Dating Tips for an Anxious Attachment Style

Individuals with anxious attachment have a tendency to attach quickly (often to people who lean more avoidant) and to idealize early on. Alternatively, they may pass up more secure options due to lack of spark, even if they’d make solid long-term matches.

Here are some things anxiously attached people can keep in mind when it comes to dating so as to protect their time, energy, and hearts.

1. Hold off on social media following.

Chris Rock has joked that people bring their  “representatives” to initial dates, more than we bring our complete selves. Some representatives offer an accurate picture into future character; others are showing you who the person wants to be, or successfully conjure maybe 10 or 15% of the time—but the other 90%, it’s a different story.

It’s important to be in touch with more than just the curated or idealized version when you’re getting to know a person. Once your brain begins idealizing, it becomes increasingly difficult to let go of someone who may not have even been real. The traits you’ve assigned value to might be nothing more than your mind’s own projections based on what you want or need in a partner.

Social media following will only add to the likelihood that you’ll put the other person on an unearned pedestal, as we show our best parts on these platforms—and the anxiously attached already tend to prematurely idealize enough as it is.

2. Narrow your physical radius.

 Texts and phone calls without spending time together in person are kerosene for fantasizing, imagining, and projection in the early stages of dating—again, all things that the anxious attachment style is more prone to. It’s easier to not fall into this trap if you live close to the person you’re dating. Having to drive an hour or two to see someone really makes it into an event. That time set aside requires commitment. It raises the stakes. It tells your brain, “I’m prioritizing this person.”

There’s far less sacrifice involved in walking three blocks from your apartment to meet for a casual coffee—and then doing it again a few days later. And a few days after that, until eventually, you’ve come to know this person, and you weren’t even thinking about it. It happened organically, with little fantasizing or projecting in between. 

3. Be wary of sparks.

Roxy Zarrabi, Psy.D has encouraged her readers to “think about (their) attachment style as the blueprint for the partners (they) are drawn to and how (they) relate in (their) relationships.” 

“If you have an anxious attachment style, you may be prone to being drawn to emotionally unavailable people,” she writes.

 Without the high of chasing or pursuing, healthy and balanced connection can feel boring to the anxiously attached. But it’s important to remember that what can feel like connection may at times amount to more of a drug high. As writer Annie Wegner puts it, “Dopamine is unsatisfactory long-term. You will feel alone, even with a human beside you.”

So when dating, pay attention to that value in healthier, less buzzy or exciting potential partners. And try unsubscribing to the idea that a lack of immediate fireworks is a sign of “not meant to be.” Calm can be a positive foundation to start from.

4. Listen to your warning bells.

During an unhealthy situation, I was once in, my anxiety burned like wildfire inside me. Loud alarm bells were sounding in my head (and it wasn’t just my chronic tinnitus). Madame Clavel from Madeline was screaming, “Something is not right.”

Meditation, journaling, and exercise felt like mere buckets of water against a massive conflagration in that they put out a few flames, but didn’t address the root cause. What addressed the root cause was ending the unhealthy dynamic that was responsible for it.

It’s an anxious tendency to blame one’s self. You might think the problem is you at first, that you just need to “get a handle on your anxiety,” make it go away to keep it from sabotaging a potentially good relationship.

And yet, a lot of the time, we actually are picking up on something real. Our bodies can be wiser than our brains. Much as we may not want to listen to it, anxiety is often there to tell us that something’s amiss. It’s there to help us make wiser choices in our dating lives. Without it, we’re likelier to drive straight ahead into concrete walls or to follow cute-looking squirrels off rocky cliffs.

Pay attention to what your anxiety’s directing you towards. Know that what burdens you can also be an asset.

5. Allow people to reveal themselves with time. 

Stay discerning, and pay attention to the qualities and behaviors in a potential partner that you don’t like, in addition to the ones that you do. A person’s harder to let go of when they’re wearing the “Perfect” badge—and they don’t deserve that from you quite yet. They haven’t earned their place on the pedestal. Let this reminder power your healthy skepticism and detachment in the beginning stages of dating.

Notice when your excitement and idealizing feelings start to take hold so that perhaps you can bring them down a notch.