Why Dismissive Avoidants Long for Adulation, and are then Repulsed by it.
What initially captivates a dismissive avoidant in the insecure attachment dance, is the quality of adulation that someone with anxious preoccupied attachment is able to give them. The worshipful gaze, the rapt attention, an avoidant finds this irresistible.
As a parentified child, an avoidant learns quickly how to attune to their caregiver, and how to reassure and manage their parent's emotions. The parent seeks the child's counsel, and listens intently as the child gives advice and helps the parent navigate their insecurities. The child learns that in the role of advisor, their parent will admire them and look to them for comfort. What is lost here and is unspoken, is the needs of the child. The parentified child is unable to articulate their needs or even to know them, as the parent's needs are paramount.
In this dyad, the child loses respect for their parent, They begin to see themselves as superior to their caregiver, and they come to expect that in relationship, they will be in the position of power. This creates in the child a sense of over-confidence and certainty, a knowing that adults are in some key way, their inferiors, and that they can't be trusted to help.
In adult relationships, the avoidant seeks out dependent partners. Partners who remind them of their parent who sought their advice, and looked at them with adoration as it was provided. What pulls an avoidant most intensely to another, is the fire of adulation in the gaze of someone with anxious preoccupied attachment. This is the lure and the song that fixates the avoidant.
This heat of adulation is the call of the first caregiver. Unconsciously the avoidant seeks to attune to this new worshipful object, this new adoring dependent potential partner as they know this, and only this, is the way to gain love. Then the avoidant loves as a faux parent; offering reassurance, offering support, attuning and regulating the partner.
Until, the spell of adulation breaks, as it inevitably will. Revulsion is never far from the consciousness of an avoidant. This is because, no child can feel safe when they are treated as an object of veneration by a parent. This position of power that parentification brings, is a burden and is loathsome and revolting to the child even though the child has to repress this and not see it. Parentification is enmeshment, engulfment, the child has been used, their needs neglected. The parent has been utterly selfish in their inability to manage their own needs and instead has asked their own child to help them regulate their emotions.
This painful reality inevitably breaks through in adult relationships when the avoidant begins to feel burdened by the partner's need for reassurance. The avoidant projects the engulfing parent onto the partner and feels utter exhaustion and overwhelm in the face of the partner's needs, as they once did as a child when having to counsel their parent.
At this stage, the adulation that the anxious preoccupied partner gives, becomes repulsive to the avoidant, it is seen as disgusting and the avoidant feels tainted by it. It can begin to feel manipulative, strategic and unreal.
How to break this cycle?
The avoidant must not fall into the trap of adulation. The exchange of reassurance for adulation continues the cycle of the insecure attachment dance. The avoidant must not give reassurance as a transaction in order to receive adulation. If an avoidant feels a power surge when meeting a potential partner, they must pause and notice if they are receiving adulation, and if they are, then this is a warning to the avoidant that they are about to re-play their parentified role from childhood. Discernment at this stage is essential. Working with your therapist can help you navigate away from the Cycle of Adulation and keep you safe from re-activating the parentified wound.
This work is not easy, but it is possible. The call of adulation is strong, it reaches up from childhood and truly is a force, yet it can be seen, understood and resisted by the avoidant. The cycle can, and should, be broken.
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