Relationships: Narcissist Meets Dismissive Avoidant

I don’t care for labels much because they are weird, aren’t they? I like to walk through life as my authentic self, but when I recognize some personality traits, labels might be applicable. I have been self-reflecting in the past few months after parting ways with a person I felt had characteristics aligning with a narcissistic personality disorder.

After I left this relationship, I had to sit with myself and discover what I learned from that experience. Since I am an overthinker, I analyzed everything. I never once concluded that walking away wasn’t the right choice for me. It was the ONLY thing I could do under the circumstances.

So I was on the FYI page on TikTok. I came across a video about attachment styles that mentioned Avoidant Dismissive designation. There was a focus on its connection to Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was like, wait one damn minute. It seemed as if the video threw Narcissists and Avoidant Dismissive Traits in the same bucket. That’s when the dive into the rabbit hole started. I was digging into this for a good portion of my day. I read some psychology-based articles that let me know that the TikTok video was not exactly true. These two things had some commonality, but they were indeed different.

I was relieved that there was no connection. That’s because upon reflecting upon how I behaved in this relationship and with others, I realized I leaned toward this attachment style. It wasn’t distressing at all. It was enlightening, and puzzle pieces of my past relationships came into sharp focus. I felt personally attacked, but I overwhelmingly understood my past choices.

When I was in therapy, my sessions involved how I was very aloof almost in past relationships. We also discussed my ability to walk away from people. I will go even further to say I went to each relationship, KNOWING that I would walk away, and I selected folks that I believed wouldn’t harm me WHEN I walked away. I recognized this was my pattern, but since it was my norm, I never thought it was out of the ordinary. There is NOT one relationship I was in that I thought these folks would be around for an extended period. I didn’t actively plan to get rid of them, but I only thought I’d enjoy their company for as long as I would, and it would end when we no longer enjoy each other’s company.

I always tell people TikTok is very educational. Not in the traditional sense, but the right content on your FYI can be enlightening. That was the case with the content that sent me down this path. That short video helped me understand a LOT about myself. That will result in hitting my therapist up for an appointment to discuss it further.

So, I started thinking about some of my past relationships. I thought about the last one, in particular. At the time, while things were going downhill in that relationship, I kept thinking, “F*k this.” My “F*k outta here game” is strong, always has been and always will be. I know this about myself, and after reading about the dismissive-avoidant thing, it makes so much sense.

Although I wanted to bounce from this relationship right after New Year’s Eve, I didn’t. That was for very selfish reasons. ANY. WHO. Also, I knew that I wanted to do things differently than I’ve done in the past by just walking away. In this relationship, I wanted to give 100% and present them with the opportunity to right their behavior. I recognized later due to their behavioral issue / Narcissistic leanings, it wasn’t going to happen. I still wanted them to understand the things about the relationship that made me unhappy. I let them know and watched to see if there would be changed behavior. I later realized they didn’t have the capacity for any sort of adjustment of behavior. So, I bounced.

It’s been a few months of reflecting on things and realizing I was truly in line for toxic abuse had I not escaped and had I not been rather oblivious to the bozo shenanigans. So, I managed to deflect like 99% of it. My friends said I have a very natural “grey rock” personality. So a lot of stuff just bounces off me without being internalized. How I didn’t allow a lot of nonsense to stick to me was viewed as wild by most of my friends.

I will always be grateful for my natural obliviousness to “bozo nonsense.” That allowed me to come away from a relationship that could have been emotionally abusive relatively unscathed. That’s the good part, but what allowed this was traits of having an Avoidant Dismissive characteristic. I took multiple quizzes, which all came back that aligned with being Avoidant Dismissive. Not to Google diagnose, but I’m going to Google diagnose because It actually makes sense and fits.

As I was falling down a rabbit hole in researching this, I found avoidant folks are essentially a nightmare for narcissistic types of people. That’s because the avoidant doesn’t naturally have the supply needed by the narcissist type. So the obnoxious parts of my personality actually saved me. Go figure. The good news is I dodge a bullet.

A few conflicting characteristics: