The UK didn't choose to avoid such arrangements and requested many times for a comprehensive free trade deal. The problem is that the EU considers arrangements

The UK didn't choose to avoid such arrangements and requested many times for a comprehensive free trade deal. The problem is that the EU considers arrangements such as those with the Swiss to be legacy, deprecated and no longer on offer. They have also spent a lot of time pressuring Switzerland in various ways to try and force it to become a de-facto member-without-membership. They don't want any country in Europe to have any option other than membership, whereby membership means full control from Brussels without local elections having any meaningful outcomes. That is their goal and doing a trade deal with the UK would have undermined that.