Dismissive Avoidants: Yes, They Love You — But They’re Too Cowardly to Admit It!

Here’s the ugly truth: dismissive avoidants can love you. They can feel it. They can want you. But the moment intimacy, vulnerability, or accountability knocks at the door, they freak out, panic and run.

Not because you’re unworthy. Not because the love isn’t real. But because facing their own fears terrifies them more than losing you.

Why They Run

Dismissive avoidants grew up in environments where emotional closeness wasn’t safe.

Vulnerability was punished or ignored. So they learned: “If I need nobody, nobody can hurt me.”

Fast-forward to adulthood, and that same survival strategy destroys their chance of REAL love.

The moment you get close, they shut down, pick fights, or ghost. To them, distance feels like safety. But to you, it feels like rejection, betrayal, and cruelty. And it IS.

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Them

You can’t love someone into emotional maturity.

You can’t sit there hoping they’ll wake up one morning ready to open their heart.

Waiting for a dismissive avoidant to “finally come around” keeps you stuck in limbo while they repeat the same pattern.

Their healing isn’t your responsibility, and your life is too precious to waste on someone committed to running from themselves.

Why They Should Step Out of the Dating Pool

Until dismissive avoidants do the work, they leave behind a trail of broken hearts and half-lived relationships.

Every time they get close and then run, they reinforce their own fear of intimacy while teaching their partners to question their worth.

Dating without doing the inner work is selfish — it turns partners into collateral damage in a war the avoidant is really fighting with themselves.

Eventually they land on someone who either isn’t intimate or emotionally close and/or someone who tolerates their lack of emotional connection. Either way it’s a slow ride into hell.

The Impact on Their Children

Unhealed avoidants don’t just hurt their partners. They pass down emotional unavailability to their kids.

Children raised by dismissive avoidants often feel unseen, unheard, and unsafe expressing feelings. They learn to bottle up emotions or chase unavailable love later in life — repeating the same generational wound.

Why They Need Therapy

Avoidants don’t need another partner to “fix” them. They don’t need another chance to prove they can love while running away from love. They certainly don’t need a “room mate” who doesn’t challenge them or call them out.

THEY NEED THERAPY!!!

• To learn that vulnerability isn’t weakness.

• To rewire the belief that needing others is dangerous.

• To finally face the pain they’ve been running from all along.

Final Word

Dismissive avoidants do love — but love without courage, accountability, vulnerability or presence isn’t really love at all.

If you’re with one, stop waiting for them to change. And if you are one, stop dating until you’ve done the work. And if you’re in a relationship then GO TO THERAPY.

Because until you heal, you’re not protecting yourself. You’re just spreading your pain to everyone who tries to love you.

TR