Transcription
Though I get asked all the time by people, "Why does my dismissive avoidant partner shut down around sex, especially when we're in a longer-term relationship?" In this video, we're going to unpack exactly all the reasons why this commonly happens, and also we'll cover some key steps about what to do instead.
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So first and foremost, you know, it often becomes a theme for a lot of people, whether they're in a situationship, a romantic relationship, or they're dating a dismissive avoidant. The first six months or so will be totally normal, and then around the six-month mark, sometimes all the way up to like the year, year and a half mark, the dismissive avoidant will start to shut down and kind of pull back.
Usually, at first, it happens emotionally, and then over time, it can actually begin to happen more and more to the point where it's literally bleeding into the person's sex life. It's actually changing the dynamic around intimacy as a whole. There are a few core reasons why this takes place, and oftentimes I'll see the partner of a dismissive avoidant because of the way they personalize that.
Of course, you're a human being; it's very easy to personalize that. Like, "Oh, is it me? What's wrong with me that this is happening? What did I do?" You know, and we'll see a lot of these different circumstances play out. But the reality is, often when you're taking it personally, then what ends up happening is the way you respond to that actually causes them to shut down more.
Now, this is not on the person being shut down from, right? It's not the person's responsibility to fix or change this. But I find that it's really helpful for these individuals to have context for why this is happening. Then you can initiate a conversation or a different way of operating in a relationship to see if that person also wants to transform with you and to do the work in the relationship with you.
Either they will, and they'll show up, and you'll become more securely attached together as a result, or they won't. This is why we also want to set a deadline around these things, right? So if you're not getting your needs met, whether it's sexually, emotionally, in many different ways in a relationship, you want to set a deadline.
You want to be like, "Okay, I'm really going to pour my heart into this for X amount of time—two months, three months, six weeks." I mean, it depends on a lot of different factors. You know, are you married? That brings a whole different topic of conversation. Are you dating for a year or two years? Have you been together for six weeks? You know, there's going to be a different sort of timeline or deadline we want to put around how long we pour into a relationship for.
But if you don't see the needle move and you don't see transformation happen at the end of that deadline period, then you may want to reconsider whether it's the right relationship for you.
So when it comes to sex for dismissive avoidants, dismissal avoidance tend to—when we talk about this all the time on this channel—we talk about how dismissive avoidants operate in their feelings minus their fears. You'll generally see that they're in their romantic feelings for somebody until these fears come up.
Now, because we take our parent relationships as children and at a subconscious level, the way we were treated there, we expect to be treated as adults. Essentially, what happens is our parents are our primary attachment figures as children, and then we replace our primary attachment figures psychologically with our romantic partners as adults.
Because the person we're the most vulnerable to and open up the most around, etc. What happens is if, as children, we didn't feel safe being ourselves, we didn't feel safe being seen, we didn't feel safe communicating or hashing out conflict, if we felt criticized or really sensitive to criticism, if we didn't feel like we were being built up enough and we felt instead that we were sort of being neglected or torn down more frequently, then as a child, you are going to be programmed to feel that that's on the horizon when you become an adult and invest in relationships romantically.
So the first few months, before you actually build an attachment, these things don't apply in the same way. You're just in your feelings; there's not much to fear yet. But as the relationship dynamic progresses and there's more intimacy, there's more closeness, there's more vulnerability, these vulnerable moments, these vulnerable aspects of yourself remind you of childhood.
Because your subconscious mind stores everything, when you have these catalysts that remind you of past experiences, it surfaces old memory and emotion to the surface. This is how a trigger works, essentially. It's like something happens to you, and your subconscious goes, "Oh, what's our experience of this?" It opens its filing cabinet, and all the past emotion of that triggering event floods to the surface.
So, you know, if you didn't feel safe, if you didn't feel seen, if you felt like you had to become hyper-reliant and create space from your caregivers to create relief, the moment you start building that attachment-based bond as an adult, some of those things are likely to come online, especially around vulnerability and closeness.
Because, you know, whether we like it or not, being a child is a vulnerable experience, right? And we're really reliant on our caregivers at that time. So even though it's a totally different experience, you know, even though we're now talking about sex as an adult and obviously not talking about that in the childhood context, it doesn't mean that those same core triggers won't be there.
When we feel vulnerable, we might feel unsafe; we might feel afraid. What you'll see is when dismissive avoidants feel afraid, when they feel criticized, they self-soothe and cope with that by pulling away and creating distance. It's a known thing that dismissive avoidants will minimize their attachment needs as a form of self-preservation or self-protection.
This doesn't just happen emotionally; this happens around sex and intimacy. Usually, you'll see it sort of drip out. It starts with the emotional components, and then there might be the physical space components, like creating more space. Over time, dismissive avoidants will end up pulling away more and more until the point it often bleeds into people's sex lives.
Now, there's a lot more about this to be said, and that's the first major theme. The next major theme that I think is really important to recognize is that dismissive avoidants are not in their bodies very much. They're not present in their physical experience a lot of the time. Dismissive avoidants are very intellectual; they're very up here.
Oftentimes, they're actually mildly dissociated, mildly disconnected from their bodies, from even knowing what they feel, from experiencing sensations in their bodies. They can really become quite, you know, intellectualizing of not just their emotional experiences but even their physical or sexual experiences.
So if you're ever with a dismissive avoidant and they feel criticized, or they feel, even if they're just criticizing themselves around sex, or if they feel a sense of pressure to perform or to show up in a certain way, oftentimes they will get so in their heads about the experience of sex that it can have an impact on their ability to be present, to enjoy the experience of having sex, to really show up and be attuned to the person that they're having sex with as well.
As a result of this, it can actually make the experience of sex something that feels uncomfortable or unsafe. If you ask the dismissive avoidant, they would never say, "Oh yeah, I feel unsafe around sex," or they generally won't speak like that. But the reality is they're often in sympathetic nervous system mode; they're often uncomfortable.
After working with so many clients and having these discussions with people so frequently, what I found is that when you start actually asking more and more questions to dismissive avoidants, they'll say, "Yeah, I am in my head a lot. Yeah, I guess now that I think about it, I'm not really in my body. I'm not really present for the experience itself."
Over time, because of their own subconscious programs and then the way that they cope is to constantly create distance and also to sometimes flaw-find, they can end up in a position with somebody where it just doesn't feel comfortable to the same degree or in the same way. Again, this tends to happen more and more the deeper the attachment bond is formed.
So with all this being said, there are a couple of ways of approaching this. Number one is you can communicate with the person that you're in a relationship with or sleeping with, and you can let them know that, "Hey, you know, these are some of the things that are important to me around sex. It's important to have intimacy in the relationship. I notice that we've been pulling away from each other, and that's okay, but can we make an effort to be present, to do more things together?"
The more that you can get into a position to normalize sex—and not, sorry, not normalize sex, normalize discussions about sex—the easier and safer it becomes to actually have intimacy. The more it's comfortable and safe to just even have these discussions, the easier it will be to also proceed to have sex.
Number two, the more a dismissive avoidant feels unconditionally accepted instead of judged, the more willing they will be to be vulnerable, and that includes, you know, has a huge impact on sex. If a dismissive avoidant feels nitpicked, criticized, you know, if they feel like somebody's kind of giving them a hard time or judging them in certain ways, they can withdraw dramatically.
It will have a huge, huge impact on the relationship around sex. So it's going to be really important that there's a sense of acceptance, this sense of, "Hey, you know, there's no pressure. We're just here to have an experience together." The more that that's there, the easier it will also be.
Last but not least, the more that there's actually a sense of overall safety in the relationship dynamic—and I say safety, and I know that when I say this, it sounds like, you know, most dismissive avoidants will never tell you they feel unsafe—but they walk on eggshells in terms of what people think about them.
If they don't think that they're being fully accepted, or if they think that they're being shamed or criticized in any way, they won't even, like, they'll just pull away, right? They won't even try to have that discussion or be vulnerable or hash it out; they'll often just pull away.
So the more that there is a sense of not just being accepted but actually empathized with emotionally in the dynamic—and believe it or not, this affects, like, if you're criticizing a partner about their career, it can bleed into that they feel criticized in general, and it can bleed into the relationship to sex.
It's not like a unilateral thing, but the more that that's there as a whole, usually the better the connection will be. Now, I say this with also this, you know, really important kind of, I guess, disclaimer, which is you shouldn't walk on eggshells, right? You should be able to practice having more open conversations, more open discussions about your likes, dislikes, your needs sexually, and in multiple areas of life.
You should also put yourself in a position where you're empathizing and you're accepting of your partner, but in a way where you're also being able to communicate and have acceptance and kindness and compassion as well. This is why, you know, earlier in the video, I mentioned the deadline, right?
If you're starting to date somebody and you're seeing this, have these discussions, practice some of these skills and tools, and then set a deadline. If you see the needle moving—which actually, in the vast majority of cases working with clients, I would see the needle move dramatically in a short period of time—then you've got your answers.
"Hey, this is a solvable problem. This is something we can break through together in a relationship." If instead you don't see that, if instead you see sort of a flat amount of growth, no shifts, no changes, no improvements despite you really pouring in and trying to show up and kind of lead the way in this dynamic in a healthy form, then you have an answer, right?
This person probably won't change. So then you have to ask yourself, "Am I okay with this kind of relationship dynamic forever?" For a lot of people, the answer might be no. So that's a place you really want to get to.
In a lot of cases, I see people become secure together because facilitating open conversations about needs, being able to empathize more effectively with each other's perspectives, being able to be more present, more attuned to each other—I mean, all of these are massive steps on the path to becoming secure.
But it could also go the opposite direction. But at least you know, right? At least you're getting to the bottom of these things and gathering this information, and you can decide what to do next.
So, I hope to shed some light on, you know, the sort of intimacy sexual shutdown that can happen a lot of times for dismissive avoidants in relationships. If you want to go a step further into all of this content, you can check out the attachment styles and sex course that I have for free for seven days using the link down below, where we really dig into all the different attachment styles, some of their patterns around sex, how to have healthier conversations in these relationship dynamics, how to talk about needs, boundaries, all these different things in a healthy form.
Again, you can check it out for free for seven days using the link below. If you join in there, you'll see that you have access to the whole school, all the courses for that seven days. If you cancel before day seven, which is really easy to do, then you never get charged anything.
Hopefully, you can check out, and you can come in, maybe ask me a question on a webinar. I'm in there all the time just doing support webinars. We have other trained facilitators, counselors, coaches, and they're doing a whole bunch of events every day, so you've got tons of extra support in there along with the courses.
Anyways, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed, and thank you so much for watching. If you're enjoying this channel, please like, share, and subscribe, and I can't wait to see you in tomorrow's video.