I’ve a dismissive avoidant partner who said that he’s overwhelmed by our relationship and that he wants to break up, how do I get him back?
Last Updated: 17.06.2025 11:53
Understanding that DAs suppress their emotions and push healthy emotionally available people away is really important for any one in a relationship with or considering a relationship with a DA.
Can they change? Yes
If your DA is overwhelmed, the only thing you can do is give him space.
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The thing is, when people are wired to dismiss and avoid, and that is what they do no one can do anything to make them change but them selves. For me I had to go through a lot to recognize that I was a DA.
Funny thing they apologized! We made peace.
The primary caregivers did not allow the baby to freely express themselves. Often the baby is left to cry them selves to sleep.
Maybe I was thinking if she overcame her DA ways, she would appreciate me even more and we would be perfect together. But that isn’t what she was thinking.
Are they bad people? I don’t think so. I am a reformed DA, my Mom is a DA, I have fallen in love with DAs. I get them, I understand how tragic it is for the DA.
Even if you do what makes you think he is going to change? What is it that is so attractive, is it the way he was so attentive in the beginning? Did he love bomb you and make you feel like you were special, and that you had a future together? Did you think you found the one?
After all they dismiss their own feelings, they avoid self reflection and connection. They usually fail to self improve, because they don’t reflect. So expecting them to change is not realistic.
When this happens, and no real commitment or emotional bonds exist all of the suppressed emotions that were dismissed and avoided in the past are free to come rushing to the surface. When they feel the oxycitocin they think finally i have found the “one and only”.
Will it be easy for them to change? It wasn’t for me, it took years of therapy, meditation and shadow work.
Funny, that heartache was the best thing that ever happened to me. Before being discarded the first time, I had been working so hard on self realization, and I was really proud of my self. I believed I had come so far. I didn’t realize how broken my inner child still was. I worked on that before getting back together for the second time.
Let’s start with the most basic considerations, the DA has an elevated cortisol level so they are in a heightened state of stress as a base line.
When she discarded me for the second time, I knew I had done everything I could, I knew she was avoidant, she knew she was avoidant and i really tried my best to be the partner I would have wanted some one to be when I was avoidant.
Our relationship was over in an instant, it was a complete discard.
The thing about breaking up, and experiencing pain is you can experience the “Dark Night of the Soul”, and discover your shadow self. I hate that it sounds so “dark and creepy”. It really isn’t, sometimes people think that sounds demonic. It is the opposite, it is coming to peace with all of the unhealed unconscious patterns and programs that keep us from being our best self.
Why? Well, emotionally their parents were just not available to give them the love they needed. They were available to meet all of the physical needs, but not the nurturing and acceptance that is required to make babies feel safe and secure.
As I recovered I fell deeply in love with a DA. Guess I had the savior complex going on. The relationship lasted three years. After the first year she discarded me by text, jumped into a new relationship with on weeks. Eight months later we got back for another two years, she discarded me by text and within a month was in another relationship.
He might miss you, but if you chase, he is gone. You can say, ok I get it you are overwhelmed, Take all the time and space you need. If and when you are ready to talk I will be here for you.
I even got my Mom and dad to do attachment tests. Mom the DA and Pop the FA. They even did some soul searching to figure out why they were that way, we spoke about it for countless hours.
Why do I get stressed when I go to bed?
I remember thinking about why i just had no feelings at all, I couldn’t talk about it, i had no idea what was happening, it was all reactive.
As children love was conditional, if they scored a goal they got attention. But if they hurt them selves they had to shake it off, if they had feelings they were not allowed to express them, they were told that emotion is not acceptable if you want to be sad go be sad by your self. They were controlled and learned that if they were going to get any emotional soothing they would have to do it for them selves.
I was addicted to the chase, I loved being infatuated!
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Even though I only wanted to be with someone and I was madly in love weeks or days before , I just became disgusted, and would go numb.
In this stage, it is easy to think you found someone who is secure and really into you. It is easy to get attached, but DAs have attachment wounds.
They develop unconscious patterns, why? Because children are ego centric. They think if I am not loved, I am not love worthy. Which is a core wound and fear for the DA. The belief that deep down they are unlovable and defective. This is unconscious, it lurks in the DA shadow self, they are unaware of their fear of abandonment and unworthiness. They internally are wired to withdraw from emotional connection, to turn inside and fend for them selves, and they think every one should be that way. So don’t try to get them to open up, it is the emotional connection that partners seek that are the triggers for the DA.
I sucked at the relationship part!
She broke my heart, twice. Can’t say I did not deserve to be karmas bitch. I did, it was how I realized all the pain and suffering I caused other people.
I am done with that personally, I know DAs are not bad people. I am not saying all of them are severely dismissive, it is a spectrum.
Really securly attached people are not going to put up with the DA nonsense.
I know that even severely dismissive avoidants can be so incredibly awesome, if they do the work and learn to open up and become emotionally available they can be awesome partners.
I would withdraw, they wouldn’t know why. They would ask, and the more they did the more I shut down, Sometimes just disappearing, lots of time cheating and chasing the next girl to become infatuated with.
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Will you DA change? Maybe, maybe not. If you are going to be with a DA the only one you can change is you. It is really possible that for anyone wanting to get their DA back, they have some anxiety issues that they probably should be looking at.
Before I started my journey to heal, I would meet a woman and man I was the most awesome partner, you were going to fall for me I was going to win you over.
When I hit bottom and recognized how messed up I was I began my road to recovery in earnest. It took years of therapy, mediation, countless self help books, shadow work and inner child healing. I am really secure today, but it was a long hard road for me.
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I felt like I wanted to die! I laid around for one week, like a zombie. it took months not to think about here every waking moment and she haunted my dreams. So I went back to work. Dug deep into my shadow self, and really made peace with my inner child.
They have lower levels of dopamine production, which in part explains why the infatuate so hard in early relationship stages. When they get infatuated the increased oxytocin levels are even more “addictive’” because they lack dopamine, and because that they get really get off on the increase oxytocin levels produce.
I was severely avoidant, I discarded women and if the were unfortunate enough to have fallen for me I crushed them emotionally. I was an emotionally unavailable, self centered jerk who thought it was a super power to just cut people out of my life in an instant. I didn’t think twice about it, not until months after I discarded them. Then sometimes I would miss them, and think about them.
Why is going on a date today so much different than it was when I was young?
The thing I would discover, is only did that with emotionally available partners. The really good girlfriend material, the ones who cared about me and were available, the ones that I really would have been better off with.
It is through acknowledging the parts of our inner being that we have failed to acknowledge and that are our emotional triggers that we can integrate them into our conscious and turn our weakness into strength becoming far better people and being far better off.
They are still who they are, but they are trying to improve. Who said old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
But in the mean while, if he is severely dismissive why the heck do you want to be with him?
Are they difficult to be in a relationship? When they are severely avoidant they are. But like everything else in life there is a spectrum, some are mildly dismissive some are extremely dismissive.
I feel for all of them. I can relate to them.
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Usually the mother her self is avoidant, depressed, perhaps narcissistic, just not emotionally available and often controlling.
The is the main reason I came here to Quora, I wanted to try and help, I wanted to get some good Karma for my past transgressions. I hope that I have achieved that in some small way.
Will they do it for you? No