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Is It Me? A Love Avoidant

Nat N. PhD
6 min readNov 24, 2019

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Image courtesy Toa Heftiba

In a previous article I discussed love attachment styles and relationship mindsets such as ‘Love addiction’. Now I’ll talk about one of the Four Attachment Styles in Love which was initially studied in the 1960s and 1970s for children/caregivers and then in the 1980s extended to adult relationships. It has now become commonplace to dive deeper in this area for those within the psychology field.

The Four Attachment Styles:

  • Secure
  • Anxious-Preoccupied
  • Dismissive-Avoidant
  • Fearful-Avoidant

There are so many working models and theories about how this unfolds, manifest, and influence in our relationships with ourselves and others.

The simplistic take is that these behaviors are mirrors of the ideas and beliefs we have formed about who we are and about our close relationships. I’ll talk about the style I am most familiar with, which is my own…

Dismissive-avoidant

We all know that in terms of physical and character traits we differ. The same is true of the unique styles of our romantic and interpersonal relationships. There are two “avoidant” attachments styles: fearful-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant.

It is believed those with an avoidant style think about intimacy as “dangerous” and that other people are “unreliable” or that being intimate with them is “not important”. A person with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style has a mentality stating they do not need others. They believe they can survive by themselves, by being alone. Sometimes they even think they do not need to depend on others for happiness or to feel “completeness” as a person. This is viewed by them as a weakness in others.

Dismissive-avoidant individuals have completed a mental transformation that says: “I am good, I don’t need others, and they aren’t really important to me. I am fine as I am.

Cognitive Scientist from MIT, Jeb Kinnison

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Nat N. PhD
Nat N. PhD

Written by Nat N. PhD

Founder of MySoulrenity.com, Communications PhD, international Culture Speaker, Conscious Coach, + intuition fiend. Nerdy, ever-curious cosmic woman.

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