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It’s all about learning what you don’t want

Ah man, it sucks that relationship didn’t work out! I know you thought they were the one, but what did you learn from it?

What a tough question to answer when you’re grieving for someone who isn’t even dead!

What did you learn?

When a relationship breaks down and this doesn’t even just have to be a romantic one, you HAVE to walk away saying to yourself “well ok, next time I know from a process of elimination, here are the things I know I don’t want in my next person” rather than taking the approach of “here’s my super long list of tick boxes I want them to fill”.

Instead I think it’s better to add to a list of things we know we don’t want next time rather than sticking to a list of absolute must haves for our “perfect” partner (who won’t exist by the way because perfect is simply unattainable).

What have you realised you don’t want your forever person to be like, or what traits have you realised you don’t think match your own for whatever reason.

Here’s the benefits of finding your perfect match from a process of elimination rather than going off of a “must haves” list.

1. We might think we know exactly how we want our forever person to be in our minds, but when we experience it in real life it feels strangely different to our expectations.

2. Finding out what kind of person you want to be with from a process of elimination rather helps build you into who you are at the same time.

3. Until you’ve experienced what you don’t want, how will you REALLY know exactly what you do what with total certainty?

4. Creating a list of expectations for our perfect match to fill actually reflects more of what we’re missing from our own life than anything else, you want someone outgoing, confident and not scared of anything? Okay cool, but are you actually bringing that to the relationship yourself? Because if you’re not, how do you expect to attract someone like this?

5. As brutal as it sounds, getting your hands dirty will make you fully appreciate the final stop. So if I’m putting this in terms of dating, until you’ve dated some s**t heads, you’ll never fully appreciate the person you’re supposed to be with. See what I mean?

6. Dating is character building. Honestly it really is. You can’t expect someone who’s the embodiment of some list of “must haves” to show up without you putting in any effort. You have to get out there and experience some crappy relationships to realise what you ACTUALLY want because our wants from a relationship change as we get older.

So honestly. In learning what you don’t want. You’ll inadvertently learn what you do and that’s a far better way around of doing things because it sill help form you into the person that you are at the same time.

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Why verbalising “I love you” seems so damn hard (to me)

The last few weeks have felt very self reflective for me, I tend to direct myself towards the route of self discovery and personal growth when faced with situations that I find emotionally challenging, so it got me thinking …. Why does telling someone I love them feel so unimportant to me, until people around me start asking if I’ve told the person I’m dating that I love them yet, it really doesn’t enter my head.

I really had to delve into my childhood to find an answer to this one, but really it came to me after an off topic conversation with a friend about the importance of understanding a partners love language and what we naturally gravitate towards to express our love for another person.

It suddenly dawned on me that ‘I love you’s’ weren’t something that were thrown around left right and centre as I was growing up, and I’m not saying that’s because there was no love in my family, in fact it was quite the opposite, but we knew we loved each other in different ways rather that constantly telling each other that we love them.

As I was growing up, I was shown continuously that the way someone expresses they care about you or love you is through doing things for you, from cooking you a meal, helping you with homework (one of my parents expressions of love), buying you new things or taking you on days out etc. 

Even when I look at the relationship my parents had (all be it not an ever lasting love affair) but my mum would show she cared about my dad by looking after me and my brother and not asking for help and always making sure she had home cooked meals prepared for him, it was even shown when she supported him throughout a career change. And my dads way of showing love was through financial support, he would ensure we kept a (large) roof over our heads and he would always take us on a lavish family holiday once a year. 

But this proves my point – all of these expressions of love are action based, not word based. And this was what I grew up around.

So now here’s my question I’ve had to ask myself, is this why I have such an issue with verbally expressing how I feel about someone? Quite possibly.

To me, as soon as I start going above and beyond for someone through doing things like booking weekends away, cooking for them, making the bed and making them a coffee when they want one, I’m showing how much I care or that I’m falling in love with them (because trust me, unless I really like you, I will probably always hesitate to do things for you) and it replaces the need for that all be it intimidating (to me) three word eight letter sentence.

I also tend to forget that not everyone will understand this expression of love and will need to hear exactly how I feel about them because doing things isn’t an obvious enough sign if your love language isn’t acts of service. But here’s the funny thing, I don’t want to receive love through acts of service. In fact, I want someone to tell me how they feel about me, I like having viral reassurance which is why words of affirmation is my joint top love language – so although I cant express love this way, I do want to receive it this way, which has some kind of twisted irony to it really!

But here’s the thing, the type of love you grow up around will either do one of two things to you as an adult. You either admire the love you’ve been around as a child and want to replicate that in adulthood, or … you want the total opposite because you crave what you didn’t have.

So although I can’t bring myself to tell someone how much I care about them or how much I love them, I do want them to tell me – talk about hypocritical. But it does make sense because I want the opposite of what I’ve grown up around.

My childhood also wasn’t filled with constant expressions of PDA either between my parents or towards me and my brother from my parents. We weren’t raised by overly ‘huggy‘ parents and yet for me now as an adult, physical touch is the joint top love language I want my partner to express towards me to show that they care.

So here’s the question I’ll pose to you – how did your parents express love to you and your siblings and each other?
And how do you think this has impacted what love actually is to you?

When you actually sit down to think to answer the question of ‘what is love to you’ its initially going to be hard to answer, but a lot of us will form our answer based on what we’ve seen and experienced, either through what we’ve grown up around or from the rom coms we’ve seen at the cinema. But it’s important to be able to answer the question taking out external factors that may have shaped our opinion.

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Sounds like you’ve got a lot of baggage

Imagine that. Imagine someone who used to claim to love you telling you that no one after them will love you because you now sound like you’ve got ‘baggage’

Maybe that should come on the warning label when you date someone with a narcissist personality. Not only will the tear you down when you guys are together, but they will continue to do so once they aren’t even in your life.

Funny thing is, that so called ‘baggage’ they’re claiming makes you unlovable is only from all their unneeded extras they’ve left you with. You know when you get to the airport and realise you need to get rid of a few things you don’t actually want because your suitcase is too heavy, yeah well that’s the crap they left you with.

You were just fine, in fact your suitcase was way under the weight limit, but the stuff they left you with weighed 10x the amount of anything you actually owned yourself.

But it’s ok, because a heavier suitcase just means you need to develop a more keen sense of awareness for what muscles are working to carry this heavier weight.

If we’re speaking metaphorically, the muscle they’ll have left you needing to work on is actually your brain. But god damn will that muscle be toned af for the next person who wants to try and join you at this made up airport (kind of like a terming to jet off to a perfect healthy relationship).

Here’s the part when you can thank your narcissistic piece of s**t ex for leaving you with the weight of your relationship and where it went wrong because all they’ve done is provide you with the ability to sense someone with negative intentions a mile off.

Typically speaking, this kind of ex will normally be the second person you fall in love with. And this is based off of the findings of anthropologist Helen Fisher and according to her we only fall in love three times in our life but our second love, well that’s the hardest one.

It’s the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved.

Our second love will typically become a cycle, often one we keep repeating because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time we try, it somehow ends worse than before and we focus so much on making it work that we will tend to lose sight of if we actually should be trying to make it work at all.

More often than not, our second love is unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic. Most likely there will be high levels of drama. This is exactly what keeps us addicted to this storyline, because it’s the emotional roller coaster of extreme highs and lows and like a junkie trying to get a fix, we stick through the lows with the expectation of the high.

So it’s no surprise really that this love has just us with some ‘baggage’.

However …. what it has done is shown us exactly what we don’t want from a love that we will have forever. It’s also taught us lessons that we would never have learnt if it wasn’t for going through this experience.

So thank your second love, for leaving you with their baggage (and then kindly reminding you of it years later just to make sure you don’t move on from them) because without them, you wouldn’t know what a healthy long lasting relationship is and how to cherish the man/woman that makes you feel safe and respected.

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What if fate said….

What if fate was screaming at you both that you shouldn’t be together by never letting you live life running on the same timeline?

Would you listen?

Or would you put your fingers in your ears and sing to yourself to dull out the sound of life maybe having a pre planned route for you?

I’m talking like the adjustment bureau kind of vibes. Like there are some people who come into your life either to steer you into your real purpose or away from it.

Would you listen to fate if it was trying to tell you the person who’s constantly been your maybe is actually a no. That actually ‘timing’ was never the issue between you both but actually you just shouldn’t be together.

I can almost hear what people will be saying ‘but I know I should be with him/her just not right now, we’re on different pages’ but that’s the thing about literature, the pages are never the same, but somehow they still move in chronological order.

If you two aren’t even making chronological sense then maybe it’s time to accept that somewhere life never intended for you guys to be together, you stumbled across each other by a totally romantic accident and that’s ok, because they’re part of your journey but they aren’t your destination.

And what about the other end of the scale?

Those of us who life and fate has continuously attempted to propel together but by some crazy miracle or inconvenience you’ve kept missing each other.

For years the two of you had life plans that should have naturally twisted together but something has kept drawing you away from each other, maybe those people just weren’t quite ready to be shown what their ‘forever’ looks like quite yet.

Maybe the two of you have been so busy forming yourselves into the person you want to be by gaining a tonne of life experience with the wrong people. You were busy getting your hearts broken to get remoulded and put into shape ready for the person fate has in mind for you.

Or maybe the two of you will never meet?

Either way, maybe fate and life has a pre planned idea of who we should be with, or maybe it doesn’t. And maybe we don’t actually have any control over how our life will end up.

Edward Lorenz suggests that ‘Small actions will eventually lead to vastly different outcomes’ so weather we’re pulling away from our forever person or pushing towards them, if you’re meant to me together eventually you will be, once you’ve done all the ‘life stuff’ you need to do first.

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To chase or not to chase?

As women we’re always told ‘never chase a man‘ but the issue with this advice is the fact that it’s almost discouraging women from pursuing the man she wants, and what’s wrong with a bit of effort?

Does a runner win a race by standing still? Absolutely not.

If you’ve managed to go out and get the job you want, the pay rise you dreamt of, the car you’ve aspired to drive ….. you can’t say you managed to get all of those things by turning in the opposite direction and acting as if you didn’t want them. The odds are, you probably went after them with determination and perseverance.

So why treat the person we want any differently?

And I know what you’re going to say, people are different to material objects, they can make their own conscious decisions and yes I agree, however …. If effort is being reciprocated then you shouldn’t be scared to chase after what you want.

I also believe that making a man constantly chase you is a dangerous game, because if we think of it like a cat playing with a piece of string …. the longer you make the game last the less satisfied the cat is once the string is dropped, because the effort in trying to get it was more rewarding than actually having it and no one wants to feel like a piece of dropped string.

But maybe the chase is how we feel wanted? Maybe someone putting in unrequited effort for us is what makes us feel fully secure with the fact that they want us and only us?

At what point do we stop chasing or being chased and make the person we like feel wanted and appreciated with consistency? Because honestly, I can’t think of a bigger turn on when dating someone than that person showing you consistency.

If you’re like me, you’ll be worried that when you let people stop chasing you and give them your full attention, they’ll run off and won’t want you anymore, but maybe we need to let our walls down and give up on the idea of the chase for a while.

Maybe being honest with our feelings is the way forward, if you like the fact someone is chasing you, tell them ….. if you’re chasing after someone you like, TELL THEM!

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You know both of you can feel that sexual tension, right?

Damn, there it is. That weird feeling in the room, you’re both in, you know she can feel it too, right? It’s not just you. You guys both feel it but yet neither of you are going to say a word.

You guys should ignore it, right? But wait, apparently there’s something fun about doing things when you know you shouldn’t and it becomes even more fun when the only people who know what’s going on are the two of you.

She knows you feel it too, because she saw the way you look at her still, did you think you could slyly check her out and she wouldn’t pick up on it? Don’t be silly, she knows you too well not to notice. And now the two of you keep making eye contact, creating tension in the air that’s almost palpable. She even saw the very brief way your eyes wondered down to her lips, it must be annoying to know she noticed something you probably didn’t even realise you’d done, but you know what it means when you look at someones lips right? It just means subconsciously you’re thinking about kissing them …. uh oh.

You know you shouldn’t look at her like that, especially if you’re not going to take control and do something about it, you should just stop it. All the eye contact going on is a slow killer and you know it’s working up the both of you. As soon as you locked eyes with her it threw you back to thinking about how she looked at you when she wanted your body close to her. A little eye contact can start a very dangerous game, but yet it seems you’re both excited to play.

When there are thousand words left unsaid in a room where the tension keeps growing, how much longer can it go on before the room explodes and one of you caves? It’s a game of willpower now, but you’re both stubborn so will it be left as a draw? Surely that’s too boring? … Everything deserves a climax, right?

This could be fine, things can be left without a resolution, just remember social distancing. As long as the two of you remain at least 1.5m apart from each other at all times it will be totally fine.

Because let’s face it, as soon as you step closer to each other that’s when the test will level up, as if the eye contact and smiles weren’t bad enough, just wait until you’re accidentally stood close enough to feel the heat coming off of each other’s bodies, or the way her perfume smells, that’s the smell you got used to having on your bedsheets, but it’s been absent for a while, so what’s going to happen, what if you remember you’ve missed it?

Is it even worth the risk to find out? Probably not, right?

It’s worth knowing though, this isn’t just in your head, you aren’t imagining this feeling because she feels it too, she can sense the way you want her just from the atmosphere that ever so slightly changes each time you guys look at each other. If only everyone else in the room knew what the two of you were actually thinking …. it would make a good explicit novel that’s for sure.

Why not take it one step further next time, stand closer to her, or maybe risk one more civilised kiss on the cheek to have her face close to yours again even just for a second, or are you worried you’ll want to keep her there for longer than a split second if you do it again? Risky game, right?

But what’s life without a bit of risk, well it’s just boring.

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The good the bad and the beautiful parts of dating a writer

As much as it sucks to admit, a writer either loves deeply or not at all. Writers are romantic, love is something writers usually write a lot about whether they’ve had a good or bad experience with it. But if you’ve dated them, don’t for a second thing you haven’t inspired something they’ve written.

But this is why you should give your heart to a writer, there will never be a shortage of words which they’ll use to express their love and devotion to you. And for a while (or maybe forever if you’re lucky) you’ll be their inspiration. They’ll play out the story of the two of you in so many ways you didn’t even realise were possible.

They’ll obsess over your details, taking in every inch of how you are and the way you do things, from the shape of your lips, the colour of your eyes and I mean the real colour, the way your hair feels when they run their fingers through it, and how it sits when you’ve just got out the shower. They’ll notice the way you carry yourself in public, how you walk and even your complexion and how it changes when you get embarrassed.

They’ll notice every mannerism you have, and because of this they will be able to notice in explicit details when you’re happy, sad, angry or any time your mood slightly changes. You’ll be the inspiration for them to create stories that other people spend time reading about. Know that writers feel everything so deeply (sometimes too deeply). And, because of this, they’ll love you just as deeply, and sometimes this may come off strong but it’s just how they work.

A writer will fully commit to you even before you’ve asked them to. As picky as they are with their words, they’re also very picky with the people they choose to love. And when they find someone special, they’ll give every piece of themselves that they physically can. They’ll invest themselves in you and will continue to do so for the rest of their lives, or as long as you let them. They won’t hold back from giving you everything you need to make yourself as good as you can be.

A writer is a dreamer and will take you to places you’ve never been to, both physically and figuratively. They’re explorers and always looking for new experiences. They will sweep you off your feet and bring you into their fantasy world, to a place only a few have ever been allowed into. They will generate ideas and create scenarios that sometimes creep into their real life and leads to them being slightly over analytical when it comes to the person they care about.

A writer is passionate. They yearn for more out of life, and they love life in a way others don’t. They see life in a way others can’t. They experience life in a way others can’t, they use passion to fuel their writing and their life. The same way they are passionate about their life and work, the same way they will be passionate about you. They’ll offer you an intense level of passion, with them you’ll have found yourself with an unforgettable lover, someone who you will always say you have insane sexual chemistry with.

They’ll crave physical touch and they are happiest when laying next to you running their hands across your bare skin, taking in every inch of you, the way your muscles move and the shape of your back as you sleep, each freckle, scar and stunning imperfection that make you, you. And they’ll love every bit of it because it’s just more to take in.

A writer is full of emotions and any emotion they feel is felt at such a high intensity it sometimes makes them question their own judgement. They work with feelings, and they’ll be understanding of yours, always. You’ll never have to hide your emotions because they’ll know what you’re feeling even when you don’t utter a single word. They’ll be there for you when you’re feeling sad or down or even unable to process exactly what your emotions even mean. This is why you should give your heart to a writer because the ugly parts of you won’t make them love you any less, if anything, they’ll love you even more.

You should give your heart to a writer because there will always be more than what meets the eye with them, you’ll meet them and think they’re kind, but that will only be the top layer. You’ll soon come to realise they’re well-educated, empathetic and well-spoken. They’re observant and have a deep mind. They’re kind-hearted and will never judge you for feeling the way you do or expressing it in ways that aren’t conventional. They are rare.

You should give your heart to a writer because they’ll help you see how amazing you are. They’ll tell you every detail you want to know about yourself and will help you understand where you’ve gone wrong. You’ll soon be forced to realise things about yourself that you didn’t even pick up on. But they’ll make you realize that your flaws don’t even matter because they can look past them and see the real you. They want to make you love yourself even more.

You should give your heart to a writer if you want an oddly beautiful, passionate person in your life, who maybe feels things a little too much and who maybe loves a little too hard. But when they fall for you they won’t hold back. You’ll never have to question where you stand or if they want you.

Give your heart to a writer if you’re ready for love and I mean true love, something you’ll always look at with a sort of longing if you ever let it go.

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When the unexpected punches you in the face

I bet you didn’t even realise that you’d feel like this, after having something taken away from you that you didn’t even know you wanted, or at least you didn’t know you wanted it right now.

Darling girl, it’s ok to admit how much it’s hurt you to have to get through this by yourself, not having anyone to hold you while you’re curled up in pain, which constantly wakes you up throughout the night. It’s ok to admit that it would have been easier to do it with him than without him, that doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human.

I know you’ve spent days sitting there wondering what you did wrong, how you could have avoided creating the total and utter mess of a situation you’ve now found yourself in. If you’d have known, what would you have done differently, would you have looked at yourself in the mirror in a different way each morning? Would you have moved slower, eaten better, or even started meditation?

But hey, guess what? You didn’t know. And although you’ve already heard this from anyone around you that you’ve told, it really wasn’t your fault. This was just life’s way of saying ‘not right now’ and that may hurt, you may want to kick or scream or punch anything you can. But it doesn’t change what has happened.

Sometimes, life takes a choice away from you before you even knew that it was a possibility and maybe that’s because it knew you weren’t ready to make that choice yet.

Not all beautiful things are supposed to unfold how you imagine they will and it’s just because they’ve appeared at the wrong time.

Imagine it like this: a flower has accidentally decided to try and bloom in winter, instead of the harsh weather letting it come out and struggle through a phase it just wasn’t meant to see, the cold will kill it off before it even has a chance to suffer. That beautiful flower has been saved a load of unnecessary pain, Mother Nature just had to hold it back and say ‘now is not the time, one day not far from now you’ll blossom into something beautiful, but now just isn’t the time. The world isn’t ready for you yet’.

It’s okay to cry for the loss of something you didn’t even know you wanted, it’s okay to be hurt at the fact a decision was made out of your own hands, grieving for something you didn’t even know …. is understandable.

I know you feel like your body is fighting against you, the one thing you thought you had control over during a time of uncertainty now also feels like it’s betrayed you and let you down, and the worst part is, this crazy surge of emotions being fired up in your brain, is fighting for something that isn’t even there, making you question your own judgements and I know the confusion just makes you want to cry even more.

It’s ok to miss the idea of something you never even really had. It’s ok to hold on to a ‘what if’ even if it’s just for a while. You haven’t been given a set time to get over how something could have been if it had been left in your control.

So maybe this was life’s way of saying ‘not yet’ but this can also be your way of saying, ‘I’m happy to welcome unexpected events’ because life is crazy and beautiful and we make it what we want.

So when life throws yet another unexpected punch at you, just thrive in the fact that each day after is a day of healing. Things will get better and eventually you’ll be in the time when these things are supposed to happen for you.

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Catch the curve ball

tenor

She’s the curve ball in the game you didn’t even know you were playing and you’ll realise eventually, that girl would have given you the whole world, you just had to be ready to catch what life was throwing at you.

“But this wasn’t the exact plan I had, it isn’t exactly lining up with how I thought things would go” I get that, but hear me out…..

You know she’d have made you smile even after you’ve had a bad day, she would have sat and listened to you for hours until you’d spoken about it so much that you no longer felt stressed and you’d have felt safe because you know she’d have never judged anything you said.

You’ll realise eventually that when you find someone who’s only genuine concern is your happiness, you should hold onto them no matter what.

When you find someone in this crazy messed up world who still has kindness and good intentions in them for someone other than themselves, you’ll want to hold onto them for as long as you can, because they’re a rare breed these days which sucks!

When you realise that she was someone who bought out the best side of you, maybe it’ll be too late. Because you’ll have pushed her away not truly realising what you’re doing.

You’ll realise why honesty didn’t seem so scary with her, why you didn’t get the urge to tell her stupid white lies like with all the others before. It was because you felt like anything you told her wouldn’t be met with judgement and finding someone who accepts all parts of you exactly how they are without a sense of ‘yeah you’re great but if you done this I think you’d be better’ is rare.

Imagine being with someone who’s happy to accept you exactly as you, even though you both know you have flaws and you’re not perfect, but she doesn’t care because your flaws make you imperfectly perfect to her.

You’ll realise soon enough that there’s no one else you want to share your good and bad days with, someone who you want to celebrate your successes with and also sit down in a calm silence with when times have got a bit tough.

How long do you think you’ll have to look until you find someone who makes this whole ‘dating‘ thing seem as easy as she did?

Being with someone who understands that family time and down time are as important as the time alone the two of you have. How many people are like that in the world, who don’t make you feel guilty for not making them a priority in your life even though they’ve just come into it, who are selfless enough that they want you to go and do all the things that are important to you, because that makes you who you are and she’d never want to change that.

You’ll realise you miss her when silly things happen throughout your day that you wish you could tell her about, or you’ve thought of something funny on a tangent that you know she’d laugh at even if she didn’t want to because she loved how your mind works.

When you figure out that you’re supposed to be with the girl who makes you feel like you’re good enough just the way you are. It might be too late.

The one who wants to encourage you in every step you’re taking in your life, who wants to help you be better if that’s what you want. Who’s excited to do this whole weird thing we call life with no one else but you. The two of you might have known where you’d end up but the middle was blurry and that’s ok because you were going to figure it out together.

You’ll realise eventually that the girl you’re supposed to be with may not tick every box off of your ‘what I wanted in another person‘ check list. But she doesn’t need to, because what you needed was actually what you never thought to expect, so maybe the universe knew exactly what you needed, but your ideas had become a bit confused.

Life works like that sometimes, it will throw you a curve ball when you don’t want it to, you’ve just got to be open to the idea of catching it … especially when it could win the whole game for you!

 

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How to date someone with an anxious attachment style

Have you ever dated someone who freaked out when you didn’t call them back right away when you said you would? Perhaps you fell asleep, only to wake up to 15 missed calls and an assault of text messages.

Or perhaps you’ve dated someone who got upset that you didn’t give her enough attention and so she punished you by ignoring you, or broke up with you as a reaction to her feeling unloved. If this sounds familiar, chances are, you’ve dated someone with an anxious attachment style.

Our attachment system is a mechanism in our brain responsible for tracking and monitoring the safety and availability of our attachment figures. Many attachment theorists believe that by the age of five, we develop a primary attachment style that will more or less define the way we emotionally bond and attach to others in our adult lives.

There are three primary attachment styles and 90% of us will be able to associate with either one or two of them: secure, avoidant and anxious.

None of which are bad or good by the way, there isn’t one in particular that you should aim to fall under. But this post is about how to love someone or be in a successful relationship with someone who has an anxious attachment style (whether they know it or not).

People with an anxious attachment style crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationship, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back. They have an inherent fear of rejection and abandonment. Even a slight hint that something is wrong will activate their attachment system, and once activated they are unable to calm down until they get a clear indication from their partner that the relationship is safe.

If you are dating someone with an anxious attachment style, you just have to understand that their wiring is different from yours, and that they require higher levels of intimacy and closeness than people with secure attachment styles. You can learn what their what triggers are, and how to best respond to make them feel loved and supported. Here are some tips on how to date someone with an anxious attachment style:

Be consistent

Lack of safety is the underlying baseline that subconsciously rules an anxious’s way of perceiving their relationships. Many theorists attribute an anxious attachment style to inconsistent caregiving, where the baby/child never knew if they would have their needs met. Therefore, their attachment system goes haywire as a means of survival. Being hot and cold and mirroring the inconsistency they received as children will be one of their greatest triggers and cause them to react in a destructive way – so be consistent, opt for balance versus extreme peaks and valleys in your attention and energy.

Let them know how you feel – on a regular basis

Anxious types have difficulty believing that you actually like them and without clear signs indicating your interest, they will convince themselves that you don’t. They need reassurance that you care about them, that you’re sticking around and won’t abandon them. Sounds exhausting, but it’s really not that hard. A simple “I’m thinking of you” text or a phone call to check in can go a long way. If you assume they know how you feel, think twice. They don’t. Proactively tell them how you feel instead of holding it in.

When in a fight, reassure that you’re not leaving them

Studies show that people with an anxious attachment style are more sensitive and quicker to perceive offset emotions. They have a unique ability to sense when their relationship is being threatened. They have a tendency to think worst-case scenario because unconsciously, they deeply fear rejection and abandonment. When in a fight, they’re instinctive reaction is to think that the relationship is over. Their heightened alert system will make them think you’re going to leave them, so they will prepare for rejection and may even try to break up with you first. It’s important that you assure them that just because you’re in a fight, it doesn’t detract from how much you love and care about them and that a disagreement doesn’t mean the end.

Follow through on the little things

If you say you’ll call, do it. If you say you want to go out, make it happen. Follow through on promises – small or large. It’s extremely important to build trust with anxious types, who are used to being let down or disappointed. Since anxious types are more sensitive to cues, they pay more attention to the things you say and will remember the promises you make.

Don’t invalidate their feelings

So if you’re wondering why you’ve been drawn to someone like this it’s likely for an array of reasons, one being that they are very heart and feeling oriented and you like that, you like that they show that they like you. They have needs for intimacy, availability and security in a relationship that are necessary for them to feel safe so that they can trust and love with reckless abandon. Know that with the light, comes the dark, and the emotions that you love are also the emotions that become challenging for your logical, busy mind. Do not shame or judge them for feeling and instead show compassion. Understand why they’ve been feeling unsettled or upset by something without making them feel like it’s not important.

While it may sound challenging to date someone with an anxious attachment style, the good news is, through support from their partner and their own self-work, they can move from anxious to secure. Once they realize that they are safe, a healthier narrative becomes reaffirmed through time and experience, and they gradually rewire their baseline, so basically once they realise you’re in it for the long haul. They’ll calm down and just remain content. It’s the early relationship stages that freak them out.

While there’s a lot of information there. Hopefully it will help someone understand their relationship better.