Gottman

Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner

Negative Reactions to “Avoidant” and “Bad Boyfriends”

Most of the reviews of Avoidant and Bad Boyfriends are positive, some embarrassingly so (“You saved my life / marriage /sanity!”) — I read the reviews and the few really negative ones I ignore because they are vastly outweighed by 5-star reviews. But there are some common themes, so I’ll address the three latest one-star reviews here.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Reader Use Discretion and vet the author!
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2020
Format: Kindle Edition

I am a Licensed Therapist specializing in Attachment Injuries and Trauma this book can be damaging for anyone dealing with an attachment injury. Use discernment when reading.

It’s threatening for a professional (licensed!) therapist to have possible patients reading the truth and starting to heal themselves. In her world, each patient is to be swaddled in bubble wrap and gently coaxed back into healthy attachment patterns through her no-doubt-caring therapy. I get a lot of fan mail from therapists and marriage counsellors who direct their patients to my books to get a head start on understanding their issues, but perhaps they recommend it for only their most robust clients. This theme (Appeal to Authority) appears frequently. I can imagine there might be people triggered by some parts of the books, but it’s not nearly as triggering as real life in a relationship with a dismissive partner. Therapy is great for those who can afford the time and expense. My books are cheap and can be read anywhere.

Other outraged reviews go after the chapter on abusive relationships (see an early version here), citing the discussion of combative relationships where (typically) the unexpressive male strikes out physically while the female is psychologically and verbally goading him. Today’s presumption that the male is entirely at fault fails to consider all of the dynamics of these troubled couples. Would you rather be shoved or slapped in anger, or continuously sniped at and undermined by your partner? The stereotype of the abusive husband and the suffering victim is common but not every angry male is entirely in the wrong, or every battered wife a completely innocent victim. Abuse comes in all types, sizes, and sexes. The belief that only women are abused is semi-sacred, and the effort to squelch any contrary voices (“cancel culture”) is similar to the search for heretics.

Reactions from dismissives in denial (or their partners who want a cotton-candy solution to their problems) are also common. Our next one-star review is an example.

Facebook "I'm in this photo and I don't like it" text box.

You’re coming too close to describing how I contribute to my relationship problems…

1.0 out of 5 stars
Skip this one, not worth the read or money. Very biased and inaccurate.
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2020
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

Not worth the read. I would give it no stars if that was an option. It condemns avoidant attachment style people. It’s another “opinion” based dating book, which I should have realized by the name. I thought it would give more constructive insight to the underlying wounds which produce the avoidant attachment types and understanding of triggers for this attachment style. It’s very narrow minded and shames anyone with this attachment style. The author never guided his subjects to working with their own insecurities and understanding that any attachment dynamic is a result of their own inner needs of attachment that of which stem from the developmental stages in early childhood. He essentially said avoidant style people are hopeless and abusive. Which is in fact not a fact or truth at all. My opinion is you can chalk this one up to another bad advice book that is not based in any actual research or fact and dangerously compartmentalizes humans into a this or that category while damning them to a negative life sentence behavior. I wish I could return this book.

On the contrary, being partly dismissive myself, I understand and sympathize with those people who can’t form good attachment bonds in later life because their earlier experiences forced them to develop a defense mechanism to save themselves. This is described in great detail in the books, but this reader demands a presentation so tactful that avoidants will feel righteous in continuing to devalue and dismiss significant others to stay safe. Avoidant is a splash of cold water and describes the harm this defense mechanism does along with some practical methods for coping with it and learning to feel more secure with intimacy.

Our next one-star review is of the “I have my guru and you’re not as good!” variety. There are people emotionally invested in attachment books they’ve already read who find my presentation jarring. A book that is quite good and presented largely to soothe the anxious-preoccupied, Attached, is often cited as better, by those same people enabled by such kid-gloves treatment to avoid looking at their own need to become more secure in themselves. As for Gottman’s books, I plug them and excerpt from them a lot because they are very good. Gottman built on academic attachment experts and my books were substantially complete before I had read any of his books. He’s got a good cottage industry going, and I view his work as especially accessible and valuable for couples with problems. Avoidant is directed to the seeker of self-knowledge and the partner who is feeling alone in his/her concerns about living with an avoidant.

1.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2019

This book labels people and limits the mind of being open to possibility. HEAVILY referenced Gotman and inappropriately and without sound evidence attempts to build on Gotmans work.

Just read Gotman’s work which is based on sound evidence.

Lordy, lordy. These people can’t even spell the names of their gurus correctly. Attachment issues are complex and every individual is a different mix of reflexes and habits, a fact I made clear at several points. Everyone has modes of reaction that mimic the more extreme kinds of insecurity, but only in specific situations or with specific people that trigger them. But I discuss them as types because it’s fair to say most people exhibit a preferred attachment style under most conditions, and it’s very useful to recognize this.

“The Science of Happily Ever After” – Couples Communications

Happy Couple: Tigers

Happy Couples: Tigers — Shutterstock


The Gottman Institute has been studying what makes for a happy marriage for many years, and their techniques and materials are widely used in couples counselling. The Atlantic has an excellent article by Emily Esfahani Smith which describes the studies they’ve undertaken and the results — which are very simple: couples who have happy marriages are responsive to and respectful of each other’s requests for attention.

I described the basic request-response patterns in this chapter of my book. The article goes into much greater depth, and is worth study. The takeaway for my readers: the most important behavior an avoidant type can work on to increase the happiness of their relationships is to practice positive response even when their impulse is to deny response or respond negatively; and the most important behavior an anxious-preoccupied type can work on is to curb the impulse to request attention and reassurance when their partner is busy or irritated. In both cases, one needs to understand how it feels to be the other partner, and tune your request or response to their needs as well as your own. Cultivate the habit of considering your partner’s state before responding carelessly or asking for reassurance, and the relationship is much more likely to reach a happy state of mutual trust and love.

Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth.

Except, of course, it doesn’t work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in ten remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published earlier this year.

If you’ve read my book, I don’t need to point out to you that about half the population has an attachment type that tends to make a happy marriage more difficult to achieve. The Secure types, about 50% of the population, are more likely to marry each other and find this kind of supportive but unintrusive communication easier. The Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant tend to be less supportive and reject true intimacy, and so see requests as clingy demands; while the Anxious-Preoccupied have an excessive need for reassurance that drives them to request attention more often and with less respect for their partner’s state of mind.

From the data they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters. The masters were still happily together after six years. The disasters had either broken up or were chronically unhappy in their marriages. When the researchers analyzed the data they gathered on the couples, they saw clear differences between the masters and disasters. The disasters looked calm during the interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, told a different story. Their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were active, and their blood flow was fast. Following thousands of couples longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically active the couples were in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated over time.

But what does physiology have to do with anything? The problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal—of being in fight-or-flight mode—in their relationships. Having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger. Even when they were talking about pleasant or mundane facets of their relationships, they were prepared to attack and be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more aggressive toward each other. For example, each member of a couple could be talking about how their days had gone, and a highly aroused husband might say to his wife, “Why don’t you start talking about your day. It won’t take you very long.”

The masters, by contrast, showed low physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought. It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable.

The positive health benefits of a happy marriage come from the reductions in stress and worry seen when one has a trusted and respected partner there to assist. An unhappy relationship with a partner who is adversarial and undermining is worse than no relationship at all.

The study revealed the request-response dynamics of the good relationships, which tended to reinforce trust and a sense of closeness, while the bad relationships showed carelessness in both requests and responses were damaging to the relationship and could predict divorce:

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.

By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with up to 94 percent certainty whether couples—straight or gay, rich or poor, childless or not—will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later. Much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and generosity; or contempt, criticism, and hostility?

The accumulated record of sensitivity to the other’s needs either cements the bond or gradually erodes it. The habit of responding thoughtfully and positively even when interrupted or annoyed demonstrates love for the partner, while either not responding or responding negatively demonstrates contempt or indifference — this is commonly the Avoidant’s tendency. Meanwhile, the Anxious-Preoccupied are focused on their own need for constant reassurance, and over-request regardless of their partner’s state; this is as thoughtless in its way as the Avoidant’s dismissal.

Contempt, they have found, is the number one factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People who give their partner the cold shoulder—deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally—damage the relationship by making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill their partner’s ability to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is the death knell of relationships.

Kindness, on the other hand, glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—feel loved. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Shakespeare’s Juliet. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.

“If your partner expresses a need,” explained Julie Gottman, “and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner.”

In that moment, the easy response may be to turn away from your partner and focus on your iPad or your book or the television, to mumble “Uh huh” and move on with your life, but neglecting small moments of emotional connection will slowly wear away at your relationship. Neglect creates distance between partners and breeds resentment in the one who is being ignored.

The hardest time to practice kindness is, of course, during a fight—but this is also the most important time to be kind. Letting contempt and aggression spiral out of control during a conflict can inflict irrevocable damage on a relationship.

“Kindness doesn’t mean that we don’t express our anger,” Julie Gottman explained, “but the kindness informs how we choose to express the anger. You can throw spears at your partner. Or you can explain why you’re hurt and angry, and that’s the kinder path.”

John Gottman elaborated on those spears: “Disasters will say things differently in a fight. Disasters will say ‘You’re late. What’s wrong with you? You’re just like your mom.’ Masters will say ‘I feel bad for picking on you about your lateness, and I know it’s not your fault, but it’s really annoying that you’re late again.’”

For the hundreds of thousands of couples getting married this month—and for the millions of couples currently together, married or not—the lesson from the research is clear: If you want to have a stable, healthy relationship, exercise kindness early and often.

When people think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of generosity, like buying each other little gifts or giving one another back rubs every now and then. While those are great examples of generosity, kindness can also be built into the very backbone of a relationship through the way partners interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back rubs and chocolates involved.

One way to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions. From the research of the Gottmans, we know that disasters see negativity in their relationship even when it is not there. An angry wife may assume, for example, that when her husband left the toilet seat up, he was deliberately trying to annoy her. But he may have just absent-mindedly forgotten to put the seat down.

Or say a wife is running late to dinner (again), and the husband assumes that she doesn’t value him enough to show up to their date on time after he took the trouble to make a reservation and leave work early so that they could spend a romantic evening together. But it turns out that the wife was running late because she stopped by a store to pick him up a gift for their special night out. Imagine her joining him for dinner, excited to deliver her gift, only to realize that he’s in a sour mood because he misinterpreted what was motivating her behavior. The ability to interpret your partner’s actions and intentions charitably can soften the sharp edge of conflict.

“Even in relationships where people are frustrated, it’s almost always the case that there are positive things going on and people trying to do the right thing,” psychologist Ty Tashiro told me. “A lot of times, a partner is trying to do the right thing even if it’s executed poorly. So appreciate the intent.”

Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each other’s good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like, “That’s nice.”

We’ve all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship.

In one study from 2006, psychological researcher Shelly Gable and her colleagues brought young adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive events from their lives. They psychologists wanted to know how partners would respond to each other’s good news. They found that, in general, couples responded to each other’s good news in four different ways that they called: passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive, and active constructive.

Let’s say that one partner had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical school. She would say something like “I got into my top choice med school!”

If her partner responded in a passive destructive manner, he would ignore the event. For example, he might say something like: “You wouldn’t believe the great news I got yesterday! I won a free t-shirt!”

If her partner responded in a passive constructive way, he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted, understated way. A typical passive constructive response is saying “That’s great, babe” as he texts his buddy on his phone.

In the third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish the good news his partner just got: “Are you sure you can handle all the studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!”

Finally, there’s active constructive responding. If her partner responded in this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with her: “That’s great! Congratulations! When did you find out? Did they call you? What classes will you take first semester?”

Among the four response styles, active constructive responding is the kindest. While the other response styles are joy-killers, active constructive responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives the couple an opportunity to bond over the good news. In the parlance of the Gottmans, active constructive responding is a way of “turning toward” your partners bid (sharing the good news) rather than “turning away” from it.

This advice is very simple — treat your partner like the most important person in the world to you, with the best manners you can muster. And even if you find it hard at first to habitually be kind when you are not feeling it, making the effort to fake it until it becomes a habit will pay enormous dividends in the happiness of your marriage, and the regard of everyone in your life as you treat them with more kindness and respect — because once you get in the habit, you will tend to treat everyone with more consideration.


Further reading:

My book, Bad Boyfriends: Using Attachment Theory to Avoid Mr. (or Ms.) Wrong and Make You a Better Partner, goes into greater detail on how a good communication style builds better relationships, and helps you attract the best partner for you.

Dr. John Gottman’s book (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work) is a great guide on how to strive for secure attachment with your partner by open and positive communication combined with empathy.

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