Reader Anxious Attachment writes,
I’m wondering if you could offer some advice about how to foster the kind of relationship I’m looking for – emotionally open, intimate, compassionate, communicative, respectful of our individual time and perspectives, playful, etc – at the beginning stages of dating. I’m starting to jump back into the dating pool after a few months of focusing on myself during quarantine, and I’m just so nervous about triggering my anxious attachment style again and wandering down relationship dead ends.
On the one hand, it think it makes sense to try to be emotionally open, vulnerable, and all the things I listed above at the beginning of the relationship. But I also understand that intimacy grows slowly – you can’t go emotional-guns-blazing right at the beginning of meeting someone. I’m just wondering if you have any practical tips for how to build a healthy relationship, right from the start. Thanks!
Dear AA,
It is great that you have learned about attachment style and the way that your anxious attachment style likely impacted your previous relationships (I’m guessing it looked a lot like this). I understand that you want to get into a healthy relationship and use your time being single to think about potential issues and how to avoid them, and that’s great.
The best way to set yourself up for success in a romantic relationship is to work on yourself. Therapy would be ideal to help you understand the origin of your anxious attachment style. Most likely, you had a caregiver that you couldn’t really count on to be there for you consistently, which led to your anxiety and trust issues. Understanding this and processing it will help you move past it and not be as readily drawn to emotionally unavailable partners.
Working on yourself also means figuring out who you are outside of your relationship. If you fill your life with truly fulfilling things, like friends, hobbies, and a meaningful career, then you will be less likely to pin all your hopes and dreams on your next partner and become anxious when they cannot always be present or perfect. Your self-esteem will be dependent on many things, not only whether you can get and keep the attention of a partner. (An aside: A sensitive and deeper thinking person like you may also derive a lot of fulfillment from volunteering with people, especially if your career doesn’t directly involve helping people.)
When you start dating again, only start a relationship with someone with whom you have a physical and emotional spark. Life is too short to try and force a connection with anyone. There are enough fish in the sea for you to find someone you really click with. When you meet that person, be open and flexible. People with anxious attachment tend to subconsciously test their partners fairly early in the relationship. They want to be sure that this person really wants to be together. Unfortunately, the person ends up pulling away because of the difficult and unpredictable nature of the “tests.” This leads to more pursuer-distancer behavior.
Watch out for wanting to merge completely with someone very early on. Don’t start spending every night together right away. Keep hanging out with your friends, going to yoga, or whatever else. Don’t have sex the first night if you tend toward anxious attachment. This is not going to do you any favors because it will ramp up your anxious, attachment-seeking behaviors before you even know if you genuinely like a person. (I have nothing against sex on the first date in general, but for anxious people, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.)
Playfulness cannot be forced, and intimacy grows over time. Openmindedness is probably a precondition for both, though. If you recognize that you tend to be anxious in general (not just anxious attachment), then this, and its associated black-and-white rigid thinking, is something that can be usefully addressed in therapy.
I wish you the best in your dating adventures. Do keep me posted and if you start going down some bad roads, instead of texting the guy 35 times in a row, email me again and I’ll move you to the front of the queue for reader questions. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, I Sense That You Also May Be My 20’s Spirit Animal Like This Girl Too.