Avoidant Needs

But the internet tells me all avoidants are monsters and don't deserve anything!

I'm conflicted now 🤔

lilyg

I think perhaps we are experiencing something similar.

It's hard for an open-hearted person to understand the barriers set in place for the Avoidant. When you live a life where love flows freely, and you're willing to move through whatever emotional difficulties to meet your lover with LOVE, it is mind-baffling to try to understand the avoidant's walls.

Right now, my boyfriend (who I am breaking up with) sees my perspective as unreasonable. I guess I will have to accept that. I kind of regret sharing my heart, my emotional self with him, because it's only used to weaponize the interaction. Perhaps I should have just said: I'm done.

Really good article Juniper. I like how it tied the whole "I want you in my house just not in my room" with the comfort that being in separate rooms provides to the avoidant. I never understood that before so this is new insight. Thank you.

it's striking for me to realize that i do not have more than two memories of my mother being intentially in a room with me and engaging.

At christmas i have memories of her doing presents and all that and i appreciate that.

The other memory that i can access is that she would gather my sibs and i together in the evening to read to us.  I really appreciate what she was doing there.

But there was not interaction- it was her reading a book, it was not conversation.

surely we must have conversed intentionally but i cannot recall that from my younger years at all.

when i came home from school in second grade (walking the blocks to our house) i would make cinnamon toast for myself and then eventually go see her in her room where she would be writing letters on the typewriter to her mom whom she hated, or sewing for money as a seamstress, almost always on the phone.

my father, i only remember seeing sometimes in the morning when he gulped a breakfast shake before work.  he was a severe alcoholic but a functional one. i never saw him but in the morning for a few minutes.
sometimes he would sit down at the table, and i would sit there with him in silence.  he wasn't there to talk to me.  i would only see him if i went to him. 

he liked my sister and it was very different as he gave her gifts a lot and called her sunshine and sang to her. 

someone told me; with my dark hair and eyes, i reminded him a lot of my mother.  My sister was blonde.  it seems so shallow but hey.  he was sad when i was born, in despair, as he hated my mother so. he saw me as a tragedy.



also, my mother told me from a very young age, that i was just like her mother. i did not know until i was an adult, that ah hated her mother for what she felt was abandonment.
i met and connected with my aunt, her younger sister, just a few years ago and she described my mother's personality disorder and the family dynamic to me.
she said my mother and grandmother were exceedingly hateful and cruel to each other, and would write 13 page letters of vitriol week after week. they were estranged 13 years before my grandmother died. i am my grandmothers namesake. What a legacy i inherited there lol.

so- the separate room thing.  i never heard or read about it.  but it's a thing. 

Thanks for sharing - I am that person - right up for intimacy but in a separate room or co habiting next door neighbours - that would be a joy.

wouldn't it?
i like that my partner and i were 20 minutes away but there for each other the way we were, it was perfect for both of us.
our bond was strong! way stronger than previous partners, whom i did live with.

Every creature has a natural habitat where they thrive. including me.

Thank you for your kind words
I completely understand how others have difficulty understanding dismissives.
This board has illuminated me to just how deep the misunderstanding is.

As a dismissive, i of course , in the past, could not get my head around others- i really have felt alien and also baffled by other people , and have had a hard time understanding why he disconnect, prior to awareness.

Even still, i am reminded how my viewpoint is so vastly different from that of others, and i feel surprised sometimes about the responses from people who had not been able to see things from my vantage point, until i shared. We all come from, where we come from. It's important to develop the capacity to be able or at least willing to try to see things through another's eyes. So participating here, i focus on the similarity of insecure attachment (prior to awareness) the inability to give and receive love in a way that is nourishing to the self, and to others. This is a sad problem. The solution for each of us lies within our own hearts and minds. so i focus on that.

Of course, i am interacting with other insecure people here and so i try to share person-to person about how to recognize and deliver oneself from one's own attachment wounding. I am not concerned about a partner who is not here trying to heal and do not interact much about that except to provide some insight into another perspective than the one being presented by posters here with other attachment styles.

I am attempting to walk side by side with people of all styles healing attachment wounds. So i thank you for your kindness.

I am sorry that your relationship did not survive. (am i correct in this understanding?) My dismissove partner and i are no longer romantically involved either, for reasons that are outside of our compatibilty- but it is sad nonetheless and requires acceptance, which i have been able to attain. I am glad that you can look at your ex partner with some understanding and compassion, this is kindness and generosity of sprit, as goldi has reminded us. And, it will assist you in your own healing, to have a warm heart to the extent that you are able to.

i wish you the best in your process of healing from that and discovering your true self as well, regardless of our attachment styles that is a lifelong endeavor. 🌸