Dear reader, are you an Anxious or Avoidant Dater? Recently I was at the Love Coaches Conference in Santa Monica. There were some amazing guest speakers who shared their insight for helping us help our clients find love.
I found the key note speaker Dr. Amir Levine of Attachment Theory to be particularly interesting.
If you aren’t familiar with Attachment Theory, basically there are 3 types of relationship attachment styles, Secure, Anxious or Avoidant.
Basically, people with Secure relationship attachment styles are comfortable with Intimacy and don’t think a lot about the relationship or worry about their partner’s ability to love them back.
People with the Anxious attachment style crave intimacy and closeness and have a lot of insecurities about where the relationship is going. They worry a lot about their partner’s behavior, spend time trying to interpret their partner’s behavior, worry that their partner will leave them and have a hard time letting go.
People with Avoidant attachment style feel uncomfortable when things get too close, value their independence and freedom more than relationship and don’t worry about their partner’s feelings or commitment to them. They can walk away from a relationship very easily and seem relatively unaffected by the break-up.
Some people have both Avoidant and Anxious relationship styles. This shows up as being very concerned about their partner’s commitment to them but then feel uncomfortable when things start to get too intimate.
Not surprisingly often anxious daters find themselves attracted to avoidant daters to create their own type of “balance”.
Unfortunately this rarely works because the avoidant dater will only INCREASE the anxious dater’s anxiety!!
If you have ever had trouble concentrating to the distraction of other things in your life or you worry about what your partner is doing or how he feels about you to the point where you lose sleep or don’t get things done, you are probably an anxious dater.
If you are an anxious dater, you may be mistaking this anxiety with love!
A relationship with an avoidant relationship style person will just result in you feeling even more insecure, on edge and anxious all the time. And you will become pre-occupied with the relationship and the person you’re dating to the detriment of other things in your life!
So if you’re an anxious dater are you doomed to feel insecure in relationship forever? Can you stop being “so needy” and start to relax? Are you destined for a lifetime of therapy to change this about yourself so you can have a happy, healthy fulfilling relationship?
The good news is NO!
And I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that Dr. Levine’s advice to anxious dater was the same advice I give my clients!
Dr. Levine’s advice is that instead of looking for a partner who you feel “drawn too” and for intense chemistry and physical attraction, instead look for a partner who has a secure relationship attachment style.
How do you do this?
Simply learn how to ask for you what you need. What is ironic is that while Anxious daters really need to learn to ask for what they need, they are the most scared to do it for fear of rejection or being left.
But here’s the truth:
A person with a secure attachment style won’t have a problem calling or texting you every day when he travels for business.
A person with a secure attachment style won’t mind if you ask him to make advance plans with you for the weekend.
A person with a secure attachment style won’t send you mixed messages by not contacting you for a week and then call you wanting to get together THAT NIGHT.
Yes, the uncertainty of dating can be an especially anxiety-provoking time even for peole with Secure attachment styles, and so for Anxious daters it can be especially difficult!
But if you get support and learn how date to have the happy, healthy fulfilling relationship you want, you only have to go through it once!!
Now what if you are an Avoidant relationship style?
Well for you, when things start to get serious you will feel uncomfortable.
You will start to look for things wrong with the person and find yourself losing interest in your partner.
You may become interested in someone else or create crisis in your life and find reasons to avoid the person you are becoming intimate with.
If you easily meet people to date, but rarely get in a relationship, you may have an avoidant dating style.
You would be best matched with another avoidant relationship style so you can give each other the space and freedom you need.
My ex-husband and his wife both have Avoidant relationship styles and they get along great!!
And she loves me because he and I are still friends and he can talk to me about things and she doesn’t have to deal with it! But because he’s Avoidant we only talk every few months!
When you know your relationship attachment style, you can find the right match for you so that you can have a relationship that meets your needs!
I would love to hear from you!
What relationship attachment style do you have?
How has this affected you in relationships so far?
Simple hit reply to this email and let me know!!
Wishing you...
Much Love and Happy Dating,
