Have you done some research on attachment dynamics? If you haven’t and desire to relate with anyone, I strongly recommend you to get familiar with this topic.
I know for myself that I am pretty insecurely attached, with a preoccupancy towards anxious attachment (aka fear of abandonment). It shows in finding security in closeness. Making the person I love the centre of my focus, and feeling terrified when they are not as close as I want them to be.
Nature strives for balance. And so the anxiously attached attracts someone with an insecure strategy of a similar intensity on the other side of the scale: someone avoidant (aka fear of commitment). These are the folks needing distance in their relating to feel safe.
Anxious and avoidant find each other in a never-ending dance of keeping a certain distance between them. Push-pull. Not rarely coming with lots of fireworks and great make up sxx.
I’ve attracted my share of avoidant partners over time. There was always a reason for the distance from them. Wanting to be a nomad, denying intimacy as a form of punishment, not wanting to be in a relationship altogether (and still doing that), or emotionally unavailable. As I’m a switch in many ways – also in my relationship styles, I did attract people who were more anxiously wired than me. It blew me straight into avoidance.
For a long time I desired a partner securely attached. All the books say that’s a different story. It’s where the insecurely attached can lick their wounds and heal.
Now I am relating with someone securely attached. Someone who has known me for many years. Someone who has liked me for as long. Someone I never saw as anything else than a friend.
That changed. We are partners now. I call it progress – to be capable of loving someone secure instead of being attracted again to someone avoidant.
Is it as easy and smooth as some of the books say?
Yes and no.
The easy part is where there is no game. Whatever I throw at him from a place of anxious attachment, it’s not sticking. My mind calms as there is no other option than trusting his words when he says he loves me and prioritizes me in his life.
I feel safe and held in this relationship in new ways.
But it doesn’t come easy all together.
What this connection needs, demands from me, is the capacity to sit with my emotions (while reaching out to him for support). To take the responsibility for all that is touched in me.
Because whenever I feel tired, sad, or overwhelmed, my anxious mind projects it on whatever story it can find in my head. And the first choice is always my relationship.
My head starts to ‘see’ everything that’s ‘wrong’, twists and turns that into distorted stories of what’s really there.
This relationship needs me to be able to breathe with that. To separate past from the current situation. To not blame him for my discomfort, yet share my boundaries and needs.
It’s possible to turn someone securely attached into an insecure attachment style, if they let themselves be. And then the games start all over again.
So just know that when you are calling in your securely attached partner, the work doesn’t stop there.
I find it both a relief and a deep confrontation with all my insecure and fearful parts. It’s a journey of deep healing to me. But not just an easy ride.
Check out the Attachment Dynamics category for more on this topic!
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