Dismissive avoidant attachment style: What it is and how to spot it

What is dismissive avoidant attachment?

Dismissive avoidant attachment is an attachment style in which someone copes with relationship fears by shutting down their emotions and needs, and relying only on themselves. They keep an emotional distance, even from people they’re close to, because closeness has come to feel unsafe.

A brief primer on attachment theory

Attachment theory was first developed by British psychiatrist John Bowlby in the mid-20th century and later expanded on by psychologist Mary Ainsworth. The gist is that our relationship with our caregivers as infants can shape our social and emotional development.

It wasn’t until 1987 that researchers Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver applied the theory to adult romantic love, identifying three main attachment styles: secure, anxious, and avoidant.

Attachment styles are not clinical diagnoses, but experts say they can be a helpful way to understand how you tend to connect with others. “It’s meant to define how someone manages needs and fears in close relationships,” says Julie Menanno, a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of Secure Love. Your attachment style basically describes what you fear most in relationships and what you do when that fear gets triggered.

The two sides of avoidant attachment

Even if you’re familiar with the main attachment styles (secure, anxious, and avoidant), dismissive avoidant attachment might be new to you. It first appeared in 1990, when psychologist Kim Bartholomew introduced a new model of attachment, arguing that there are two different types:

• Fearful avoidant: wanting closeness but steering clear of it out of fear
• Dismissive avoidant: denying the need for closeness at all

Bartholomew’s model, which she tested in a 1991 study, sorts attachment along two dimensions: how you view yourself and how you view others. “It’s like a quadrant,” explains Tracy Dalgleish, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and author of I Didn’t Sign Up for This.

Here’s how each style tends to show up, according to the experts:

• Secure: You trust that your needs will be met, or that you can work it out when they aren’t.
• Anxious: With a negative view of self, you operate from a baseline of mistrust and anxiety around your needs getting met, and are hypervigilant to signs of rejection or abandonment.
• Dismissive avoidant: You don’t see others as safe, so you learn to rely only on yourself. Disconnection from and discomfort with emotions is a hallmark.
• Fearful avoidant or disorganized: With a negative view of yourself and others, you crave closeness but expect to get hurt, leading to a cycle of seeking and pushing away love.

Most people lean heavily toward one style, especially within a given relationship, Menanno says, but it’s also possible to identify with multiple styles, depending on the situation or relationship.

Signs of dismissive avoidant attachment

The hallmark of this attachment style is emotional distance in close relationships: avoiding true intimacy, rarely sharing feelings or needs, and handling stress alone.

Dr. Dalgleish frames it as the opposite strategy of anxious attachment. When anxiously attached people feel threatened, they hyperactivate: their emotions and needs get loud, and they “knock on the door” for connection. People with a dismissive avoidant style do the reverse. “They’re deactivating. They’re shutting down,” she says.

How it looks to others

“Someone with dismissive avoidant attachment is someone who is hyper-independent, and they are probably described as highly autonomous,” Dr. Dalgleish says. “When they’re close with another person, they actually end up avoiding true intimacy and closeness.” In practice, that can look like:

• Rarely talking about feelings, fears, or needs, or showing vulnerability
• Dismissing your emotions, or treating them as pressure or criticism
• Being self-reliant and hyperindependent in daily life
• Shutting down or withdrawing into hobbies, work, or other distractions during conflict
• Focusing more on physical or sexual intimacy than emotional closeness
• Struggling to commit or keeping one foot out the door

A dismissive avoidant partner often reacts to emotions or needs with dismissal, defensiveness, or logic. In conflict, you can also see withdrawal or “stonewalling,” as Bartholomew noted in her research: Going quiet, emotionally flat, and unresponsive to avoid a fight.

But that doesn’t mean that dismissive avoidants are always loners. “I can have people in my office who have a very avoidant attachment style, but they’re the most outgoing person you’ve ever met,” Menanno says.

What it feels like inside

From the inside, dismissive avoidance can feel like being fine, independent, and unbothered—or numb, shut-down, or empty. It’s not that you don’t have fears or emotions, but you’ve learned to suppress or disconnect from them.

These individuals tend to keep it all in. “What they’ve learned to do in moments of distress, anxiety, or stress is to rely on soothing themselves, and they don’t share what’s happening inside of them,” Dr. Dalgleish says.

Someone with this attachment style may know they’re in a bad mood without being able to name or express the feeling. “It makes sense from a parenting perspective,” Dr. Dalgleish says. “If your caregiver never reflected back what your feelings are, you didn’t learn how to identify them.”

People with this style also tend to register their partner’s distress and emotions as a personal threat. “What I commonly see in my clinical work is that this partner deeply internalizes their partner’s difficult feelings,” Dr. Dalgleish says. “They feel like they’re failing. They feel like they’re not enough.”

Dismissive avoidant vs. fearful avoidant

Both forms of avoidant attachment are known to keep closeness at arm’s length, but for different reasons. “Someone who is fearful is actually more of a push-pull, versus the dismissive is more of a pulling away,” Dr. Dalgleish says.

Bartholomew drew the line at awareness. People with a fearful style consciously want connection, but are held back by distrust and fear of rejection. They see themselves as undeserving of love and support, so they’re prone to loneliness and distress. People with a dismissing style, on the other hand, protect a positive self-image by minimizing their need for others—without even realizing it—and avoiding closeness.

People with fearful avoidance tend to have high avoidance and high anxiety in relationships, Dr. Dalgleish explains, whereas dismissive avoidance presents as high avoidance with low anxiety.

What causes dismissive avoidant attachment?

While attachment styles may seem persistent, they’re not set in stone, so a person can absolutely change their attachment style if they work at it.

One meta-analysis of 127 studies covering over 21,000 attachment assessments found overall moderate stability in attachment style from infancy to adulthood. “It tends to be pretty stable,” Menanno says. “But absolutely you can change.” It typically takes awareness, a catalyst, and hard work.

The relationship you’re in matters too. An avoidant and an anxious partner—a common pairing, Menanno says—can reinforce each other’s patterns. Difficult chapters can also harden styles, even in two people who are only modestly dismissive and anxious.

But entering a relationship with someone whose attachment style doesn’t reinforce your own can create more space for patterns to soften, Menanno says.

How to move toward secure attachment

You can develop a more secure attachment style whether or not you’re in a relationship. The core work involves learning to find, feel, and share the emotions you’ve learned to shut down. “This all starts with your relationship with your own self and your own feelings,” Menanno says.

Books and workshops can help, but the best option is a therapist who works with attachment, Menanno says. In attachment therapy, you’ll dig deeper into the early childhood experiences that may have shaped your view of yourself and others, Menanno says.

Several types of individual therapy can help shift these patterns. Dr. Dalgleish recommends:

• Interpersonal therapy (IPT): Helps you identify the repeated patterns you fall into in relationships and build healthier dynamics
• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): Helps you make room for difficult thoughts and feelings and live according to what matters most to you
• Internal family systems (IFS): Helps you get to know and work with all the parts of yourself so you can show up as a more compassionate and conscious individual

If you’re in a relationship, the same work happens together, often through couples therapy alongside individual therapy. Both experts recommend emotionally focused therapy (EFT) for couples, which helps you identify your core needs and longings, break out of unhealthy relational patterns, and turn toward your partner to express those needs, Dr. Dalgleish explains. EFT calls the repeated fights couples get stuck in a negative cycle. These cycles tend to activate both partners’ deeper attachment fears and reinforce old patterns, Dr. Dalgleish says, which is why a therapist’s support helps.

What to do if you’re dating someone with dismissive avoidant attachment

Attachment styles aren’t fixed, so it’s possible for your partner to change, but it’s not something you can do for them. What you can do is be clear about your own needs and watch whether or not they’re willing to meet those needs.

It’s also important to be conscious of your own attachment style and what work you might need to do to move toward a more secure attachment, Menanno says.

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Notice your own patterns. “[You] have to start looking at: How am I responding to my partner when their avoidance shows up?” Menanno says.
• Regulate before you respond. Calm your body and give yourself space before bringing up the issue—take a walk, journal, or cry if you need to.
• Lead with vulnerability. Menanno suggests something like: “I’m feeling really alone with this. I need to know that you can help me out here.”
• Make room for their feelings. “Give your partner space to be able to share their feelings and needs, and ensure that you are not responding in a rejecting or minimizing manner,” Dr. Dalgleish says.
• Tell them what you want. “Vocalize to your partner that you do want to get to know them, that you want them to be vulnerable with you, and you want to create a safe and loving, healthy relationship,” Dr. Dalgleish says.
• Be clear about what you need from them. “Spell out the problem and ask for help. “Express that need to go to couples therapy, or to have them go do their own work,” Dr. Dalgleish says.

Keep in mind that progress may take time. “These patterns develop over the course of a lifetime, and they don’t change overnight,” Menanno says.

Signs it’s workable vs. a dealbreaker

So how do you know if your dismissive avoidant partner isn’t likely to change their attachment style? “If they’re not willing to recognize and join you in the fact that there is a problem—and own their part of that problem specifically,” Menanno says.

Menanno suggests asking yourself: “Is there evidence of hope? Am I seeing any movement?” That often looks like taking accountability and seeking support, like going to individual or couples therapy. Here are some signs the pattern may be workable:

• They admit there’s a problem.
• They own their specific part (like “I know I tend to get defensive when you bring concerns to me.”).
• They’ve expressed openness to and interest in changing.
• They’re willing to put in work, like going to therapy.
• You see progress over time, even if it’s uneven.

And here are some signs your partner probably isn’t ready to change:

• They won’t acknowledge there’s a problem.
• They put the blame on you.
• They say they won’t change or refuse to get help.
• Weeks or months pass with no movement.

In any case, remember that your partner’s avoidance isn’t about you, Dr. Dalgleish says. “Someone who is in a relationship with someone who is dismissive avoidant needs to remember that it’s not personal to their own sense of worthiness.” They’re simply using an outdated coping strategy that began a long time ago.