Nick DiMaggio’s Reviews > Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner > Status Update

If you’re anxious-preoccupied, your insecurities will build in the absence of reassurance, and you’ll do great damage to your social ties by acting clingy, possessive, and jealous. The controlling nature of the neediness shown scares away potential partners who don’t want constant drama in their relationships, and the anxious-preoccupied’s fear of abandonment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Happiness is not the immediate goal of a successful relationship; the goal is a bond that strengthens both of you and helps you be more the person you want to be.

Anxious people’s unmet needs for closeness were expected to cause them to misinterpret a partner’s desire for privacy or autonomy as a sign of rejection, which could tempt them to escalate demands for intimacy to such an extent that, paradoxically, it might cause their partner to withdraw or flee.

Couples in which an anxious person is paired with an avoidant one tend to produce destructive pursuit-distancing or demand-withdrawal patterns of relating. In such couples, the anxious partner’s needs and demands frustrate the avoidant partner’s preference for distance, and the avoidant partner’s tendency to create distance frustrated the anxious partner’s intense distance for closeness.

Avoidant people do not generally approve of expressions of need and vulnerability, whether their own or those of their partners, and they have no desire to get entangled with someone whose weaknesses and needs are all too visible.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

The best partner is responsive to your signals, and you as a good partner signal only when you really need help. Most of the trouble in relationships is about bad signaling and poor responses.