The Journey of Finding Love with an Insecure Attachment Style
If you watched any Disney movies growing up, you probably had a skewed view of what it would be like to find your own happily ever after. You imagined the perfect person falling into your world at just the right time to spend forever with you. However, once you opened the door to looking for a partner, you likely found yourself struggling with the anxiety and insecurities that come up when you’re putting yourself out there.
Whether you have an anxious or avoidant attachment style, finding and sustaining a healthy relationship can be challenging. If you’re anxiously attached, your need for validation paired with your ability to attach quickly leaves you insecure in the beginning stages of your relationships. If you’re avoidantly attached, your need for space and time for processing, paired with an extreme desire for independence, can lead you to ghost potential romantic partners accidentally.
So how do you put your best foot forward in the dating world when you want to find a true, committed partner? It all starts with understanding your attachment patterns and using that information and awareness to attract the right partner for you.
Not sure what your attachment style is? Click here to take my quick, free quiz!
Understanding Attachment Patterns
Before we dive into the ways to attract the right partner, it’s important to note that we are more than just attachment labels. While you’ll read “anxiously attached” and “avoidantly attached,” you are much, much more than any one label someone can place on you. And, while it’s sometimes easy to over-identify with a specific label, attachment is a two-way street highly dependent on who we have attached to in the past and who we are presently attached to.
The Wheel of Attachment
Let me introduce you to the Wheel of Attachment:
As you can see, attachment is much more of a spectrum based on our experiences. How does this work when it comes to our romantic relationships? Well, if you identify more with avoidant attachment and date someone more secure, you may find yourself moving to a more secure attachment. If you’re dating someone with an anxious attachment, you might notice some fearful patterns arise.
Anxious and avoidant attachment are seen here as opposites, which is true, but they also have a lot of similarities since they are two sides of the same insecure coin. You can read more about their similarities here.
Attachment Styles and Dating
So why is it good to understand your attachment patterns and have at least a general awareness of the other patterns on the spectrum of attachment? Different people have different needs in their relationships, and many of those needs stem from their childhood experiences and attachment patterns.
Ultimately, every relationship is going to have its own struggles and even the healthiest relationships have conflicts (ruptures and repairs), but when you have an awareness of your own patterns, you will be able to quickly tell if a certain relationship is going to help you heal and move toward security, or cause more of a rollercoaster of emotions (I’m looking at you, Anxious-Avoidant Dance).
The best way to navigate what you need in a relationship is to take some time to really process some questions like:
Looking back on past relationships, what makes you feel most loved?
Looking back on past relationships, what frustrated you the most?
What are your expectations in a relationship?
What do you want in a partner?
What don’t you want in a partner?
If you’re someone who has more anxious patterns, you might find that you need a partner who is more available, willing to offer reassurance, communicates clearly, and enjoys making (and following through) with plans.
If you’re someone with more avoidant patterns, you might look for a partner who is more emotionally aware, comfortable spending time alone, and knows how to clearly communicate their needs.
Looking Outside Your “Type”
If I asked you to describe your ideal partner, you might already have a picture of them in your mind. When you look back on your past relationships, what types of people did you typically date? Do you see any consistent patterns?
If you’re anxiously attached, you might find a pattern of unavailable partners. Maybe they were deeply invested in their work, they were more closed off emotionally, or they weren’t ever really willing to commit fully to your relationship. If you’re avoidantly attached, you might find that you have a pattern of dating people who are more emotional, outgoing, and expressive than you are. It’s true what they say, opposites do attract. While our opposites can unlock parts of us in need of healing, they can also keep our nervous systems in an activated state—the state that keeps your body stressed. This frequently is the state your body is most comfortable in, too, depending on your childhood experiences.
You might be dating people who are touching your trauma and repeating your childhood experiences.
While it may be uncomfortable at first, looking outside of your “type” might offer you the characteristics you need most to find safety and healing. Unfortunately, people who are warm, compassionate, and calm can be seen as “boring.” These are also the same people who allow you to feel the safety needed to become truly intimate and vulnerable. Which, I’d argue, is what most people want in a relationship.
Insecure Attachment and Romantic Relationships
Whether you have anxious, avoidant, or even fearful patterns, you will find that a relationship that moves out of the honeymoon or romantic phase allows you to find the places that need healing. I’ve seen many couples arrive at this point and jump ship because they think that the sudden conflicts and challenges mean they aren’t the perfect match. First, let me say that there is no perfect relationship or partner. Every relationship worth anything is going to require work.
The goal, however, is to move away from thinking that it’s you vs your partner and begin seeing yourselves as a team again. Your core wounds and attachment patterns are going to come alive, leaving you with the ability to work together, build safety, and develop an intimacy that happens when two people choose each other and heal together.
While my book, Anxiously Attached, is written with anxious people in mind, almost all of the practices and insights can be applied to my avoidant and fearful friends. Your insecure attachment requires some of the same things of you to become more secure in life and love: healing your Little Me, becoming self-full, and learning to love your whole self.
A Brand New Way to Heal
We need other people to help us heal, it’s a part of our very core to rely on a community. It’s not always easy, though, to find a group of people who share a similar path as you. Well, that is until now. I’m honored to have a community of people who are becoming aware of their attachment patterns and are excited about the journey to becoming more secure.
I’ve partnered with my incredible teammate, Julia Newlin-Smith, to build a new intimate container of people seeking to heal together. This safe space called, Exploring Anxiously Attached: A Journey of Connection, is going to guide a small group of people, like you, through my book, Anxiously Attached, to process and practice the insights and strategies together.
Space is going to be limited to maintain an intimate, impactful experience, so be sure to click here to learn more about this unique offer and save your spot before we run out.
