Dating with an Anxious Attachment Style

So on today's Ask Laura I have an anxiously attracted young lady who is asking some questions about dating. We've been working together for a while and she's gone from having an anxious attachment style where she is very worried, very anxious about the people that she's dating. As soon as they pull away from her or go away for any point she gets very very upset and very anxious around it. Like a typical anxiously attached human. And because of that we've had some time out of the dating pool and now we're moving back into the dating pool after we have worked on anxious attachment styles and healing childhood trauma. But the problem is is that when you heal your anxious attachment style often what happens is that boundaries come into place and we begin to become a little bit fearful avoidant and so now we're managing that. And today my anxiously attached slash fearful avoidant client bless her has asked me this question. So she's dating, she's matching with people online and they are proceeding to message her quite a lot. And she's finding that this constant messaging is giving her the ick because it feels like as soon as she starts talking with them some of that limerence starts to pop in. And if you're not aware of what limerence is, limerence is basically an involuntary intense romantic obsession that is often marked by intrusive thoughts and acute longing for emotional reciprocation by the person that you are limerent over. And it can often kind of come as a result of having unmet romantic needs or uncertainty and you can see how that would often pay back into somebody who's anxiously attached. Now my darling here is talking to people, talking to men online and they are talking a lot to her and as a result she's kind of getting some of that thought process where she's beginning to think about oh my gosh maybe this is the one, maybe we're going to be settled down, maybe we're going to have a lot of things together and be together forever. And because of that it's giving her the ick now because she's had a couple of guys that have come and done this and then left. Now she's beginning to pattern match that anybody that does that may abandon her and so as soon as she starts to see these behaviours of kind of lots of talking, lots of what feels a little bit like maybe love bombing to her because she has been in a narcissistic relationship in the past where love bombing had been an issue. And now this consistent talking to her, being over the top, lots of communication is actually making her quite fearful and so it's giving her the ick and now she's wanting to put in a boundary. So she asked me this morning, I'm getting the ick, I don't know what to do about it, should I put in a boundary with these guys and how am I going to proceed from dating from here on in? Have I now become fearful avoidance? Now the question here about the boundary is number one, you can message somebody as much or as little as you like and the boundary doesn't have to be don't message me so much and asking them to measure your boundary for you. The boundary is literally you not replying which can be a really difficult thing for us particularly for women because we've been told to be nice and to be respectful and you know message people about when they message you. But actually if somebody's messaged you five times, the only way that conversation can happen and can continue is if you are returning their messages. So the boundary there is, is you watching your own response? Are you messaging more than you should be messaging? Is that part of the problem? Is that where this boundary is kind of being kind of stomped on a little bit because actually you're giving more to them than what you want to be giving and that's where the problem is with that. So I would suggest the boundary here is literally just you not responding when you don't want to respond and if they're texting you too much I'd say pull back a little bit and stop responding and they'll stop messaging you too much and if somebody continues to message you you know that you don't know and you haven't met yet and they've messaged you 500 times today and you haven't responded I'd say that was a red flag and that might be a good idea to kind of pull back from those people anyway. So number two, has she now become fearful, avoidant? Yes there is a little bit of that going on because when we go from one we tend to switch into the other side of things and then before we kind of find that you know that middle ground. I like to describe it as a pendulum that's swinging you know if you've swung far this way you're going to swing far that way and it's going to take a little while before you rest in the middle and so yeah there is a little bit of kind of avoidance going on but it's mainly because of anxiety it's mainly a fear of like you know that again of abandonment, a fear that you're giving too much for somebody, a fear that maybe you're being gaslit or love bombed and again if you put your boundaries in with the communication that you're having with that person you'll find that that tends to lessen a little bit. She's concerned that maybe her point isn't valid and that she's just kind of gone into her head a little bit so I think everything that she said has been completely valid and it's completely you know what you're feeling is what you feel so it is valid and you know if somebody is talking to you quite a lot I would say that really the reason why people message you a lot on online dating is because they want to get to know you before they put the time and effort into meeting you. Now there's benefits and problems with that because yes you are kind of able to scope somebody out in messages but the truth of the matter is that a lot of the time what you're doing is projecting your own either good or bad qualities onto somebody unconsciously and so really you're reading things in how you would send them rather than necessarily reading them in how they would send them so online communication where it's just verbal probably isn't actually the best way to kind of work out how somebody is or what somebody's like but it's understandable that people want to you know text a lot before they meet you to work out whether or not they want to do that and the main issue here isn't so much that people or that she's messaging a lot with people the main issue here is that she is getting attached to the person whilst they are messaging and so this is why she's kind of going towards these avoidant tendencies so the important thing here to recognize is that actually everything's valid but there's this kind of like limerent imagination that's happening here where we're thinking maybe this is the one and so we're becoming a little bit too attached to somebody before we've met them that's the issue the issue isn't that they're texting too much the isn't isn't that you know that that you're avoidant the issue isn't here anxiety the issue is that we're getting too attached to people before we've met them so how can we deal with that so limerence is is unhealthy and it tends to be because of we're trying to fill an inner void and we're also trying to satisfy some unmet childhood needs for love now there is only so much healing that you can do as an individual i call this my this is my idea um this is my little trauma onion and so there's only so much healing that you can do as an individual you actually have to go into the next layer of like you know healing with other people in friendships in relationships in romantic relationships and then healing that you'll do when you have children and get married because each one of those situations brings new territory and you can't heal in that territory until you're in that territory so i would say miss anxiously attached has done all of the work that she can do on her own which is why we're now moving into the the dating side so the question here is often you know what unhealthy kind of inner void is wanting to be filled at this current moment in time what unmet childhood need for love is being triggered and how have we dealt with that as us individuals and can we continue to do that whilst we are in the dating and the answer is yes you know so often when we start to feel these needs coming these needs coming up it begins to trigger a lot of kind of like a worthiness a lot of fear of abandonment a lot of worry so what we need to do is we need to kind of recognize that that anxiety is coming up that feeling of not being enough is coming up again and we need to just kind of do some self-soothing or so we need to kind of be like i'm fearful again that i'm going to be abandoned okay and we're not being abandoned we don't know this guy we've not even met him so even if he did run away it wouldn't make any difference so i i like to use the phrase i was fine before this person i'll be fine after this person okay regardless of who they are and how attached we are you'll be fine before and you were you were fine before and you'll be fine after so some self-soothing some self-recognition of the fact that we're getting kind of a little bit too attached when that anxiety starts to pop in we could maybe be conscious enough to kind of detach a little bit come back to self-care habits come back to cosseting on your own come back to talking to friends because often when we go into this kind of limerent stage we've kind of just given too much to the other person and that's where a lot of the abandonment tends to come in because it feels like we've invested a lot but actually we haven't really invested anything like you haven't even met this person yet most of these you know you're just talking online so the idea is that we've invested a lot but the idea of investment is imagination it's just because in our heads we're thinking about we're getting married we're having kids and you know we're and we're doing all that mad stuff that we do and it's this it's the invention of the fact that we've done all of these things with this person when we come back into the present moment and we're just like what am i doing i've only i've talked to this guy four times you know i don't even know this guy there has been no investment made the investment is made in our imaginations so you can't lose something that you've imagined because it isn't real anyway okay so we can also come back to is it reciprocated you know look at whether or not that what is what you're giving out is being reciprocated i like to call this relationship chess you move they move you move they move if it's just you moving just you moving just you moving or just them moving just them moving just them moving that's not really how a relationship should work you know it should be each person reciprocating and pretty much evenly in particularly in the beginning and recognize that those thought patterns when they come up they tend to be quite intrusive and involuntary so when you do start to get these feelings again come back to the moment the the moment of peace and mindfulness right now and just kind of take a deep breath and just be like wow okay that's limerence okay recognize it for what it is it's imagination it's imagination it's thoughts it's nothing that's real okay remember the the word f e a r is false events appearing real it's you know i'm going to be abandoned no that's the fear of abandonment it's a false event that's appearing well you can't be abandoned by somebody you're not even with so come back into that present moment settle yourself soothe yourself do some self-talk to like rationalize with your brain i can't be a kind of like i like to you know and i stuff this stuff comes up for me now i'd laugh because it's like well i don't have it anymore because i'm in a relationship but you know when it's when it did used to come up for me it was always kind of like a very very deep feeling of abandonment and loss which is triggered a lot through kind of stuff from childhood and i met needs in childhood and so the feeling the person that's having the feeling of like i'm gonna be abandoned is that tiny little child self you your child self you that really just needs to be self-soothed of like baby girl nobody's abandoning you you do not need this guy we've got each other you've got me talk to your inner child self-soothe her remind her that you've got her and reaffirm those feelings of self-worth and your independence okay remind yourself that you are independent that you were okay before this person came along you'll be perfect after this person came along that your self-worth you've been working on that for years that no man is going to come along and steal your self-worth from you at this at this point and so you know focus on love that isn't tied to validation and isn't tied to uh you know giving more or doing more for for somebody else okay remember that healthy relationships are based in independence they are based in understanding and acceptance and and a bit you know and self-worth in your own self-worth in your own self-acceptance I always say that a good healthy relationship should be two people walking parallel to each other unhealthy relationships are like this where you want to be intertwined and enmeshed with the other person and that's not healthy okay a healthy relationship is you deciding to walk the other person home as you walk home to together and choosing to walk the path together okay and forge out a path together he's not walking your path with you and you're not walking his path with him you two have decided to leave your independent paths and walk a path together that's a healthy relationship okay so this has been ask laura if you've got any questions or anything feel free to drop them in the comments feel free to send me your emails if you have questions or concerns about anything you can get me help get me at laura mahlstrom on any of my social media that's tiktok instagram and facebook feel free to come and friend me on facebook as well over there um yeah and feel free to send an email to team at laura mahlstrom.com and I can answer all of your questions there as well I love you guys take care of yourselves remember that you are worth everything and you don't need a man to be happy but there is a right guy out there for you and when you earn divine union it is one of the best things that you can ever have but you don't get there through dating bums I love you I don't want no scrub scrub is the guy that can't get no love from me singing at the passenger side of the bus trying to holler at me don't want no