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Most people think avoidant partners don't get jealous, but that is not true at all. Dismissive avoidance, in fact, do feel jealousy, but the way that they experience it is often masked by their fear of vulnerability and their fear of essentially losing control. So in today's video, I'm going to unpack five surprising and even shocking ways that dismissive avoidance, hidden jealousy may show up in more covert forms so you can get an idea of whether or not this is actually happening. And most importantly, at the end of this video, we will talk about what you can do to address this. If you see potentially unhealthy dynamics in your relationships, number one, there may be some silent comparison. Okay, so dismissive avoidance. When they're feeling jealousy, they don't like to be vulnerable, so they won't show it. They won't say, oh, I'm feeling jealous. They often won't say, I'm feeling insecure. But they may actually compare themselves to your past. Maybe ask questions about your exes, and you'll usually hear it come out in when they make passive aggressive comments about your exes or say negative things. So for example, if you talk about your ex and you've shared something about your ex in the past, if they say something like, oh, yeah, but he wasn't like this, or she wasn't this way, like the way I am, you know, if there's some, you know, quiet sort of hidden comparison or at least attempt to sort of put the ex down in some way or talk about how you know, well, obviously you wouldn't be compatible with it with that person. If you hear even snapshots of that, because it's such a stretch for dismissive avoidance to even want to open up much at all. Even a really small comment like that usually has a really big magnitude of sort of hidden feelings that that person is working to suppress and really not allow to get to the surface. Number two, if they feel jealous, you're actually going to see them withdraw rather than confront. So let's say, for example, that you're out at an event and maybe you see a friend from the past, but that friend's a little too friendly with you in front of your dismissive, avoidant person that you're dating or in a relationship with, you're actually going to see that when dismissive avoidants feel frustrated, they just retreat. So if they feel like they're not happy about that, rather than saying, even if you didn't participate in it, by the way, right? Even if they just don't like how that person's talking to you or looking at you, they're going to be quick to just sort of retreat from the whole situation because they just don't want anything to do with it. And this is because dismissive avoidants often pull away when they feel insecure so that you'll think that they're fine when they may actually be hurt. And again, there's this idea that dismissive avoidants essentially carry. And even some fearful avoidants carry this idea too, which is, hey, if you have the power to hurt me and then you know you are hurting me, even if it's by accident, then like I need to take my power away from your ability to hurt me, which means I need to retreat and diminish my attachment needs to you. And dismissive avoidants essentially have convinced themselves that by minimizing their attachment needs, by convincing themselves they don't need somebody in a romantic way, they'd be fine without them, that maybe they're not the best fit for them anyways. This is essentially how they're self soothing. Okay, so this is literally how the dismissive avoidant is often attempting to self protect when they're feeling vulnerable around situations like this. Number three, you may hear subtle sarcasm or again, sort of passive aggression about the situation. So I'm not talking passive aggression in comparison, which was our first point, but passive aggression about the situation. So they may get distant and then they may end up, you know, sort of making a passive aggressive comment about the situation. So if they're feeling jealous, maybe you're out with your friends, something like this, and they're feeling a little bit jealous in that particular situation, you're going to generally see that the dismissive avoidant may make a passive aggressive comment or critical comment like oh yeah, I'm too old to party like that, I've evolved beyond that. They may say sort of these nitpicky comments and really this is their attempt at being vulnerable. I think so many dismissive avoidants literally have no idea that when they comment in this way or say these things that it's actually so counterproductive. And I do think, I think that something that is so important when we talk about relationships and connection, something that is so important is that your partner in a secure relationship should truly feel like somebody you were working so hard to look out for and to make feel safe. And this truly is a two way street. Irrespective of gender or length of relationship. I mean irrespective of all factors in a healthy, secure relationship, both people try really hard to make one another Feel protected, supported, emotionally safe, loyal, you know, they'll try to express loyalty. And so the perfect world, you would see a dismissible when maybe feel comfortable opening up and saying, oh, I'm feeling a little bit insecure, maybe I'm experiencing a little bit of jealousy. I just need to know that we're all good. And by saying this, you should ideally have a really healthy response from a partner who's like, hey, I'm thinking of you, I can't wait to hang out with you tomorrow. Things like this. But unfortunately, when somebody is passive aggressive or they just retreat or they withdraw, they don't even give themselves the opportunity to be soothed by another person because they're not making any bid to let the person know, hey, I'm looking for soothing, I'm looking for connection. And so the person is like, oh, why are you being passive aggressive? Why are you retreating from me? And as soon as somebody exhibits these behaviors of withdrawal or even passive aggression is like a passive attempt to push somebody away, right? In any of these types of scenarios, what becomes really painful is that the dismissive avoidant does something and acts on the way that they're feeling. That only further pushes the person away. So they don't even get a chance to get reassurance or soothing or care from the person that they care for and that they're feeling jealous, maybe about or around in this situation. And so it's so important, it just really makes such an important argument for the concept of vulnerability and us being able to open up in relationships. And we still have two more to cover. But on that note, I really want to say if you're somebody who struggles with healthy vulnerability, we talk a lot about the difference between codependency and counter dependence. This idea that we constantly push away and don't want to need somebody at all is very counter dependent. But somebody who is afraid to drop the mask and say they need somebody and they don't want to burden anybody or be a burden and then be abandoned, this is often rooted in codependent behavior. And so it's funny because you can sometimes have these same outputs where somebody doesn't just say what they actually need because a, they're either worried of being abandoned and being a burden and so they're just operating from this codependent space, or they're counter dependent and they literally are just pretending they don't need anybody at all, even to themselves, because that makes them feel soothed. And in both cases, none of those things are productive for relationships. None of those things are moving the needle forward and becoming more secure. And none of those things are helping you solve problems between yourself and somebody else in a romantic partnership. And that's healthy behavior. That's what we need. And so I just want to let you know too, if you are somebody who wants to work through these things, you're experiencing them or you just want to understand more about them. We have a codependency course and we literally have never really given this one away before. I'm doing it just for this segment of time. We've never done it before this. But you'll see this out for a few days at a time here in a row. And we're giving it away as a free gift. It's our anniversary month at the Personal Development School. And so if you want to check out the codependency course and get access to it for free as a gift, along with a seven day free trial to access all of the Personal Development School, you can use the link below. And you get to keep that course for life along with checking out the trial for seven days. And our hope is obviously that you'll love the school and pds and then you'll want to actually stick around and hang out afterwards. But either way, you get a free gift. Number four. You may see the sudden cold and then slightly warmer behavior. So you may see a little bit of essentially intermittent reinforcement from a dismissive avoidant when they start to get jealous. So they may feel like, okay, I need to pull away, I need to shut you down and not need you. And I don't like how you have the power to make me feel uncomfortable. So I have to diminish that power by convincing myself, I don't need you. But then at the end of the day, dismissive avoidants usually do this thing where once they reflect, once they have a little bit of space and time and room to reflect, they often sort of come back around. And so once they've taken space and they've kind of processed and had a chance to just had a minute to, you know, check in with how they're feeling, then they'll often turn around and be like a little bit warmer or a little bit more open because they'll realize logically that their behavior of just shutting down completely doesn't make sense. And usually at that point, to be quite honest, the dismissive avoidant will kind of feel embarrassed about that they're feeling like that. And they'll be like, oh, wait, that wasn't really an appropriate response to just shut down, you know, a More middle ground response to prove that I don't care that much or that I'm fine would be to act normal. And so there might be this sudden pull away and then this sort of returning to baseline, but internally they still might feel this urge to pull away at the same time. And then number five, last but not least is dismissive avoidants often feel a lot of shame when they experience jealousy because it makes them feel needy or out of control. And so instead of owning it, sometimes they just turn it inward and you'll hear them, you know, in their way that they speak about themselves or the way that they talk about, you know, how they're showing up, really judging themselves, shaming themselves. And often when we're in shame, when you feel shame, you know, if you ever think about, like a moment where you felt really embarrassed, which is sort of a higher level of shame, like an extension, a lighter extension of shame. Have you ever done something embarrassing in front of people, like slipped and fell when everybody's watching or something like that? You know, like, what do you want to do right away? You want to run and hide? And shame, you know, being such a more intense emotion than just embarrassment often makes you want to just retreat, hide, have privacy. And so you may just see this emotional shutdown that takes place. And when dismissive avoidants suddenly are hurt by something and go into deep emotional sh, a lot of times it's literally because they're feeling shame. So jealousy doesn't always look like rage or confrontation, especially not from dismissive avoidance. And hopefully this gives you really powerful context on what could be happening here beneath the surface, more deeply. And again, if you want to go deeper into codependency, counter dependency, these things that make us not show ourselves, not be productive in relationships, in terms of how we show up and connect and solve problems, then that's a really fantastic course that will help you so much so you don't have to keep going through these weird loops and pain points in your relationship. And again, it's a gift. Just for a limited time. It's available and the link will be down below. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed today's video and I will see you next time.