.
They are not good at constructive and healthy communication. They don’t know how to communicate their feelings or needs so they keep a lot to themselves and they don’t share.
This slowly breeds resentment and the death of the relationship.
I didn’t know it at the time, when we were “happily” coupled, that he was a dismissive avoidant. I thought he was a bit quiet, maybe lacking in communication skills and I know he struggled with emotional discussion.
“They make my head hurt,” he once said to me of emotional discussions or anything that required feeling and not thinking.
I was fine with that. I could be patient, eventually he would open up to me, I thought. I was wrong.
He broke up with me suddenly and for no apparent reason.
After that, I looked at him and our relationship in a whole different light.
Every memory with him felt tainted and blurred by his cruel and unkind rejection of me and his inability to honestly communicate.
He was hiding so many things from me. What else did I not know?
I questioned everything about our relationship now. And began to wonder whether I was happy with him at all.
I realised something, I was happy to be in a relationship but I wasn’t happy with him. And those two things are vastly different.
Because although he was kind most of the time, eager to go on any adventure I proposed and provided for me financially at time I was going through a career transition, he also left me with a bad feeling. I knew he was keeping things from me. I had repeated dreams that he had broken up with me. The next morning I told myself I was being ridiculous.
He is happy with me! If he wasn’t, surely he would he would say something!
But dismissive avoidants don’t say anything when something is wrong or when they are unhappy with something their partner has done or not done.
That would require vulnerability and an emotional discussion. Two things that terrified him.
Unfortunately he also gave me mixed signals and led me to believe we did have future and he wanted me in it when, in reality, he didn’t.
He left me feeling confused and with a pit of anxiety in my stomach.
He failed to reassure me when I asked for it.
He failed to give me peace of mind.
He failed to put in effort and try his best for me and the relationship.
He failed to to carry his load.
He failed to be honest and express himself.
He handled the break-up so poorly. He blindsided me and I know that is indicative of how he communicates and deal withs conflict, which is very poor.
In his break up discussion, I lost all respect for him. The things he said to me where an indication of his emotional immaturity and lack of self-awareness. And I realised, this is not the man I want a long term future with.
A dismissive avoidant deactivates from the relationship by creating distance. But it is done slowly, so the other does not notice until it’s too late.
He deactivated from the relationship by:
- Working obsessively: it’s a fine line between hard work and obsession. He used work to avoid having to deal with any of his emotions or feelings for me. While I thought he was hard worker, I now realise that working every evening and every weekend too is not healthy. Work became his priority. He put all of his focus and attention on his work and left no room for feeling or thinking about his relationship with me.
- Refusing to discuss the future: he never brought up our future together. I found it exciting and wanted to discuss a possible marriage and children. I thought it was something to look forward for. He found it terrifying and said he was’t “ready for marriage.”
- Not saying “I Love You”: when I looked back on the relationship after the breakup I realised that I couldn’t remember when was the last time he said those three words to me. I often told him I loved him but when he said it back to me, he said it so quickly and in a rush that most of times all I heard was, “to.”
- Not showing an interest in my life: he gave up caring about my life. He stopped asking me about work and my studies. I brought it up with him and he tried to ask me questions. But when he did he was cold and also seemed strangely angry. I felt his annoyance with me and I could not understand why.
- Lying: he was dishonest with me about a few things, the worst being his feelings on marrying me. But one concerning lie was a lie he told me about his friends wedding. During the final year of our relationship we were invited to his friends wedding. He did not tell me of the invitation. While in Rome, on a family holiday he refused to attend citing work as his reason, he called me to say he needed to tell me something. My heart sank, I thought he was breaking up with me but he told me he was going to his friend’s wedding in Vienna. Crying he told me that he didn’t tell me because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go and wanted some time alone too. He clearly seemed distressed at the thought of hurting me. I forgave him quite quickly and thought he was going through something that had nothing to do with me. I was wrong, he lied about the wedding because he did not want me to attend it with him and was afraid of any discussions about the future it would inspire.
All of the above created distance. They pushed me away further and further until when he ended our relationship, I didn’t fight or even try convince him otherwise, I said, “ok”. Because dismissive avoidants are not easy to be with and I was exhausted.
I consistently had this feeling, in the last year of our relationship, of anxiety and panic. At the time I didn’t understand where this fear, that he wanted to end the relationship, was coming from.
Why did I feel scared? He wasn’t verbalising any unhappiness and he certainly was not fighting with me nor did he seem annoyed or irritated with me? He seemed happy.
Then why did I feel like this?
I told myself I was anxious and clearly had to do some work on myself.
But now I realise why I felt that way and it wasn’t ridiculous.
He withdrew from me and the relationship. He deactivated and created distance. He sabotaged our relationship because moving forward and being intimate was terrifying for him.
But he did it slowly and silently, making it hard for me to pinpoint where the sabotage was coming from or why.
When I sought out his reassurance he didn’t give it to me completely.
He half-heartedly told me stories but they were all an attempt to hide his real feelings and thoughts from me.
He was afraid of hurting me, he told me at the end, but lying to me hurt me even more.
I was exhausted from trying so hard and attempting to make our relationship a healthy one.
So when he ended it, I felt shock but also relief. Because I now didn’t have to try so hard. And now the worst thing had happened. The thing I feared the most. The end. And knowing the end was here, I also felt relief.
I understand dismissive avoidant individuals live with a lot pain and loneliness. I feel deeply sad for my ex because I don’t think he is aware of his destructive behaviours and I doubt he will get the help he needs to heal.
I hope he does, living in pain is not a healthy way to live.
Hopefully I see the signs next time, if any, before it’s too late.
