Dear Michelle:

It just so happens that while replying to another member I came across a website that can be useful to you: marriage. com/ advice/ mental health/ avoidant-attachment.

Your boyfriend clearly fits the Avoidant attachment style (“Emotionally Unavailable”, in your title).  Here is some of what it says under “Is there a solution or treatment?”: “Loving someone with avoidant attachment can be a challenge and requires a lot of patience and understanding .. be tolerant and gentle and avoid criticism”.

You may find relationship advice elsewhere as well, in regard to having a partner with the Avoidant attachment style.

Another website, flow psychology. com, states the following: “There are two avoidant attachment styles. These are fearful-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant. It is said that people with either of these styles regard  intimacy as dangerous and that other people are unreliable… The person with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style has a mentality that he or she is not in need of other people and can survive being alone or does not need to depend on another… People who are considered to be dismissive-avoidant are seen as loners and people who are impersonal and more objective…more interested in their own comfort to the point of not being sensitive to the feelings of other people…

“People with the dismissive-avoidant attachment style tend to refuse to get into detailed discussions and often avoid instances where he or she needs to answer questions.. (they) often think and say that they are not yet ready for a commitment when their relationships are doing well..”

* The attachment styles theory is excellent, but any one individual does not fit one attachment style 100%, at all times. When dividing billions of people into a few groups, such as four attachment styles, there will be a lot of variety within each group. Still, seems to me that there is a close fit between your boyfriend and the dismissive-avoidant attachment style.

anita