If you are an anxiously attached dater, then you may have heard comments like “you come on too strong,” or that “you are too much too soon” when it comes to dating, and you have likely had people simply stop responding to you via text (maybe it’s happened many times), or ghost you after a few dates, or even a few months, and maybe some other ghostly experiences in your dating life. This pattern feels horrible when it happens and it hurts you to keep pouring your heart out and feeling like you are getting so close to what you want, and then losing it again and again. From my clinical experience, anxiously attached daters have so much love to give to a relationship, yet they’d also like it reciprocated. Anxious daters frequently have had many painful experiences in dating and relationships, and often have a sinking feeling that there isn’t someone who can ever fully meet their needs. We keep dating anyway though looking for our person, because it also feels pretty painful to be alone.
Being an anxiously attached dater has us unconsciously seeking out relationships where the other person will often be unable or unwilling to meet many of our needs. The truth is that anxious daters most often feel attracted to a partner who shows up avoidantly. Avoidantly attached daters often want a varying degree of connection, but it typically does not feel enough and it is inconsistent for the anxiously attached dater.
Avoidantly attached daters are often not available for what an anxious dater is looking for emotionally. From working for years with people who identify as anxious and avoidant daters, I’ve come to find that sometimes the more avoidantly attached a person is, and the more anxiously attached we are = a lot of chemistry/fire, but it can be the explosive kind where someone or both people get hurt. In a long term anxious-avoidant relationship dynamic, couples therapy can be helpful to work on these dynamics. If our relationship stays in an anxious-avoidant dynamic for a long period of time, our needs and desires can go unmet. Keep in mind that anxious attachment style often shows up across settings, not just romantic dating and relationships.
With anxiously attached daters, there can be an unconscious narrative of “I am not enough, so let me try to make myself enough by over-giving and going above and beyond so that I can be enough for you.” When we do this, it can be off putting and feel like too much for the other person. People like feeling confident, competent and capable and sometimes anxious daters can cross that over-helping line, from an entirely well-meaning and kind-hearted place. Boundaries feel good to people, especially securely attached daters. Healthy relationships appreciate an awareness of that line of separation between where one person stops and the other starts.
Anxious daters can hold onto anxious-avoidant dating dynamics, reaching out over and over again even when there’s no response at all on the other end, or very little there from the other person. Often, the more anxiously attached a person is, the longer and more readily they will (painfully) accept having their wants and needs go unmet. We may not be given clear and obvious 100% yes from the other person after months of dating, maybe the other person is barely even responding to us, yet the anxious dater will sometimes keep a pattern of texting and calling in hopes that at some point the other person will realize that they are missing out on someone great -us.
How does it feel to be anxiously attached while dating?
If you’re an anxious dater, then you have a tendency to be in relationships; being single for longer stretches often feels painful, so anxiously attached people are frequently actively looking to partner or in a relationship. So, you go on date after date, and often feel a lot of attraction to people who are emotionally and even often quite literally unavailable to you.
You wonder why this keeps happening to you specifically. You may go on dates with people who are available and interested in you, but you’re just not attracted to those people–you may friend zone them, mentally note that it was a boring date and ignore their future texts (or continue texting but with no interest in dating them because you don’t want to hurt their feelings), or you may be overwhelmed or even repulsed by their confident communicated interest and pursuit of you. This can also show up in forming friendships as well. You may feel incredibly frustrated, lonely, angry, and at times believe that something must be wrong with you and wonder when this pattern will finally change. It feels hopeless because it just keeps happening to you. You know that it doesn’t happen to everyone, so why you?
Anxious attachment can cause our thirst for connection to feel insatiable and as if what we get will simply never be enough; there are reasons for that. Sometimes, what we’re doing to get the connection or responses that we need, is actually having the opposite effect that we are seeking. Mild to intense jealousy and grippy behaviors, texting, location checking, and similar behaviors can push away people whom we are actually wanting to bring closer. This makes the very thing that we desire constantly out of reach. Sometimes we are even inadvertently pushing away the people we want to draw in, causing an often painful cycle of people pulling back from us, both in dating and friendship. This hurts, deeply, for anxiously attached people. Learning skills and strategies to soothe an anxious nervous system, ground yourself, show up from a place of confidence and self-love KNOWING that you deserve the very relationship that you seek will be supportive in getting there.
When you go out, you may be attracted to the mysterious and distant person who does not communicate much of an interest. It’s a guessing game as to whether or not they are interested in you. They may keep asking to hang out with you, but they don’t verbally express interest in the way that you hope they would so that it is clear that they are interested (and the ones who do express clear interest, well, we’re just not interested in them). Does this sound like a painful cycle when you look at it? It doesn’t seem to make sense, but when we look at it from a psychological perspective it actually makes a lot of sense.
Why do we pursue people who are emotionally unavailable?
We repeat the cycle over and over again, hoping at some point the outcome will somehow change…even though we keep doing the same thing. People with anxious attachment styles typically have unmet needs that they are longing to fill, but because of childhood attachment wounds, without work and growth, the cycle will likely continue on. I once heard a quote that stated:
“We are only as needy as our unmet needs.”
There is a reason that anxiously attached daters feel hungry for their needs to be met, sometimes intensely. Oftentimes our emotional needs were not fully met in childhood, and we seek what is familiar, so we seek another relationship where our emotional needs will continue to go unmet. A great partner can meet many of our needs (and we meet theirs) through kind, open and healthfully-paced vulnerable communication. What I mean by that last part is moving at a pace that allows for gradual sharing and, over time, increasingly vulnerable communication. For example, not giving a stranger or person from a couple dates your most vulnerable shares. They haven’t earned that and we do not know if they’re a safe place yet.
What does our anxious attachment often look like from the outside?
In a dating environment, someone with significant anxiously attached dating patterns can be observed as some of the following examples, and particularly when most or all of the following are true for someone:
- Sending repeated texts to someone who has not yet responded
- Also, sending lengthy chunks of text, including multiple lengthy texts when the other person is sending very little
- Sometimes coming across as pushy or intense and sometimes even described by others as having a sense of entitlement to closeness in relationships where we are in a very early stage and that level of attempts at closeness only pushes people away
- Sometimes making statements or actions that expose our jealous dating patterns/history
- Showing up to a conversation with lots of feelings and upset about why the other person didn’t get back to you sooner (and maybe it’s only been a few or several hours, and maybe even only a few dates)
- Putting a ton of effort into forming a relationship with someone whom you actually do not really know yet -maybe it’s only been a few dates or hangouts (if friendship), and you are pressing the gas harder -maybe even a lot harder -than the other person. (Notice their pacing and move within that range, do not intensely overshoot it as this can have the opposite of our intended effect. We want to be desired as much as we desire, we each deserve that.)
- Many anxious daters are constantly checking their device to see if the other person messaged back yet (or maybe even checking the other person’s location if that option is available) and if they have not messaged back, there can be lots of feelings about it.
- We can be possessive or grippy early on, having expectations of another person that are not aligned with where we currently are in the relationship stage/dating process.
- We can push people early on toward a yes or no with us, when they’re just getting to know us, and this can push them away. (It’s so helpful to just show up and fully be yourself, knowing that you deserve someone who will ultimately be all in on you, but it’s not reasonable to expect someone to be all in on us when they do not yet know us. How could they be after just meeting us? Putting pressure here can steer people away from us.)
- Sometimes even the lyrics of the music we tend toward the most is about unrequited love, loving someone more than they can love us, never forgetting someone who never was going to care about us a fraction of how much we cared about them.
- We may send frequent smiles in the direction of strangers who have a less than kind facial expression toward us. We want to smooth things out, we want to be liked, we want to feel accepted, especially by the people who seem to not.
At a very minimum, find someone who wants to be with you.
It happens too often that people with insecure attachment styles, and from my experience, particularly anxious attachment, are willing to accept so little from someone they date or partner with, “breadcrumbing” as it is often called. There are clues that they do not love who you are, how you are, they may even say that they are not attracted to you, or they are not sure about you, they do not want to do activities and spend time with you. It is so important to know your value and to date from that empowered place.
Healing Anxious Attachment
While you heal it, you will feel it and that can be painful. You know that though, you have felt the pain before. Supportive therapy is helpful for this healing process. It will take following a different pattern in relationships, and that can be tough and long term work. If you’re reading this and resonating, then you likely know how anxious attachment feels. But how do people heal their anxious attachment style and move closer toward being securely attached? Healing an anxious attachment style takes insight, mindfulness as you date, self-compassion, and self-love, and a commitment to showing up for yourself differently in the long run than you have historically.
When we have a strengthened sense of self, self-esteem, and truly lean into our worth, then we no longer expect someone to consistently show up for us in a way that, based on history and data, they haven’t yet done. When we talk about the anxious-avoidant dynamic, it can seem simple and we may wonder why people stay in that cycle. Like everything in psychology there are real reasons. I believe that healing attachment wounds is best done through long-term work with an attachment-knowledgeable licensed therapist whom you feel gets you and you can trust.
When we do the therapeutic work of healing an anxious attachment style as we date and form new friendships, we engage with people who show up for us and we disengage from people who do not.
With self-love comes self-respect, and a deep knowing of how deserving you are to have your needs met in the ways that you so readily and happily meet others’ needs.
In working with clients for some time now, it’s quite common that people share feeling put off by some of the insecure attachment resources that exist for anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Many resources refer to there having been childhood trauma that occurred, leading to an insecure attachment style. People will often share that they had a good enough or even great childhood with the majority of their needs met and loving parents/caregivers who were doing the very best that they could. Therefore, they couldn’t possibly have an insecure attachment, right? The thing is, anxious or avoidant attachment can certainly stem from trauma in childhood, but it also often occurs in people who express having great childhoods. Attachment disruption in childhood can result from any of the following, among others:
- Inconsistent reactions and responses from our parents or caregivers
- Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), a term coined by Dr. Jonice Webb. CEN isn’t what our parents did to us, but rather what they failed to know to do for us, so childhood emotional needs went unmet. This is extremely common, even with parents who have the best intentions.
- Having a caregiver struggle with various mental health or substance use issues, especially if untreated or undiagnosed
- Being separated from caregivers
- Childhood trauma
What does secure attachment look and feel like?
- You know the value that you bring to a relationship, friendship or any setting
- You take time to get to know someone to ensure it is a good fit for you
- You don’t jump into something overnight, and you communicate your feelings and intentions over time honestly and openly as you get to know someone
- You don’t worry about whether or not someone likes you or wants to be with you in early dating, because you know that the only people worth you being with are people who truly see you and value you and all of the awesomeness that you bring.
- When someone cancels plans and they give you a reason, you take them at their word and don’t make other assumptions or get triggered, but instead stay calm, kind and grounded
- We mirror within a reasonable range of how another person shows up, so we are not pursuing someone who is intense rapid pacing or seriously slow pacing dating.
- You believe what others say about their intentions and ensure their actions align.
- You do not stick around for breadcrumb relationships or situationships where they are not aligning with you on desired outcomes (those are easy to let go of because you know that you deserve something that feels supportive, reciprocal and is more than enough for you).
When anxiously attached people do go on dates with someone who is securely attached, they may feel that the person was nice but that it felt a bit boring or there wasn’t enough attraction, spark, fire. Anxiously attached people will often feel the most intense chemistry with avoidantly attached partners, and it’s not sexy, but that has to do with our childhood and attachment issues. Secure attachment feels predictable and safe, which can feel boring in comparison. For an anxiously attached person, dating an unavailable partner over and over is often fire first, pain later, on repeat. We are trying to draw water from a dry (or low water well) and expecting to get a full bucket of water, yet we do this over and over again with anxious attachment. We do it for years with the same person or we keep doing it with different people. You deserve to have your needs met by someone who wants to meet them. That’s the very least that you deserve.
If there is a part of you that does not believe those last two sentences, then I would encourage you to work with a therapist who understands attachment style, how it impacts your dating life, and can support you in increasing your self-love, self-confidence and healing attachment patterns that are causing you pain. You can break the cycle, it doesn’t have to stay this way.
The truth is that you are awesome just as you are. Oftentimes anxious daters give more, do more, try more, reach out more. What if you didn’t need to work so hard at this? What if trying a little less would actually yield more? You can learn to relax into the dating process and date with a lot more confidence and calm (it feels much better and lighter this way too).
This blog is meant to offer insight and reflection, not medical or psychological advice. It’s no substitute for working with a licensed professional. The strategies mentioned here are general suggestions and may not resonate with everyone. If something doesn’t work for you, please know that this is simply one perspective, informed by my background, training, and experience. Also, any examples provided are purely hypothetical and do not reflect actual people or situations.
