The Thais Gibson Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Why Dismissive Avoidants Want to Act Like They're In A Relationship Without Actually Committing
Host: Thais Gibson
Date: January 28, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores why individuals with a Dismissive Avoidant (DA) attachment style often behave as if they're in a committed relationship without fully committing. Thais Gibson breaks down the emotional barriers, subconscious patterns, and relationship dynamics that lead to this common behavior. She also offers practical advice for those dating DAs and highlights tools for understanding and improving attachment patterns.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Attachment Styles (00:00–02:00)

Introduction to Attachment Styles:
- Four main styles: Secure, Anxious-Preoccupied, Fearful-Avoidant, and Dismissive Avoidant.
- DA is characterized by emotional distance, privacy, and reluctance to commit.

“The dismissive avoidant... tends to be the one in relationships that is, you know, always kind of trying to keep people at bay, is a little more private, more slow to warm up, and generally is the least likely to be really enthusiastic about making commitments in relationships.”
– Thais Gibson (00:50)

2. Reason #1: Lack of Emotional Modeling in Upbringing (02:00–06:15)

DA’s Emotional Development:
- Grew up in emotionally neglectful environments; lacked models for healthy emotional connection.
- Comfortable with intellectual, physical, or sexual connection, but struggle with emotional intimacy.
- Analogy: If “10 units” of connection are possible, DAs struggle to channel these into the emotional pillar, so focus elsewhere.

“One of the biggest reasons people will end up making commitments... has a lot to do with the emotional pillar. With emotional intimacy, we really want to take other people into consideration... And so when that pillar's growth is stunted, it can be more difficult for dismissive avoidants to really place a lot of emphasis on that.”
– Thais Gibson (04:48)

Result: DAs can meet most relational needs without committing, downplaying the importance of the emotional bond required for true commitment.

3. Reason #2: Vulnerability Feels Unsafe (06:16–09:30)

Vulnerability as a ‘Bad Thing’:
- DAs equate vulnerability with weakness due to unmet needs in childhood.
- Subconsciously avoid commitments because commitments require vulnerability.
- Despite logical understanding, their subconscious minds resist vulnerability.

“For the vast majority of dismissive avoidants, they see vulnerability as being weak or shameful because when they were vulnerable as children, their needs usually didn’t get met. And so as an adult, they’re like, ‘Okay, well being vulnerable just hurt me as a child. So I’m going to retract my vulnerability.’”
– Thais Gibson (07:23)

4. Reason #3: Inability to Resolve Conflict (09:31–12:40)

Conflict Skills Not Modeled:
- DAs didn’t learn healthy ways to address conflict growing up; avoid difficult conversations.
- Without conflict resolution, grievances build up into resentment.
- Fear: Not being ‘stuck’ with a person, but stuck with unresolved issues and negative emotions.

“If instead, as a dismissive avoidant, you don’t know how to have those conversations ... then all that happens instead is you keep holding grievances intrinsically, right?... Eventually it doesn’t feel good to be around people that you love and care about.”
– Thais Gibson (11:04)

Key insight: DAs may avoid commitment to avoid a buildup of resentment they don’t know how to resolve.

5. Reason #4: Feeling Misunderstood and Criticized (12:41–15:40)

Early Criticism:
- DAs frequently feel misunderstood or criticized by partners, even before commitment.
- Difficulties in recognizing and communicating their own needs/rules amplify this miscommunication.
- “Different rulebooks metaphor”: Each partner plays by different subconscious rules, causing friction.

“For dismissive avoidants ... when other people communicate those things to them, it feels like all this pressure, like, well, I have to play by your rules, but you’re not playing by mine. But they’re not often communicating their rules, recognizing that they even have individual rules, sharing those rules with a partner or loved one.”
– Thais Gibson (13:51)

Cycle of Pressure and Withdrawal:
- DAs feel pressured to reciprocate in ways they don’t understand, leading to frustration and avoidance.

6. The Importance of Attachment Theory and Communication (15:41–End)

Integrated Attachment Theory:
- Understanding attachment styles offers practical tools for resolving core relational issues (e.g., core wounds, needs, communication).
- Simple changes can resolve deep-seated problems quickly with the right resources.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On DAs’ Internal Barriers:

“It’s not like they are lacking in empathy or care. Often they’re not very expressive of their empathy, but they can be very empathetic, quietly into themselves.”
– Thais Gibson (05:57)
On Relationship Success:

“I wouldn’t necessarily call staying in a relationship long term when you’re miserable... relationship success. Relationship success is when you stay... because you’re happy and it’s your authentic truth to be in that relationship because it feels good and it brings you joy.”
– Thais Gibson (12:33)
On Communication Breakdown:

“You can think of your attachment style as being your subconscious set of rules for how to give and receive love... One person has the rules for Monopoly, the other person has the rules for Scrabble. I mean like you’re going to have a lot of issues, right?”
– Thais Gibson (13:23)

Timestamps for Important Segments

00:00–02:00: Overview of attachment styles and introduction to Dismissive Avoidant traits
02:01–06:15: Emotional modeling and limited emotional capacity in DAs
06:16–09:30: Vulnerability and the subconscious avoidance of deeper commitment
09:31–12:40: Conflict resolution deficits and resentment buildup
12:41–15:40: Miscommunication, feeling criticized, and the "different rulebook" analogy
15:41–End: Integrated attachment theory, communication tools, and resources for further learning

Practical Takeaways

Dismissive Avoidant individuals are not inherently cold or uncaring—they simply have underdeveloped skills in emotional connection due to their upbringing and internal experiences.
Their reluctance to commit is usually driven by fear of vulnerability, unresolved resentment, and feeling misunderstood—not a lack of affection.
Improving relationships with DAs (or as a DA) requires understanding the underlying subconscious patterns, fostering open communication, and building conflict resolution skills.
Thais encourages further exploration of attachment theory through her in-depth resources to move towards healthier, more secure connections.

For listeners seeking to break their own patterns or better understand loved ones, this episode provides clear explanations and actionable insights—delivered with Thais Gibson’s trademark warmth and clarity.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Are you currently dating or seeing a dismissive avoidant attachment style? And they act like they're in a relationship with you and yet they have a lot of cold feet behaviors around commitment. Well, in this video we are going to cover exactly some core reasons why the dismissive avoidant attachment style may act like they're in a relationship with you, but without actually committing. And we'll also talk about what you can do about this. Now, if you're not already familiar, the dismissive avoidant attachment style, AKA love style, is one of four main attachment styles and this one in particular. And by the way, we all have an attachment style, if you didn't know that already. There's the securely attached style, then there's the anxious, preoccupied, the kind of the anxious clingy one, the fearful avoidant, who I like to think of as the hot and cold love style, and the dismissive avoidant, who tends to be the one in relationships that is, you know, always kind of trying to keep people at bay, is a little more private, more slow to warm up, and generally is the least likely to be really enthusiastic about making commitments in relationships. And there's reasons for this. So the first major reason is that dismissive avoidance generally grow up in a household where the pillars of emotional connection are not modeled to them. So if you've ever known a dismissive avoidant, okay, dismissive avoidance, just some characteristics of this, if you're not already familiar, as I mentioned, they tend to get neglected growing up. And so, you know, what essentially takes place is they learn to neglect their own feelings and their emotions. And as a result of that, they don't really understand the emotional pillars of the self very well. They're great at intellectual connection. They can be great at like physical connection, sexual connection. That can be a space sometimes. Instead, dismissive avoidance even don't like that much intimacy and can be really sort of holding back there. But it's almost like because they don't have healthy skills modeled to them growing up for emotional connection, they try to connect through intellectual connection and often physical or sexual connection because their growth has been stunted in the emotional connection. So if you can imagine an analogy for a minute, okay, like obviously it doesn't actually work like this, but just to give you this analogy, imagine that as a human being you have 10 units of connection, but you're completely blocked on channeling or funneling those 10, those 10 units at all through the emotional connection space. And let's say we've got our four pillars of connection, we've got intellectual Connection, emotional connection, physical like affection and bringing somebody into your physical space and then sexual connection. Right. So then we have like actual sexual connection or chemistry. Well, imagine that you are completely blocked in the emotional space or it's very, very blocked. At best you can do one unit of your connection can flow through that channel. And well then you're going to put a lot more emphasis on the other channels of connection because that's what's comfortable and familiar to you. Now, one of the biggest reasons people will end up making commitments to things like monogamous relationships has a lot to do with the emotional pillar. With emotional intimacy, we really want to take other people into consideration. We want to be mindful of how we might affect them, how our choices are affecting them, how they feel, how we make them feel in a relationship, and vice versa. And so when that pillars growth is stunted, our reason number one out of the four is that it can be more difficult for dismissive avoidance to really place a lot of emphasis on that because they kind of feel like, well, without being monogamous or making a commitment to the relationship, I can still connect intellectually, I can still connect physically or sexually. And so do I really need to do the commitment? Like most of my needs are met without actually having to get there. So that can be a big reason for, for dismissive avoidance. And again, it's not like they are lacking in empathy or care. Often they're not very expressive of their empathy, but they can be very empathetic, quietly into themselves. But it's that they don't know how to do the giving and receiving of the emotional pillars of connection very well. Because if you were neglected growing up and that wasn't shown to you very easily, then that can cause you to feel a little bit confused in your upbringing. So your upbringing and then your adult life, right. Like it's, it's just like an unknown to a certain degree, if you didn't have a lot of that emotional level of connection really modeled to you. So that's number one. Number two, dismissive avoidance is a byproduct of that. Often really struggle with vulnerability. Vulnerability they've made mean that it's a bad thing. So for the vast majority of dismissive avoidance, they see vulnerability as being weak or shameful because when they were vulnerable as children, their needs usually didn't get. And so as an adult they're like, okay, well being vulnerable just hurt me as a child. So I'm going to retract my vulnerability. I'm not really going to open up. I don't see value in vulnerability. And consciously they may know better. Consciously they may be able to recognize and say, okay, well you know, if I'm not vulnerable, then it's hard to really build deeper bonds or deeper connections. And consciously we can kind of like conceptually understand these things. But the subconscious mind is the one running the show. The subconscious mind is the one for all of us making 95 to 97%, you know, of our decisions are, you know, producing our emotions, our actions, our behaviors, our belief systems. And so that's really what's going to end up, you know, making that decision for you at the end of the day. So vulnerability being a scary thing will not only further block emotional connection, but it will also cause them to not want to enter into commitments that would naturally require more vulnerability as a sort of prerequisite to that commitment. Right. When we commit, we have to open ourselves up more. We have to dedicate ourselves to the emotional well being of each other. And there's a certain degree of that that can feel vulnerable. By the way, before I go into the next two, if you're new to this or you're like, I just really want to understand the dismissive, avoidant or any of the other attachment styles I mentioned for that matter. You can check out for free for 7 days any of our, um, attachment style roadmaps. And they're called the, the you know, pick the attachment style dismissive, avoidant in the six stages of a relationship, but also for the secure, the anxious, preoccupied, the fearful. Avoid the other attachment styles I mentioned earlier. And it's basically like how they are all the way from dating to honeymoon stage, then how they are in the power struggle stage and then how they are in the next stages of relationship that ends up being the stability stage, commitment stage and bliss stage. But it doesn't just talk about like how they are talks about what they need, what challenges will come up, how to solve for those challeng, how to more deeply understand them. The course itself is about an hour and a half in length. Definitely you can get through it in seven days. And as long as you cancel before day seven, which is like easy to do in two steps, you don't get charged. So check it out if you love the course. I hope you stay at PDS and take all the other courses too. But you can definitely check it all out for free for seven days using the link in the description below. So anyway, point number three here is that if you don't have any idea how to do conflict, it makes it very Difficult to maintain commitments. I want you to imagine this for a second. You're a human being. You have needs. All human beings have needs. The closer we get to people, the more we actually end up having needs from other people, right? From the people closest to us. And so because we kind of build, it's like we're a singular organism. And then when we build relationships, the relationship itself is almost like its own organism. And so when you don't know how to fix conflict, and I mean like actually resolve conflict, say, hey, by the way, yesterday xyz, that hurt my feelings. It didn't feel good for you to say that. Can you be more mindful of that in the future? And the person says, yeah, sorry, I didn't realize. And definitely I'll be more mindful of that. And I'm sorry if that hurt you. Like, I don't feel a negative way towards you. It was just a passing comment. I'm just giving you a theoretical conflict, right? So let's say you hash something out. It's easy, it's resolved. You're not like building resentment up in your resentment tank all the time. But if instead, as a dismissive avoidant, you don't know how to have those conversations because dismissive avoidance do not have modeling or demonstrations of those things growing up in their childhood and upbringing, then all that happens instead is you keep holding grievances intrinsically, right? You keep holding grudges for things. Things don't feel resolved. And then eventually it doesn't feel good to be around people that you love and care about. They feel draining. You're holding internal frustrations. You might be afraid that they're going to do those things that you know they always do that you've never talked to them about and they don't know that they're hurting you. So eventually it just causes the resentment tank in relationships to build up so high to the point where it can just overflow and it makes a relationship unable to work. It makes it unsalvageable and, or even people stay in relationships like that. I wouldn't necessarily call staying in a relationship long term when you're miserable. I wouldn't call that thriving. Right? I wouldn't call that relationship success. Relationship success is when you see in a relationship because you're happy and it's your authentic truth to be in that relationship because it feels good and it brings you joy and, and so, you know, a lot of DA's don't know how to resolve conflict. So they'll keep like building up resentment and and then they get afraid to commit and they have these fears of like, what if I'm stuck with this person forever? And really, I've heard that line out of so many dismissive avoidance in my practice in the past. But if I could decode that in dismissive avoidant language, it wouldn't be what if I am stuck with this person forever? It would be what if I'm stuck with these situations that I don't know how to resolve forever and I'm stuck with my resentment and frustration and anger towards this person forever. Those are some of the things that are actually scary scared of. And yes, there can be other little things about fear of missing out or things like that. But a lot of those issues and fears go away when you learn to become secure and work through things. And then you're so grateful for what's in front of you that there's not really a need to, to go in a different direction. So anyways, that's a huge point number three and point number four here is that often for dismissive avoidance, because they get into this dynamic in relationships where they don't know how to show up and be vulnerable and meet those emotional connection needs. Oftentimes dismissive avoidance feel really misunderstood and criticized fairly early on, like often before really making that commitment into something more certain or more long term. And this is because they are usually strung with emotional connection. The partner on the receiving end often doesn't know how to put their finger on what that is or communicate that or communicate what they need that. The dismissive avoidant instead often receives criticism from their partner or unhealthy communication. It's not always the case. They can be with somebody really secure and it may not be the case, but the vast majority of the time this is what happens. And so then again, they feel kind of unsafe in the relationship. They feel like, oh, I'm always getting criticized or nagged for something or you know, things are getting harped on for me, so why would I want to commit? Whereas the reality is that it's often a huge error in miscommunication happening. And you know, I always compare people having different attachment styles as like, you can think of your attachment style as being your subconscious set of rules for how to give and receive love. So if you think of these rules, right? And then you imagine you sit down and you're playing a board game with somebody, and that person playing the board game has a totally different set of rules. Like one person has the rules for Monopoly, the other person has the rules for Scrabble I mean like you're going to have a lot of issues, right? You're going to have a lot of unnecessary friction and challenges. And so for dismissive avoidance because they don't know how to communicate their rules, AKA their needs, their fears, their feelings. And they're sort of touched with a lot of that. When other people communicate those things to them, it feels like all this pressure, like, well, I have to play by your rules, but you're not playing by mine. But they're not often communicating their rules, recognizing that they even have individual rules, sharing those rules with a partner or loved one. And so they end up just getting locked in the cycle of feeling like even though the partner is giving to them, they feel this pressure to give back, they feel this frustration and they often feel like they can be stuck in one sided relationships. And the reality is again, it's an issue in communication at its core. So that's why attachment styles and attachment theory is so important and really like what we've built at PDS is integrated attachment theory. So it's, it goes a lot deeper than our traditional attachment theory because it also talks about core wounds and needs of each style and expectations and fears and, and boundaries and communication patterns and all these things that we really need to unpack and understand. But it just gives simple tools for how to resolve each of those things at their, at their root in a very short period of time. So anyways, if you're interested in going deeper, please check out that course down below for seven days for free. And thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video and this channel. I put daily content out here on YouTube every single day and it has everything to do with the subconscious mind, your attachment style, all kinds of things. And, and I do want to say that you know, as much as hopefully you're enjoying these videos, of course the PDFs are like a hundred times better. They go in more detail, they have really nailed down solutions and it just goes, they can be an hour and a half long instead of a quick 10 minute video. So if you ever want to do a real deep dive and really move the needle quickly, those resources are there for you to check out for free anytime. So thank you for watching. Thank you for being here. Please subscribe to this channel if you're enjoying this content and you can hit the notification bell so you don't miss any of our daily videos that we put out and I will see you in future videos.