TL;DR: dating an avoidant man is damaging for your mental health. Has any other lady here experienced this?
Women in your 30s, have you ever dated a DA (dismissive avoidant)?
I have never been aware of attachment theory (AT), and to this day I’m still taking my time to evaluate whether I believe it’s pseudo-science or not. BUT, given that I myself am in therapy (CBT to be precise), I do recognize some parallelism in terms of schemas, coping mechanisms and so on.
Anyway, I came across AT a couple of years ago, after being dumped out of nowhere from my ex, with an extremely emotionally abusive talk. Fast forward two years, I dated someone who gave me this gut feeling “something feels off/weird”. Very cold, very into superficial talks. Whenever I tried to have deeper conversations (mind you, natural ones as “are we exclusive”), he would shut down or straight up exhibit high anxiety levels. We had the bf/gf conversation (I brought it up) and he had such a strong reaction that I legitimately thought he was having a panic attack and had to use my grounding techniques to help him get back to planet earth. Mind you, this man is 35+.
After 6 months of dating, he pulled one of his many tricks on me, aka “disappeared” for 1 month (would still reply if I texted him, but with longer replying times, you know, the classical slow fade gentleman move). When we did see each other again after that, I tried to have a conversation about that, and alas, it surfaced that he was always anxious when seeing me, dreaded the time, and felt it easier to live life without me.
When someone tells me this, a switch button goes off, and I leave. For good. Never let anyone tell you more than once how easier life is without you.
Anyway, why did I put up with all of this will be something I’ll unpack in therapy (childhood wounds). I guess I’m just curious to see if I’m the only foolish woman that, well in her 30s, had the “pleasant” experience of dating an avoidant? How did you recover? Cause the mental damage is…real. So real that now the idea of a relationship disgusts me and I think I became avoidant myself.
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I did! Mine was very warm and very emotionally involved at the beginning. I had dated a narcissist and even dealt with a full blow psycho, so I thought I knew the signs.
But with my DA it was different. He wasn’t the manipulative type so I was very puzzled when he started to deactivate. It happened when we moved in together. I’m the one who pulled the trigger because I was tired of feeling like the “needy” one when I was asking for the bare minimum. And yet It was really really tough at first because I felt I had been lured into something despite myself (the DA being warm and then deactivating), but it ended up being a gift in disguise: By trying to learn about his behavior to make peace with what happened, I stumbled upon attachment theory, realized I was fearful avoidant and ended up doing a lot of work on myself which led to the healthiest and most wonderful relationship I’m currently in.
My partner is a tiny bit anxious in the relationship which exacerbates my avoidant tendencies but it usually means I’m not honoring my needs and not communicating enough…which I learned to do thanked to my avoidant ex (he was big into non violent communication…which helped him a little bit because on top of being avoidant he was also on the spectrum).
Yes, me too. I’ve realised I plough through these relationships in the hope of fixing these men. Realised in December after being utterly heartbroken that I’m codependant. Joined CoDA, it’s all still very confusing and deep rooted, but I feel my patterns of behaviour are changing slightly and I’m a lot more protective of myself in a calm way. It feels good
Telling someone they dread spending time with you and life is easy without you in it, whilst at the same time coming back to you to demand more of your time and energy is mean and disrespectful.
There is a big difference between someone who is scared of closeness and someone who is emotionally abusive.
I used to date this guy and thought he was also avoidant and, stupidly, made excuses for his cruel behaviour chalking it up to fear of closeness etc.
Turns out he ghosted me to jump into a super serious relationship where all these fears magically vanished overnight. What I’m trying to say is, use AT for yourself because you never really know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and it’s always on the other person, not you, to communicate properly about their mental states and fix themselves at their big age.