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Why Dismissive Avoidants Always Choose Their Own Comfort – Transcript
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If you've ever been in a relationship with a dismissive avoidant, you've probably felt like your needs, your feelings, your emotions, your pain, and your loneliness didn't even exist. Everything revolved around their feelings, their comfort, their wants, their desires, keeping them comfortable at all times. Today, I'm going to explain exactly why that happens. Why
dismissive avoidants focus completely on themselves in such a selfish, self-absorbed manner in relationships. Now, it's not because they have malicious intent, but it really stems from a childhood survival strategy. So, in childhood, children typically learn that it's okay to need others. It's okay to depend on people. My emotions matter.
Someone will comfort me when I need comfort. But dismissive avoidants, they learned something vastly different. What they learned is that nobody is coming. They grew up with profound emotional neglect. Profound.
The kicker is most of them don't even know that they were neglected because their basic needs are met. Food, clothing, shelter. Many grew up in relatively affluent families. College paid for, first car paid for by the parents, things like that. Two parents in the household. But the reality is very different beneath the surface.
Now, they grew up in a household where you don't talk about feelings. But in addition to that, their own feelings were rejected, dismissed, and invalidated. This is where the real damage is done. They had a critical, controlling parent, usually one that's very narcissistic in nature. A parent that put head puts heavy demands and heavy expectations on them. A parent that only gives them praise and {quote} love based on meeting and exceeding those expectations that
were hard to meet. A parent that also shamed them for having needs and and So, what they learned to do is to suppress their emotions, to to suppress their needs. And they personalize that environment growing up to feel defective, unlovable, like there's just something wrong with them. Some of them are aware of this wound. Many are not.
Many suppress it so low, so deep that they're not even aware that this wound exists, yet it still drives everything they do. They do struggle with awareness because they struggle with self-reflection. Looking inward is painful for them. They'd learn to project everything externally.
But they learn due to this environment that nobody's going to meet their needs. And the only person that is going to meet their needs is them. If they don't take care of themselves, nobody else will. That's not safe to rely on anybody else.
So, eventually this this mindset of take care of yourself becomes completely automatic. It becomes nervous system deep in them. So, they develop tunnel vision. They can only see what's directly in front of them.
Meaning themselves, but not in a self-reflective way, not in a growth way, not in an accountability way, but in a what do I feel, what do I want, what do I need, what's comfortable to me. Because they had to focus on themselves.
So, it becomes their benefit all the time. See, in a relationship, for example, instead of saying, "How does this affect us?" the dismissive avoidant says, "How does this affect me?" You see, their nervous system automatically asks them, "What keeps me emotionally safe?
What keeps me most comfortable?" And their behavior in the relationship from start to finish is completely wired around their own comfort. In the beginning, it's infatuation and validation, and it's very comfortable to them. They're getting all sorts of new attention from a new person. It's novelty, it's excitement, it's dopamine.
See, deep down, they are deeply insecure due to that defectiveness wound and all that validation is benefiting them. But when the relationship deepens and becomes more real, there's real accountability, real intimacy, real expectations, it's no longer comfortable due to those attachment wounds. Those wounds tell them, "If I really lower my walls and I really try and I let them see the real me, they're going to see I'm defective. They're not going to like what they see. I won't meet their
expectations because expectations feel insurmountable to them due to that narcissistic parent and I will disappoint them. So, you know what? That's uncomfortable. So, what they learn to do instinctively is to create emotional distance, to push their partner away, to focus on their own comfort at all times.
The thing is, they're often not even aware that they're doing this because it's so automatic deep within them and they struggle to look inward due to that wound of defectiveness. So, they usually don't have much in the way of awareness of this. And the reason why they struggle to self-reflect on this stuff is that defectiveness wound. You see, for a healthier person, the healthier person asks themselves, "What role did I play in this? How can I show up better for my partner?"
The avoidant, well, to them that's emotional equivalent of confirming defectiveness. To them it would be, "I did this wrong. It's proof I'm defective. I didn't meet my partner's needs. It's proof I'm defective." Too painful. So, to shield themselves from that, they do the automatic mental gymnastics to make everything not their fault. It's something called an external locus of control, meaning they make it so other people and other things have control over their behaviors and
emotions. That way they never have a reason to look inward and face that shame. So, because of this environment in childhood, their entire world becomes completely organized around their own comfort.
You see, >> [gasps] >> everything becomes what feels easiest, what feels the least stressful to them, what feels the most comfortable to them, what creates the least amount of vulnerability, what creates the least amount of emotional exposure.
What keeps them emotionally regulated? So, for examples here, I don't want a text. I don't want difficult conversations. I don't want emotional responsibility. I don't I don't like expectations. I don't want conflict. I don't want pressure. I don't want guilt. I don't want accountability.
See, every single decision passes through one single filter. How does this affect me? How do I feel? How How do I preserve my own comfort? Not the filter of how does this affect us, and certainly not the filter of how does this affect my partner? How does my partner feel?
Due to that programming, again, the tunnel vision, they can't see anything outside of that very narrow field of vision, which is focused on their own comfort. So, it's quite simply doesn't even occur to them that their partner has needs and feelings.
They don't consider it. It's not like they really say to themselves, "Oh, screw them. I don't care what they No, their partner's feelings just aren't even a consideration. It's like a entirely different language to them, the fact that their partner has feelings, has needs. And when their partner brings this up, it it it it absolutely is a trigger because again, it pokes at accountability, expectations, which feel deeply unsafe to them, and the way that
they deal with that is to not deal with it, is to avoid it. Again, create emotional distance. This constant desire to create emotional distance is to preserve their own comfort because intimacy feels like exposure. It feels threatening. It feels like they'll be exposed as being defective, and their whole nervous system is wired around avoiding discomfort. Anything discomforting, they avoid it rather than dealing with it.
So, emotional distance means they don't get exposed. They feel safer if their partner never gets too close. So, they really don't stop to consider your experience. You know, when when secure people make decisions, they they naturally ask themselves, "How will this make my partner feel? How does this impact them?" But, for a dismissive avoidant, they never really ask themselves that question. They don't ask themselves that question at all.
Instead, they think, "I need space. I need my own freedom. I'm overwhelmed. I'm losing feelings. I'm stressed. Me, me, me, me, me." Notice, everything's internal. The The partner's emotional experience does not enter the equation. It's all what do I feel, what do I want, what's in it for me, me, me, me. And they approach to the very beginning of the relationship with this. Now, it may feel that they're all into you and they're prioritizing you in the honeymoon phase,
which is also known as the shared fantasy because it is a fantasy to them, not a real relationship because there's no deep intimacy, no deep accountability or expectations. Their nervous system hasn't registered it as real yet. It may seem like they're considering you and prioritizing you, but in fact, they're actually considering themselves because all the attention and effort they're putting in benefits them because it gets you to validate them. It gets you to give them the attention and the
connection and the validation and the especially physical intimacy that they crave. So, it is actually all about themselves even when it seems like it's not. But then, once that aspect becomes uncomfortable, they shift the comfort priority over to distance.
So, it's not that they cannot pathologically empathize with their partner. They can. They're not narcissists and empathy does exist, especially when it's not somebody that they're close to. But, when their attachment wounds are activated in a relationship where there's expectations, intimacy, and accountability and vulnerability needed, that empathy goes out the window because they just don't have the capacity to consider the needs and feelings of the other person. They just become completely focused on
themselves. That's why they can do very hurtful behaviors to prioritize comfort like gaslighting, stonewalling, disappearing, cheating, uh you know, withdrawing, discarding because it's all about preserving their own comfort. That is the top priority in in the hierarchy of their priorities. Their car Their partner's comfort may not even be on that list at all. And if it is, it's certainly near the bottom. Not because
they mean it in a malicious way, but because they are just so focused on self. So, they become very defensive. You know, this is Here's what people miss. This is where accountability comes in.