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Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner Kindle Edition


My previous book on finding a good partner by understanding attachment types (Bad Boyfriends: Using Attachment Theory to Avoid Mr. (or Ms.) Wrong and Make You a Better Partner) brought lots of readers to JebKinnison.com, where the most asked-about topic was dealing with avoidant lovers and spouses. There are many readers in troubled marriages now who are looking for help, as well as people already invested in a relationship short of marriage who’d like help deciding if they should stick with it.

The reason why there is so much interest is the large number of people in relationships with Avoidants who struggle with their lack of responsiveness and inability to tolerate real intimacy. Relationships between an Avoidant and a partner of another attachment type are the largest group of unhappy relationships, and people who love their partners and who may have started families and had children with an Avoidant will work very hard to try to make their relationships work better, out of love for their partner and children as well as their own happiness. And it’s also true that the Avoidants in these relationships are more than likely unhappy with the situation as well—retreating into their shells and feeling harassed for being asked to respond with positive feeling when they have little to give.

The other reason why so many people are looking for help on this topic is that it is an almost impossible problem. Couples counsellors rarely have the time or knowledge to work with an Avoidant and will often advise the spouse to give up on a Dismissive, especially, whose lack of responsiveness looks like cruelty or contempt (and sometimes it is!) Yet there is some hope—though it may take years and require educating the Avoidant on the patterns of good couples communication, if both partners want to change their patterns toward more secure and satisfying models, it can be done.

How can you tell if your partner is avoidant? Does your partner:

• Seem not to care how you feel?
• Frequently fail to respond to direct questions or text messages?
• Accuse you of being too needy or codependent?
• Talk of some past lover as ideal and compare you to them?
• Act coldly toward your children and the needy?
• Remind you that he or she would be fine without you?
• Withhold sex or affection as punishment?

If that sounds familiar, then your partner is likely avoidant. At about 25% of the population, Avoidants have shorter, more troubled relationships, and tend to divorce more frequently and divorce again if remarried.

What can be done? Individual therapy for the motivated Avoidant can move their default attachment style toward security, and to the extent that problems have been made worse by an overly clingy and demanding anxious-preoccupied partner, therapy can help there, as well. Insecure partners who read and absorb the lessons of these books will have a head start on noticing and restraining themselves when they are slipping into an unsatisfying communications pattern, and an intellectual understanding of the bad patterns is a step toward unlearning them.

Not all difficult Avoidants can be reformed; that depends on both partners, the depth of their problems, and their motivation and ability to change over time. But many troubled marriages and relationships can be greatly improved, and the people in them can learn to be happier, with even modest improvements in understanding how they can best communicate support for each other.

For those reading who have not read
Bad Boyfriends or are less familiar with attachment types, a beefed-up section on attachment theory and attachment types from Bad Boyfriends is included. Regular readers of the Jeb Kinnison site will find edited versions of some relevant material previously posted there.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

IR Verdict: 4/5 Stars, IR Approved. ... a useful resource for those trapped in relationships with people unable to give them the caring connection they require.

Kinnison addresses specifically those readers who have found themselves already attached to an avoidant partner, who want to find a way to either a healthy relationship or a healthy breakup. He discusses ways... an avoidant partner can become more empathetic and responsive, while also showing how their spouse or significant other can adapt their own behavior patterns in order to avoid the worst aspects of loving an avoidant.

AVOIDANT has the merits of being eminently practical first and foremost... The advice he offers is generally sound, and sympathetic to all concerned. He also suggests in places specific actions a person can take in order to get past bad patterns in their own emotional life and in their relationships, and uses actual cases - with the names, of course, changed - as examples.... a useful resource for those trapped in relationships with people unable to give them the caring connection they require.

-- IndieReader

From the Author

This book is about finding a way to be happy individually and as a couple when either or both have avoidant attachment issues--either dismissive or fearful-avoidant (which is sometimes called anxious-avoidant.)

Not knowing anything about attachment types, many people discover their partner is avoidant only after a few years of distress, and by accident when someone tells them about attachment types, or they do some research online. Having an avoidant attachment type is not a disease or disorder; it simply means early childhood experiences with caregivers left them with little trust for intimate companions, and a desire to avoid the pain that might come if they became dependent and then were hurt by a loved one's failure to help them, as likely happened to them when they were infants. This subconscious lack of trust and desire for intimacy means they are "intimacy avoidant"--note that this is unrelated to Avoidant Personality Disorder, a confusing name for a DSM-IV-TR-defined disorder of oversensitivity and social anxiety leading to isolation.

If your partner is avoidant, you will recognize the signs immediately in reading the chapters on Dismissive-Avoidants and Fearful-Avoidants. Some of the turmoil their relationships undergo is centered around their inability and lack of desire to respond supportively to request signals from their partner; the disappointment and anger of the partner then feeds back into further withdrawal by the dismissive, and the relationship begins to crack under the strain. 

One of the points of this book is that not only can avoidants change (with therapy and motivation) to be more supportive, but their partners can learn to understand and accept more their need for emotional distance. Your avoidant partner is a complex individual with a history and many characteristics beyond attachment type; while some avoidants (especially the dismissive variety) are likely to be tough to live with for almost anyone, yours may be able to modify their thoughts and behavior enough to improve your relationship. And you may find more happiness by understanding better how they feel.

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Jeb Kinnison
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Jeb Kinnison studied computer and cognitive science at MIT and wrote programs modeling the behavior of simulated stock traders and the population dynamics of economic agents. Later he did supercomputer work at a think tank that developed parts of the early Internet (where the engineer who decided on '@' as the separator for email addresses worked down the hall.) Since then he has had several careers--real estate development, financial advising, and counselling.

Visit his web site at JebKinnison.com for more: rail guns, Nazi scientists, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the 1980s AI bubble, and current research in relationships, attachment types, diet, and health.

Visit the Substrate Wars website at SubstrateWars.com for more on upcoming books, physics, and the politics of the future.

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