Long-Term Relationship with a Dismissive Avoidant (And Why It Hurts Both People)

Being in a long-term relationship with a dismissive avoidant can feel like loving someone through a locked door — you keep knocking, and they rarely answer. It's a quiet ache for one partner and a subconscious defense strategy for the other.

The Avoidant’s Pattern: Reject the Right One, Settle for the Safe One

Dismissive avoidants often don't choose the person who lights them up or stirs something deep inside them. In fact, they usually reject that person — the one who makes them feel seen, vulnerable, and emotionally alive. Why? Because deep connection feels risky. Love that demands presence and emotional openness threatens their internal alarm system.

Being the rejected partner can cause a whole world of suffering and even psychiatric problems. It's devastating to know that the connection was real but the dismissive partner suppressed their true emotions out of fear. The dismissive avoidant can't do real love - it's triggering for them - it's far too scary.

So instead, they unconsciously gravitate towards relationships that feel safe. Not passionate, not soul-shaking — just safe. They end up with someone who feels more like a roommate than a romantic partner. There’s stability, routine, even companionship — but very little emotional or physical intimacy. It’s not that they can’t feel deeply — it’s that they’ve learned to fear what it stirs up in them.

The 'safe' Partner’s Experience: Confused, Starved, and Always Questioning

The person on the other side of this dynamic is usually left wondering what they did wrong. They crave closeness, but every bid for connection is met with deflection, distance, or discomfort. It feels like you're loving someone who keeps one foot out the door — emotionally, if not physically.

You're met with surface-level connection, but never the depth you're yearning for. Conversations stay practical. Intimacy feels rare. You start doubting yourself. You shrink your needs to avoid "pushing them away." You tell yourself, “Maybe I’m asking for too much.”

You're not.

You're just in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know how to come closer — and may never try unless they decide to do the deep internal work.

The Hidden Mental Toll on the Partner

What people don’t talk about enough is the mental health impact this has on the avoidant’s partner.

The chronic emotional starvation, the constant second-guessing, the gaslighting-by-neglect — it chips away at your self-worth. Over time, it can lead to symptoms of anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, and even trauma responses.

You live in a state of hypervigilance, always waiting for affection, connection, a moment of closeness — and when it doesn’t come, it reinforces a deep sense of unlovability.

It’s not just heartbreak. It’s a slow erosion of your identity.

Many partners begin to internalise the avoidant’s emotional unavailability as a reflection of their own inadequacy. They become stuck in cycles of self-blame, isolation, and emotional dysregulation — all while trying to hold a relationship that only gives them scraps.

Why It Keeps Happening

The avoidant partner often sees emotional closeness as a threat rather than a gift. They equate peace with emotional distance, and conflict or intensity with danger. So when love feels too real, they push it away.

Ironically, they end up in relationships where they don’t have to risk their heart — but also never get to fully use it.

And their partner? Left starving. Feeling like they’re too much, when really, they’re just too emotionally available for someone who isn’t ready to meet them there.

In short, these relationships end up being monumentally unfulfilling for both partners - an emotionless atmosphere, often drifting along with minimal connection for years.

The Tragedy

No one wins here. The avoidant settles for someone they’re not deeply in love with — often someone who doesn’t challenge their emotional walls. And the person who could’ve been a real, loving match? Rejected. Because their presence required vulnerability, depth, truth.

The partner who stays? They live in the gap — always hoping for more, rarely receiving it. And paying a heavy psychological price just to stay close.

The Hard Truth and the Way Out

Real healing is possible — but only if the avoidant is willing to do the work. That means facing their patterns, unpacking their fears, and engaging in consistent, emotionally honest therapy.

And the truth? Many don’t. Especially those deeply entrenched in dismissive behaviors. Therapy requires vulnerability — the very thing they’ve built a life avoiding.

So if you're the partner, and you’ve begged, waited, explained, compromised — and they still won’t do the work — then it’s time to choose yourself.

You cannot fix someone who refuses to even admit there’s a problem. And to protect your own mental health, sometimes the most loving, powerful thing you can do is walk away. Not out of anger, but out of deep self-respect.

Because love shouldn’t feel like abandonment in real-time.

Love should feel like being met — not like convincing someone you’re worth meeting.