Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It Read Online Free PDF Page A

and to look for their partner to be sexually responsive and pleased. By contrast, women, in their attempts to feel loved and accepted by a man, tend to be less reserved, or sometimes promiscuous. In both cases, they often struggle with feeling that their partners or situations control their sex lives, and they are often uncomfortable talking with their partners about sex.
    Dismissing Attachment: No Need for Love
    Now, meet Andy. Think about whether you relate to him at all, or whether he sounds like anyone you know. He is proud of his independence, his self-sufficiency, and his commitment to his sales job. He enjoyed spending time with his ex-girlfriend, Chris, but he wasn’t too upset when she ended their relationship. To him, she made too big a deal of his business trips by wanting him to call her, though she only asked for an occasional check-in. He also felt she wanted to talk about her feelings and their relationship “all the time.” So now he’s happy not to have to take care of her. Although he sometimes feels left out when his friends are talking about their girlfriends, he says he’s not bothered by it and actually prefers to spend the time alone. What Andy denies, even to himself, is that he actively minimizes and avoids his feelings. This is very characteristic of people with a dismissing attachment style, and it places them at risk for anxiety and depression.
    Like those with a preoccupied style, those with a dismissing style are also prone to believe that their partners will not reliably be there to support or comfort them. But they protect themselves by unconsciously using
deactivating strategies
that “turn off” (or deactivate) their attachment system, enabling them to avoid being in the untenable position of feeling a pull to rely on an undependable partner. They effectively suppress, avoid, or ignore their emotions and attachment needs. They tend to remain distant, limit their interactions and intimate conversations, and frequently denigrate their partners. For example, while Andy often seemed kind as he helped Chris with her finances, which she appreciated, this also allowed him to remain in a distant and superior position, which only increased her negative feelings about herself. At other times, Andy would keep a safe distance and respond to Chris’s attempts to be emotionally intimate by telling her that she was “just too needy.” This, of course, only increased her self-doubts. In the end, dismissing people might truly care about their partners, but they do so without getting too intimate or emotionally entangled.
    Generally unaware of their feelings, dismissing people aren’t fully equipped to cope with emotionally upsetting experiences. For instance, when their partners aggravate them, they try to minimize or deny their anger. However, that anger continues to exist under the surface, often making them tense and unforgiving. This dynamic, of course, does not bode well for their relationships; but it can’t be easily addressed or rectified because so much of it occurs outside of their awareness. This dynamic is most problematic for anxiously attached partners, who tend to interpret the dismissing partner’s anger as evidence that there is something wrong with them.
    So why doesn’t the dismissing partner just leave? Even those with a dismissing style need comfort and connection. So they seek out and stay in romantic relationships, even as they simultaneously protect themselves by being excessively self-sufficient in those relationships.
    Dismissing people approach their sexualities in the same distant and self-protective way as they engage in relationships in general. Because physical or sexual contact can weaken their defenses, many are uncomfortable with connecting through touch, such as with hugs or gentle caressing. They might abstain from sex, sometimes choosing to rely on masturbation. Or they might remain emotionally distant by limiting sex to one-night stands or short-term