Oh, the Dismissive Avoidant… It’s Not Them, It’s You

Ah, yes. The dismissive avoidant. The master of the emotional Houdini act. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of loving one, you’ll know how the script goes: they vanish, they blame you, and then, of course, you end up sitting in therapy doing all the emotional heavy lifting on their behalf. Because, naturally, you’re the problem.

Except… you’re not.

See, once you’ve sat with the pain long enough, cried into enough tissues to bankrupt Kleenex, and done the uncomfortable therapy work, something magical happens: you stop caring. You see them for what they are — an unhealed person who legged it from their soulmate because feelings gave them the same reaction as dairy gives the lactose-intolerant.

Meanwhile, they’re out there constructing a life that looks perfectly respectable on Facebook but is, in reality, beige. Beige partner, beige walls, beige children’s school photos on the fridge. Their life is pedestrian in the way only suburban misery can be — flat, joyless, and as lifeless as the pint of Guinness they’re staring at (no head, all sad bubbles), or that tepid cup of tea in a kitchen far too small for the size of the mortgage.

Because here’s the kicker: dismissive avoidants are never wrong. Oh no, never. They’ll reject the person who loved them — the one who might have helped them heal — only to “settle” for someone else. Fast-forward a decade and, surprise surprise, they’re wondering why they feel hollow. Could it, perhaps, have something to do with never processing the relationship they bolted from? Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

So now it’s their turn. The suffering they tried to outrun comes knocking, only it’s louder, older, heavier. And the great tragedy? The only person who could have helped them through it, the one they discarded and dismissed, has long since moved on.

That bridge is not only burned — it’s been flattened, paved over, and turned into a Tesco car park.

Oh dear, dismissive avoidant. Now you get to sit in your beige castle, pint in hand, wondering how it all went so wrong. Spoiler: it was you.