Loving a Dismissive Avoidant: What do I do? 💔
- Tom Robinson
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
I’ve had a wave of messages recently from people who are stuck in relationships with dismissive avoidants, asking the same aching question:
What do I do?
If you’re here, you already know the pattern. You met someone who felt like the love of your life. The connection was intense, magnetic, undeniable. And then, slowly — or sometimes suddenly — they began to withdraw. They freaked out, they then dismissed. They minimised. They avoided. They ran.
And you were left holding the emotional weight for two people.
Let me say something clearly, because false hope keeps people trapped:
There is nothing you can do to make a dismissive avoidant choose you over their fear.
You cannot love them into healing.
You cannot reason them into vulnerability.
You cannot prove your safety enough to override their wiring.
And that is unspeakably devastating.
The Ghost They Don’t Admit Exists
One of the most confusing parts of loving a dismissive avoidant is this: they often act as though the relationship didn’t matter.
No closure.
No accountability.
No therapy.
No honest admission of love.
They detach. They reframe. They go cold. They act “fine.” Sometimes they move on quickly. Sometimes they pretend you were never that important.
But here’s what many people don’t understand about dismissive avoidance:
There is often a ghost. 👻
The person they truly loved — the one who saw them, who reached them, who terrified them — does not disappear. That connection tends to haunt them. Not in the romantic, cinematic sense. In the suppressed, compartmentalised, emotionally sealed-off sense.
They don’t admit it. Often they can’t.
But that person lives in their thoughts. CONSTANTLY.
The problem is that dismissive avoidants don’t move toward love when they feel overwhelmed. They move away from it. The more real it becomes, the more their nervous system registers danger. So they withdraw emotionally, more and more, until the connection suffocates under distance.
They don’t usually wake up in a moment of clarity and choose differently. More often, they have to hit some kind of emotional rock bottom — repeated relational failures, deep loneliness, a crisis that cracks the armour. And even then, only some choose to face themselves.
You cannot accelerate that process.
You cannot be the catalyst if they are committed to avoidance.
The Cost No One Talks About
I’ve written extensively about my own experience. Yes, I’m better. Yes, I understand more now. Yes, I’ve healed in ways I didn’t know were possible.
But I am also scarred.
What happened to me was devastating. It is no exaggeration to say it derailed twenty years of my life. I still feel under a cloud at times.
Healing is not a neat, inspirational arc. It is ongoing. It is layered. It is exhausting.
To be a loving, open person who believes they have met the love of their life — and then to watch that person choose fear over connection — is a particular kind of grief.
They don’t give you closure.
They don’t go to therapy.
They don’t admit they love you.
They don’t fight for the relationship.
They act fine. They dismiss. They avoid. They run.
And you are left trying to metabolise an emotional earthquake alone.
There is no underestimating how devastating that is.
So What Do You Do?
You choose yourself.
Not because it feels empowering.
Not because it’s trendy.
Not because it’s easy.
You choose yourself because there is literally nothing else within your control.
You cannot:
Heal someone who doesn’t believe they need healing.
Create emotional availability in someone invested in suppression.
Force insight.
Compete with a lifelong defense mechanism.
You can only decide whether you will continue abandoning yourself to stay connected to someone who is abandoning the relationship.
Choosing yourself may mean:
Going no contact.
Stopping the emotional labour.
Letting go of the fantasy that they will “wake up.”
Allowing yourself to grieve fully instead of waiting.
Seeking therapy for your own healing.
Rebuilding a life that does not revolve around their potential.
It may mean accepting that you will never get the conversation you deserve.
That is brutal. But it is real.
Life Moves Forward — Understood Backwards
There’s a quote often attributed to Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
You may one day understand why this happened. You may see how it shaped you, strengthened you, clarified your standards, deepened your self-respect.
But right now, you live forward.
If there is someone emotionally available meant for you, wonderful. Love that is mutual, safe, and consistent feels completely different. It does not require you to twist yourself into emotional knots.
And if there isn’t?
Then you build a peaceful life anyway.
You fill your days with meaning, friendships, purpose, creativity, solitude that nourishes rather than starves you. You remain single if that is what protects your peace. You refuse to sign up for another dynamic that erodes your spirit.
A romantic relationship is not the only path to a full life.
The Hardest Truth
The hardest truth is this:
Sometimes the person you believed was the love of your life is simply the person who exposed your deepest longing — and your deepest wound.
And sometimes they will carry you as a ghost in their inner world, even as they continue running from themselves.
But you do not have to haunt yourself.
You do not have to wait for someone to hit rock bottom before you’re allowed to rise.
It is devastating. It can shake your identity. It can feel like it rewrote your history.
And still — you choose yourself.
Again and again.
That is how you survive loving a dismissive avoidant.
And eventually, that is how you heal.
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