Things were close. Good, even. And then, without a fight or a reason you could point to, they went distant. If you have been replaying it trying to find what you did, this is for you.
Short answer: the pull-away usually follows closeness rather than conflict. For many dismissive avoidants, a good, close moment quietly starts to feel like pressure, and the response is to create space, often right after things felt best. It is a pattern, and it is rarely about anything you did.
When someone learned early that depending on others is unsafe, intimacy can feel like a loss of self, and distance brings relief. To you it looks like whiplash; to them it can feel like coming up for air. Knowing that the retreat follows the closeness, rather than a failure on your part, changes what the confusion means, and the book maps the withdrawal step by step.
A pull-away explains the distance; it says nothing yet about the future. Whether space is followed by return, and whether the return can be talked about, is what tells you where the relationship can go. A pattern is also compatible with a relationship that simply is not right, so the explanation is not a reason to wait indefinitely.
Resist the urge to close the gap the moment it opens. Let the space exist, then ask one plain question when they are back: "I noticed you needed some room after the weekend, and that is fine. Can we talk about how that works for both of us?"
Go deeper
The Dismissive Avoidant maps the whole pattern from both sides — how the fortress was built, what it protects, what it costs, and where the door is — with 179 real questions answered.