The triggers never really go away. No matter how secure my partner is, no matter how regulated I am, my triggers have never gone away. I just learned to not abandon myself in triggers to reacting instead, staying with what I'm feeling and responding from a less activated space.

Sometimes I will randomly feel like my partner doesn't like me. His texts don't seem like yesterday's so of course it must mean he doesn't like me anymore. He didn't say baby. Or he didn't say he loves me. Definitely doesn't love me anymore. I wish I could say all those thoughts have gone away but no they haven't. And I've stopped trying to get rid of them. And while there are situations where this can be true, I'm just too much of a perfectionist. I feel like love has to be a certain way. I feel like things have to go my way or else it's not love. To cope with my triggers, I thought controlling the external, my partner would do. That's wrong of course. I've adopted the perspective that everything that happens in me is allowed to just be. I try my best not to judge my own reactions and thoughts as hard as that may be at times.

And I've recognised these thoughts for what they are: Narratives. And not all the narratives that are weaved by our minds are true. I'm no longer mistaking the map my mind convinces me of for the territory. The map is the map. The territory is the territory. I examine everything I feel carefully before deciding to believe it just because it comes with an emotional charge.

Some days are harder than others. I can feel my controlling ways seeping in and I just let them be, inside me. I don't deny that it's happening. But I also don't have to let my partner bear that burden. I can regulate myself. It took me such a long long time but I have built the capacity to stay with myself when triggered and still continue to do so. My partner can support me but I have to walk the journey myself. I remember that my partner is human too. He will make mistakes. As I do sometimes. He will also make me happy and smile. Like he often does.

It doesn't mean the triggers will go away. But at least the more I adopt this "every feeling has space" perspective I have been more accepting of other people's flaws because I realised I am just as flawed. We all have deal breakers of course but for what it's worth, I can accept a human for being human. I realise that love can exist without perfection. It started with me realising I can love myself with all my imperfections and triggers. It has definitely become easier extending that to my loved ones.

i’ve noticed that when you ask someone questions, listen to their answers, and give them a reaction, you’re constantly giving them some form of emotional feedback.

for example, they tell you something that happened to them, and you react with excitement, surprise, disappointment, curiosity, or even disagreement. basically, you make them feel like what they say has an impact on you.

could this alone be enough to make someone emotionally attached to you over time? does consistently reacting to someone’s words and actions make them crave your attention and become dependent on your responses?

i’m curious whether there’s actual psychology behind this, or if i’m overlooking other factors that play a bigger role in emotional attachment.

I went through a short relationship (about 3 months, ended 3 months ago). He pursued me intensely and we committed fast, within about a month.

Right after we became official, I asked how he felt about me, and it turned into an argument about rating my attractiveness. During it, I said I was used to men being sure about me and excited to be with me. He replied, "How do you know what your exes were like? Maybe they only dated meth heads, and next to them you were like a goddess."

That one comment stuck. Now, whenever anyone shows interest in me, my brain says they must be lying, desperate, or crazy. I know it's his filter, not a fact, but I can't switch it off, and it's making it hard to move on or even consider dating.

Has anyone dealt with something like this? How did you get past it? I'm especially interested in what actually helped (therapy approaches, habits, time, anything), not guesses about why he said it. I already have a therapist and I'm working on it.

Recently broke up with my ex over a dragged out series of going back and forth, dating and breaking up over the course of around 3 months.

Yes, it hurts like hell, because it seems to me that she was a textbook avoidant but what if she wasn’t? What if it really was just me being so attached that it creeped her out but she wanted to give it a chance. Regardless, I’m trying to use this as a learning experience for the future.

I’ve asked people this in my personal life and I get mixed answers. Is there a balance between getting too attached and putting up walls to protect yourself?

Some say that if it’s the right person, you will be equally as attached and excited about each other to the point that you should give it your 100% in every relationship you’re in.

Some say that getting that attached will suffocate your partner to the point of pushing them away or making them uncomfortable or all of the above.

Some say that staying a bit more detached than you really want to be will protect you from the pain that may come if the relationship ends, minimizing damage while keeping a relationship.

What are your experiences with this? Should everyone give 100% all the time in hopes that it’s the one, finding the relationship of their dreams, even if that effort could make the ending feel so much worse? Or should everyone stay a bit guarded to protect themselves from that pain, at the cost of potentially putting all of that effort into the right person?

*Sorry this is a long post rant..\*

(18F) At first, I thought I had an anxious attachment style because of my experience with my first love. However, after my second relationship ended, I've started realizing that I might have avoidant tendencies as well, possibly leaning toward fearful-avoidant attachment.

I've always struggled with emotional intimacy and expressing my feelings. I used to think it was mainly because I tend to freeze up during conversations, and my mind goes blank when I'm trying to connect with someone. Both of my relationships ended, and I can't help but wonder how much my communication difficulties played a role.

In my first relationship, I was the one who tried to communicate my feelings and talk about the state of our relationship, sometimes through long paragraphs. Eventually, my partner withdrew, and what hurt the most was how they acted like everything was normal after we broke up. That was three years ago, and although I've moved on, I still find myself blaming myself for the ways I struggled to communicate. I sometimes wonder if I overwhelmed them by trying so hard to explain how I felt. That experience left me questioning whether expressing my emotions too much pushes people away.

In my most recent relationship, which was long-distance, I hoped my boyfriend would be someone I could feel emotionally safe with. I saw his potential and the qualities I appreciated in him, so I wanted to give the relationship a chance. However, over time, I started noticing familiar patterns of distance and what felt like a lack of consistent effort. There were times when he would be active online but not communicate with me, or when calls he said he'd make never happened. I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt and making excuses for him because of his circumstances.

What confused me was that whenever we did talk, he acted like everything was normal, even though things didn't feel normal to me. I started questioning my own feelings and wondering whether I was overthinking things or expecting too much. At times, I felt as though my concerns were being dismissed, which left me feeling confused about what was actually happening in the relationship.

Eventually, I felt like I was losing trust in him. I realized I was tired of repeatedly questioning his interest and making excuses for things that continued to hurt me. I ended the relationship and blocked him because I didn't want to keep going through the same cycle. I also deleted our chat, so I no longer have those messages to look back on. Now, some of the details feel blurry, and I find myself questioning whether I made the right decision or whether my own attachment patterns played a role.

I know I struggled with communication, too. I sometimes froze during calls and had difficulty expressing affection, even when I wanted to connect. I don't want to ignore my own shortcomings, but I also don't want to blame myself for everything that happened. I'm struggling to distinguish between my own attachment issues and recognizing when a relationship genuinely isn't meeting my needs.

I've noticed similar patterns in my friendships, too. I tend to distance myself from people or cut ties when I feel emotionally drained. Sometimes, I feel anxious and overthink things because I'm afraid of being abandoned, but other times, I become distant and reluctant to express affection or vulnerability. I've now stepped away from several friendships and both relationships, and I'm starting to question whether I'm protecting myself or avoiding emotional discomfort.

I've been in therapy for almost two years, and I'm still trying to understand these patterns. I recently took an attachment-style quiz that suggested fearful-avoidant attachment, and it made me worry about how my behavior might affect my future relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners. I know online quizzes aren't diagnoses, but I recognize some of these tendencies in myself.

Honestly, I feel isolated. I've started questioning whether I'm capable of loving someone properly or even loving myself. I want meaningful connections and emotional intimacy, but I struggle with expressing myself, trusting others, and knowing what to do when relationships become overwhelming. I hate feeling caught between wanting people close and wanting to distance myself when things become difficult..

I don't want to keep repeating the same patterns or unintentionally hurt people, even at the expense of my own emotional well-being. At the same time, I don't want to force myself to stay in relationships that leave me feeling emotionally drained or questioning my worth. Honestly, I'm starting to wonder whether I'm even capable of sustaining a healthy relationship anymore. Seeing how negatively people talk about avoidant and fearful-avoidant attachment makes me feel like I'm somehow undeserving of love because of these tendencies. I know I have things to work on, and I genuinely want to become more secure, but part of me is scared that I'll keep repeating these patterns or end up hurting someone who genuinely cares about me. It's lonely to feel caught between wanting emotional closeness and struggling with the very vulnerability that comes with it.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting on the way I love people, and I've been trying to understand something about myself that isn't necessarily easy to admit.

When I genuinely care about someone, I feel things deeply. I'm invested in understanding them, understanding the relationship, and figuring out how two people can grow together. I pay attention to things other people might overlook, and I tend to think deeply about the connections I have with people.

I don't see that as a bad thing. I think there's something beautiful about being capable of loving someone beyond the surface. To me, love isn't just about the good moments. It's about being willing to understand someone, accept their imperfections, communicate through difficult things, and recognize that relationships take effort.

But I've also started questioning whether the intensity I bring into relationships is always helpful.

I understand codependency. I understand attachment, and I know there's a difference between loving someone deeply and making a relationship the center of your emotional world. I don't believe that every strong feeling is a sign of unhealthy attachment, or that caring deeply automatically means you have a problem.

What I'm trying to understand is where my own intensity fits into all of this.

Sometimes I wonder whether I put so much thought, emotion, and energy into understanding a relationship that I make things heavier than they need to be. Whether my desire to work through things can sometimes turn into overanalyzing them. Whether wanting to be understood can become an endless attempt to explain myself, even when I've already said everything I know how to say.

I think there's a point where self-awareness can become overthinking, where trying to understand a situation becomes trying to control an outcome, and where the desire to work through something can make it difficult to accept that not everything is within your control.

Recognizing those possibilities in myself doesn't mean I want to become less caring. It means I want to become more intentional about how I express that care.

I don't want to confuse intensity with intimacy. I don't want to assume that because something means a lot to me, it needs to be discussed, resolved, or understood immediately. And I don't want my ability to recognize patterns or think deeply about emotions to convince me that I can figure out every problem in a relationship if I just think about it long enough.

Sometimes people see things differently. Sometimes two people can genuinely care about each other and still struggle to understand one another. Sometimes a situation doesn't have a perfect resolution, and learning to sit with that uncertainty is part of growing, too.

I want to learn how to give people room to be different from me without interpreting those differences as something that needs to be fixed. I want to get better at recognizing when a conversation is productive and when I'm simply going in circles because I haven't found the understanding I was hoping for.

Most importantly, I want to preserve the depth of who I am without letting that depth become overwhelming, either for me or for the people I care about.

I don't want to love less. I want to understand my own emotions better, communicate more effectively, and recognize when to lean in and when to step back. I want to be able to care about someone without feeling responsible for figuring everything out.

I think there's a difference between changing who you are and learning how to express who you are in a healthier way. That's the difference I'm trying to understand.

I'm curious how other people have navigated this.

If you're someone who naturally feels things deeply and thinks a lot about relationships, how have you learned to balance that intensity? How do you recognize when reflection is helping you grow versus when you're overthinking something that needs to be left alone?

And how do you maintain the ability to love deeply while still allowing relationships to develop naturally, without putting so much pressure on yourself or the other person to make everything work?

I'm not asking how to become indifferent. I'm interested in how to become more balanced, more intentional, and more comfortable with the fact that loving someone doesn't mean I have to understand or solve everything.

Maybe growth isn't about feeling less. Maybe it's about learning what to do with everything we feel.

Hey there! I got monkey branched, are there good resources i can look up to work trough this so i don't take this into the future ?

Me and my girlfriend are currently going through a rough time because of my actions. I have consistently made her feel like she’s not enough because of my constant arguing, worries, and emotional outbursts. I shouldn’t have let it get to the point where I may lose her to see how wrong i’ve been but I can’t change the past and now the only thing i want to do is fix it and prove I can treat her right. The things I plan on doing are waiting between feeling upset or hurt and saying anything about it, not bringing it up if I can give a logical explanation to the action but am upset because of some deeper meaning i’ve given it, and never arguing at school. I also am giving her time right now since she’s more avoidant and I’m letting this be completely on her terms even though It’s so scary that I don’t have her with me telling me it’s okay and she loves me. I really want to be better because the main issue is that I don’t make her feel like she’s enough for me when she’s more than enough. If anyone has any advice in addition on what I listed or advice on how to make her feel like she’s enough even while we’re not fully like together talking and hanging out please let me know. I know the behavior I need to fix and what I can do but is there any maybe small gestures I can do to show she’s enough for me and I’m going to chance. I know a big thing is respecting her need for time right now and not like texting her when she’s asked for space. But if she does text me and say she’s willing to start texting and talking more regularly again then what are good ways to show that she’s enough other than just not causing conflict.

I'm a DA who is inching closer and closer to secure. As I allow myself to get attached to people I am experiencing a lot of anxiety about those attachments, and I find that the advice given to AP people on this sub and others is resonating in a way it didn't before.

In particular, the advice that when you feel scared of the other person abandoning you and seek their reassurance over and over again, you are in a sense self-abandoning. It's not that you don't deserve reassurance but in the end you have to show up for yourself first. That's really hard because of the grief that comes from all of us deserving parents who could provide that sort of all encompassing assurance from another person. Who could say "I'm right here for you" and mean it as many times as we asked.

Maybe it resonates for me to believe as a DA (the answer was "rely on yourself first"? I knew it!) but it's also harder to practice (it's so hard to tell apart what is healthy self-parenting and self-reliance from what is avoidant behaviors).

Anyway I'm curious if other DAs have found the advice to APs resonating as they allowed themselves to attach more. Also curious if any APs that made or are making the journey to secure found themselves appreciating and applying advice given to DAs?

Is there anything out there for a DA genuinely wanting to change?

I am a healing FA for context. I have had my time leaning dismissive and I have had my time leaning anxious. I am not is a relationship currently and therefore on a good streak of regulated days. I can finally look at this from a 'neutral' point of view.

Sometimes out of curiosity I tend to visit both anxious and avoidant communities and the majority of posts are usually ranting about how the other attachment makes the storyteller's worse.

It's a constant war. Especially in the early days of discovery when people are trying to come up with answers to the puzzling questions.

Pop attachment theory is radicalizing people and turning this into a war. After spending a day on reddit learning how bad the partner is, how could a relationship work?

My boyfriend and I are getting close to our one year and I’ve noticed that my anxious attachment is just getting worse and worse.

His love to me almost feels like a drug. When I don’t hear from him I start panicking and spiraling and get very emotional. Once I hear from him and get reassurance I feel instantly better. But trust me it doesn’t last long. After spending the weekends together, I start to get withdrawals after leaving. I feel depressed as hell for about a day.

I spend a lot of my time worrying about him cheating on me or leaving me. I caught him in the past texting someone flirtatiously and It’s made me feel like he’s going to do it again. I forgave him for that and this was a while back but it just stained my trust.

These past couple weeks I’ve convinced myself that he’s been distant and is going to leave me. It’s been consuming my days and I only feel better once I get some sort of reassurance.

I love him and I don’t want my insecurity and attachment styles to ruin the relationship

How can I heal this and stop it.

This happened in a previous relationship as well. The fear of loosing someone seems to take over my mind and emotions.

I've posted here before about how hard it's been to break away from my unhealthy relationship. But I think I've finally done it.

Instead of a clean break—which would activate my anxious attachment and spur me to reach out again in a few days— I suggested we move to a friends-only scenario. (Yes I know this isn't advised generally- but I've tried the clean break and it doesn't stick).

After just one day, I'm already seeing him with much more clarity. Instead of making excuses for his hurtful behavior, I now see it for what I think it is - either a power play or fear of the intimacy I offer. Even as friends-only he managed to say something hurtful last night - something entirely unnecessary.

For today, I'll be careful with my responses to him, or maybe even don't respond at all. I feel the bond with him evaporating and that gives me a feeling of freedom.

(If you're leaning secure /secure or don't relate to either options pleaser state your own option and what attatchment you think you lean to or have. It's also ok to comment if you don't have any attatchment label on yourself.)

This is a poll to research what is associated to stress regarding text notifications and a reminder that everyone's stressors are valid regardless what stresses them out and not, and to consider this in text conversations /online interactions. (Why some respond faster, slower, why some text more, less, etc. All has its valid reason.)

This is important because you might have opposite stress associations to a friend or a partner, but that doesn't make either of you the one in most need of support, the one who needs space needs just as much understanding and respect as the one who needs more contact. That's how connection and love is made.

So let's see what this poll tells us about attatchments and their stressors.

I currently feel pretty lost and wonder if I even know who I actually am. I've been attending therapy for the past few months, group and solo sessions and am trying to concentrate on actually feeling something, recognising what it is and not intellectualising it the moment any emotions rises. This is so much more difficult than I thought, half the time I'm struggling to not lash out and tell them or my therapist that I'm already trying to explain what's going on to which he likes to reply that I'm still explaining and not feeling.

My therapist is incredibly good at catching when I'm not in touch with my emotions, some of the group members too. As it turns out, a lot of my "mask of perfection" on the outside is just a shiny facaade that hides quite well how weak and scared I feel, or unwanted and like a burden inside. I used to understand myself as someone practical, sensible and unafraid. I always thought that I was doing things the best possible way, because I did communicate a lot and tried to understand. Perhaps, as it turns out, this was me appearing like a polished statue no one could reach, too perfect to relate to or triggering people with low self-worth - which I have about a lot of things too, I'm just really good at hiding them because I never share things I'm actually struggling with, only those I already found solutions for.

But now that I'm dealing with things I realise how afraid I am of a lot of memories because they bring up feelings I don't want to feel, or how terrified I am of getting on dating apps again because I don't want to be discarded again or worse see my ex on it and then have it on paper that he never cared about me. Sometimes I even think all of that is too difficult, that I don't really need therapy and why the hell do I always need to suffer, why can't things be easy for once? In the worst part of the wave I just want to disappear and don't care about anything. And then it's over and I am able to do things I like and am happy for a while but it's never stable. It feels like chaos and emptiness are switching positions inside me in a rythm I can't keep up with. So this whole thing is exhausting me to the bones. I've never been this "unstable" in my life for this long. The only other times I felt similar but never prolonged was when I tried dating which I also avoided for most of my life (which is why it was always very short) until I forced myself to fight against whatever anxiety and fear was coming up .....which led to me meeting my ex who discarded me just like that after months of talking every day, spending weekends together. I know I just had bad luck again and there are good guys out there, but currently it feels like my entire life has been a streak of bad luck and worst of all I realise that partially, I made it that way.

So those of you who went to therapy or are going to therapy, is this a typical experience? I don't know how to judge whether therapy is working or not, right now I think I'm just too dysregulated

🫠 what your opinion

Hi, I have dated non secure people my whole life. my family was extremely emotional abusive . When I get close to someone, the feelings goes to a high that is hard to describe . its so incredibly intense that it feels almost intoxicating, like a really heavy drug .
This feelings, because they are strong and because I'm f'd up, I end up loving them.
I'm thinking, does anyone here, which became secure, miss that intense and addictive feeling? Does a secure love hit the same?
Lots of people describe secure love as something that is almost boring in a nice way .
Does that mean that becoming secure means giving up on that great feeling too for good?
Thanks for those who will reply :)

… but feel awful about it.

I told my avoidant situationship I wasn’t okay with the hot and cold behaviour and it was triggering my anxious attachment. He replied saying the last week hadn’t been good for him (his nan passed which I knew and comforted him).
As much as I feel horrible for telling him all this while he’s low, this behaviour has been present the few months we have been talking, it’s not new so he can’t use that as an excuse.

I deserve better, but at the same time I’m worried I will give into the anxiety and run back. I feel like an evil person for standing up for myself…

I am also waiting MRI results for an update on my brain tumour (dx 3 years ago), so this time is challenging for me but I still reach out to people and don’t go silent. He is aware of this.

Idk hope that all makes sense…

I’m 19M her 22F, and I’m in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend. I love her more than I can explain, and our relationship means a lot to me.

Lately, though, I’ve been struggling with something that is becoming emotionally exhausting.

For the past few days, I’ve been feeling extremely anxious about our relationship. I’ve noticed that my girlfriend seems a little less affectionate than usual. She still talks to me, tells me she loves me, calls me when she can, and shows me affection, but I’ve been missing those little spontaneous moments of sweetness that usually make me feel close to her.

I talked to her about it, and she reassured me that she isn’t falling out of love with me. She explained that she’s been dealing with a lot lately, including classes, family problems, and general exhaustion. She also told me that sometimes she needs time alone and can’t always be available like we used to be.
I understand that. I really do. I don’t expect her to spend every waking moment with me, and I don’t want her to feel pressured to give me attention constantly.

The problem is that, even when she reassures me and shows me affection, I struggle to feel okay. For example, this morning she kissed me, playfully teased me, told me she loved me, and was affectionate before leaving for class. It was a genuinely sweet moment, but my anxiety didn’t go away.
Instead, I keep thinking things like: What if she’s losing feelings for me? What if she gets tired of me? What if she eventually finds someone else? What if something has changed and I’m just not seeing it yet?

I know these thoughts might not reflect reality. In fact, I genuinely believe that 80–90% of this problem might be my own anxiety making everything feel much worse than it actually is. But knowing that intellectually doesn’t seem to make the feelings go away.
What’s especially confusing is that I don’t remember feeling this intensely insecure a few weeks or months ago. Something seems to have changed recently, and now I feel like I’m constantly looking for signs that something is wrong.

I’ve also been struggling with anxiety for a long time, and I take medication for it, although I’ve been inconsistent with taking my daily medication because I keep forgetting. Recently, I’ve felt so emotionally exhausted that I slept through practically an entire day and still woke up feeling anxious and unable to do much.
I should also mention that we’ve had some difficult conversations in the past, particularly about my health and exercise. Sometimes I’ve felt pressured by those conversations, and I wonder whether that history contributes to my fear of disappointing her or not being good enough for her.

I don’t want to make her responsible for my anxiety. I know she has her own life, responsibilities, and feelings.
At the same time, I don’t want to dismiss every feeling I have as irrational anxiety if there are genuine issues I need to address.

\\\*\\\*So, for people who have experienced anxious attachment or something similar:\\\*\\\*
How do you distinguish between anxiety making you imagine the worst and actually noticing a change in your relationship?

How do you learn to feel secure when your partner is less available or affectionate than usual?
How do you stop needing reassurance to feel okay, even when your partner is already showing you love?

And how do you cope with the physical exhaustion that comes from feeling anxious about your relationship for days?

I love my girlfriend more than anything in this world, and I want us to be okay. But I also want to be okay within myself, instead of feeling like my entire emotional state depends on whether I think everything is fine between us.
I’d genuinely appreciate honest advice, especially from people who have been through something similar.

It is commonly known, and I believe by all of us, that attachment issues come from childhood, but while we all have a notion of what that means in theory, the explanations on what happens are usually too broad and have too little specificity for a lot of us to actually relate to.

They say Anxious Attachment comes from being raised in unpredictable environments, or ones in which you felt like you had to "fight" for love, but even though I always knew that, it was only yesterday that these pattern became clear for me in practice.

And it feels like I uncovered something huge, and that I can't possibly not think about anymore.

Long story short, my Anxious Attachment comes from always feeling like I had to oversignal my own existence to the world. Mind you, I'm not a conventionally-attractive dude, I don't come from an affluent family and have always been taught that achievement was the way; I grew up being praised for performing, not being.

So, I always had to overstrech in order to be seen, and if I wasn't loud in some sort of way, people would just ignore the "boring and unnapealing" real me.

In school, I was the smart kid who helped everyone, even those who actively seemed to dislike me; in group settings, I was the therapist friend, the wise monk and the sensible mediator... I was always either extremely responsible or obnoxiously cheerful and positive; call me a true Lover Boy.

I thought my heightened empathy was a gift or an innate trait, but now I realize: I grew up monitoring the emotional reactions people would have to my stances, and micromanaging my own attitude in relation to how they were perceiving me. That's how I even became so good at reading emotional cues and gauging levels of receptiveness in the first place.

In short: Maladaptive Metacognition, based on pure Hypervigilance.

Discomfort from others usually meant disapproval; that's how I was raised.

Years of doing this drowned my sense of self, and it led to the Canon Event of my life: meeting an Avoidant and calling it "love".

When you grow up performing to "earn" appreciation, that's the only thing you really see; you treat acknowledgement as "love", and even the most breadcrumb-y bit from a distant person already feels like ultimate validation, because... If the distant person that is dismissive of everybody sees and acknowledges Little Me? It can only mean I'm worth something.

And that pattern has been a constant... The least the woman seems to care about me or even acknowledge my existence, the harder I'll try to make myself seen. I'll be extra helpful, extra empathetic, extra resourceful...

Meanwhile, to the people who already appreciated me and already loved me unconditionally, I would be way less invested and even a little bothered by their presence. I would find myself wanting to be left alone or even be ignored by them for a while...

... The irony! I didn't know how to even be there for those I had nothing to prove! I'm sorry, everyone. I'll promise to be more attentive from now on. I didn't really feel like interacting with people I didn't have to amaze or impress, and that came forward with a good friend (now, relationship prospect).

(I'm gonna get a lot personal here. You can skip this following bit. There will be an indication later on where to continue)

Now, more than ever, it baffles me how lightly I took the fact she accepted the Real Me from the start. In our conversations, she was open to share about her life and sensitive topics, but not only that: she wanted to hear from me.

And something about her made me simply not perform. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was never the "hyper-helpful, hyper-positive, hyper-functioning" dude; I was flawed, had difficult days and struggled.

And yet, she never left. She heard it and asked "Is there something I can do to make you feel better?"

I did nothing of it. Why would I? I didn't fight for it, so it was worth nothing, right? It didn't even register as affection or appreciation, at the time.

... And then, a couple years later, I would commit the mistake of falling hard for the most dismissive woman I have ever met, while forgetting all about her...

It was a nightmare. Yikes, me. Real yikes.

We reconnected recently. Couple years in without talking, she came into my DMs and it repeated, all of it... "How have you been?", "Tell me about what you're facing", "I'm not all that okay, actually... What about you?"

It was as if our last talk was just the day before. It would still take me a couple of months to realize was actually happening here, a discovery that culminated into me writing this post.

(Okay, my love lore is over from here onwards.)

I had love, right by my side, and I was refusing it in name of some ungodly strife that would, maybe, bring some very fleeting and empty glory.

Little did I know that I was, already, living my dream of being seen.

The more I think about it, the more the Avoidant loses their shine in my eyes; the less I try to please and be seen, the better I feel. The more I choose this soft love, the more Secure I feel in myself.

I finally understand that the "boredom" that made me dismiss her at first was peace, and I'm learning how to appreciate it.

I'm making effort to checking in and being an actual good friend to the people who appreciate me for who I am, and allowing myself to accept that I can just be me, with all the imperfections, and who doesn't care about what they could think or would feel about me.

And yes, I'm growing increasingly detached from the Avoidant, day after day. The coldness is ceasing to be appealing, the promise is dying and I feel more and more peace.

I see myself, and I'm no longer gonna let him down.

Thanks for reading!

I am kinda done with my anxious attachment and I wish to heal it. I do feel like my bf is someone who is willing to give and put effort but my anxious attachment is kinda overwhelming I never give him that space to step up. When we first met he was the one who was interested in me and I didn't see him in that lens. Till I gave it a shot and we started dating. Initially he used to do so much, plan dates and say sweet things. Crack jokes. He still does it when I stop putting in all the efforts but my anxious attachment triggers when we are away physically and when he is having a bad day. And then I over react and cry and it happens involuntarily. Like a trauma response of being abandoned.

I wish to know if anyone ever learnt to be secure eventually....and how...

Your mind can easily go to the worst-case scenario: someone not responding right away or changing plans. Insecurity does not always have to mean that what you're thinking is correct or that you shouldn't address the issue.

These are some tips I've found helpful to combat the feeling of being insecure in a relationship.

1. Identify what causes you to become insecure. Maybe it's someone not responding or you being away from your partner, or even something that they may have done that reminds you of your last relationship. Once you identify what sets you off, you'll know why you're feeling that way.

2. Understand the difference between fact and assumptions. "They have not responded in 2 hours" is a fact. "My partner doesn't love me" is an assumption. What else could be happening?

3. Express how you feel. Instead of saying, "You never care about my feelings," you can say, "I was feeling a little insecure when our plans changed; can we discuss this?"

4. Stay busy. Have other friends in your life. Do things that make you happy and stay busy with other interests. Your significant other can be your number one priority, but they shouldn't be the only thing you're happy about.

5. Step back. When you start to feel that urge to text them or ask for more assurance, go for a walk or write down what you're feeling. Once you step back from the situation, you can figure out what you want to express.

6. Communicate what you expect from each other. Just because you think they should text you at certain times doesn't mean they know that. Everyone has different boundaries, so discuss what works for both of you.

7. Seek help. If you're constantly becoming insecure to the point where it's taking over your life and causing arguments, you should consider speaking to a therapist.

Just remember, not everything is in your head. If your partner is continuously lying to you or not honoring their word, that is also something to be concerned about. Trust takes time to build in a relationship.

What do you do to prevent yourself from becoming too insecure?

I wrote a fuller guide with seven practical steps here: https://clearerconnections.com/insecurity-in-a-relationship/

Here are protest behaviours I noticed that I use as an anxious attachment person, throughout all/most of my relationships with unavailable/avoidant people:

- Push and pressure for a relationship (with unavailable people)
- Do not respect boundaries and keep on reaching out multiple times / disrespecting their wish for no contact
- Instead of accepting that a relationship is not working, I become in control and give mixed signals about sex, intimacy, proximity, communication (preventing abandonment while also protecting myself)
- Make partners jealous as a way to prove that i’m wanted and desirable
- Constantly try to get them back
- Use intimacy as a way to make them stay/get them back
- Since a breakup makes me feel like I’m dying, I will always suggest that we remain friends so I don’t completely lose them. What happens eventually is that it helps me move on on my own terms

Does anyone relate to these?