Lessons Every Anxiously-Attached Woman Needs to Learn (From a Breakup Coach For Women With Anxious Attachment Styles)
Brought to you by my 16-day heartbreak series for women with anxious attachment styles
So you’ve recently discovered you’re anxiously attached, and you obviously had to find that out the hard way…
…you know, by going through a semi-brutal relationship (especially towards the end) and are feeling completely..empty inside.
And angry. And heartbroken.
Welcome to my neck of the woods, where most of my readers are anxiously-attached and growing into the best version of themselves and preparing for their life partner (I know, you thought they were your life partner for a while there…)
And along this journey (and yes I have taken it too!) we must realize a few things.
You can either learn the big lessons now, or learn them later.
And I think (this is my guess) that you’re ready to learn what you need to learn so you can get back to yourself and take the lessons my clients and I have all been through.
Because us anxiously attached gals LOVE to repeat our patterns, and it only gets in the way of the happily ever after we are seeking.
But the “after” in happily ever after is there because it comes after the lessons I’m dropping in this article.
So as your breakup coach for anxiously-attached peeps, these are the important lessons you’ve got to learn in order to heal, grow & find your ideal person (sooner than later!)
1.It’s better to be alone than with someone who doesn’t get you/treat you right/is avoidantly attached.
Yes, I know you’re over there pining over your ex, but you and I both know that the emptiness, misunderstood-ness (yeah, that’s a word, ok?), and loneliness you felt in your last relationship is WAY worse than the loneliness you’re feeling during your breakup right now.
Why? Because when you’re alone, at least you’ve got your beautiful self, who is doing their best to take care of you.
When you were with that ex of yours, your ex was choosing themselves and you were also choosing them—but who was choosing you?
Not them. At least not the way you needed them to.
Being alone doesn’t feel great for us folks with an anxious attachment style, let’s face it.
But we need it because we need to learn that being in a relationship IS NOT better than being alone if you’re not being treated how you deserve.
You went through SO much in your last relationship — inconsistent behavior from them, not feeling like your ex was 100% in it, feeling like you were the only reason you guys saw each other, and feeling like you were walking on eggshells allll the time.
Being alone is NOT worse than that—right?
This lesson helped me on my worst days. Because even though I wanted to text them, make it better, and at least holdout on the idea that if we were still together, I’d be happier, I know it’s not true.
There were so many days I was frustrated that I was in a relationship where my ex never really made any plans for us to look forward to, or always had a way of delaying the “next step” in our relationship.
Being alone during our breakup at least meant that I could make plans with myself, and create a life that no longer revolved around making myself feel inadequate, or like I was waiting hand and foot on my ex who most certainly was not giving our relationship nearly enough airtime as I was.
2.Jumping into another relationship one after another after another is only prolonging the inevitable (being alone and doing the inner work)
Okay, I see you over there “casually” talking to other people, which you think is harmless and innocent, but we all know the truth: you’re wanting some imitation comfort and want to avoid being alone.
The funny thing is you know it too. You totally know this (or these) people you’re casually hitting up are merely a distraction from feeling what you need to feel to move on.
I’ve been there. I’ve texted guys I KNOW are merely a distraction for me, but I knew they were into me which I used as selfish comfort and made plans with anyone just to avoid facing what I was.
I’d come up with excuses like “what, so I’m just supposed to be alone in my room all day? No!” and any other thing to enable my avoid-feeling-this-heartbreak-at-all-costs situation I was in.
But ultimately, we anxious peeps will come to see (eventually) that we are putting off doing the inner work by just dating others, even casually. Inner work is the stuff that makes us feel secure in ourselves and don’t make us rush into something for the sake of imitation comfort with situationships. It helps us deal with our stuff, and build a stronger sense of self along the way so when we do get into a relationship, we know how to put ourselves as equals in the relationship (someone we seriously are not accustomed to).
Feel like you need your whole breakup situation analyzed? Order an in-depth breakup analysis HERE.
3.You’ll find “the one” when you give up trying to be rescued by anyone other than yourself
I kid you not, I found my husband literally a couple weeks after making a commitment to myself, which meant a) knowing that pining over my last relationship wasn’t going to heal me and b) saying goodbye to temporary distraction relationships.
I didn’t find my husband when I “stopped looking” or “when I least expected it” although those were both true, I found him when I gave up trying to find a relationship so bad because I realized I was just trying to be rescued.
Many women with anxious attachment styles don’t even realize this complex is running the ship. We think we’re dating and in control of how we are showing up, but really, there’s this unconscious desire to be rescued from someone other than us.
But that “rescue” feeling goes away when we realize how great we are and focus on what we’ve got. Which sounds both vague and simple, so let me explain exactly what I mean.
In 2018, after I ended this situationship I was in, I naturally became so tired of just “seeing where things will go!” Anytime I met someone new or an old friend came back into the picture. I had not met someone who truly wanted a relationship with me beyond a few weeks after my last relationship ended 1.5 years earlier, and I was always trying to “make” these relationships happen.
And I finally let go of the proverbial dating wheel, because I finally decided I wanted to focus on myself. And not the kind where I think I’ve made huge progress in 7 days, but the kind that lasts as long as it lasts.
And that’s when I met my now-husband at a venue when I was at my friend’s birthday party.
BUT HERE’S THE THING: I want to share that if I had the same “rescue me” complex at the time of meeting my husband, I don’t know if it would have worked out between us.
It was because I was finally committed to caring for myself that not only did I make that clear to my husband, but I modelled it and made it easy for him to support me in that.
I stopped trying to be anxiously-attached “ALL IN” as we tend to do. Not because I was exercising this new muscle, but because I was EXHAUSTED from all my other attempts and only had energy for…me.
So really, a big lesson us anxiously-attached ladies need to know is that a new relationship won’t solve your unhealed complexes that are keeping you from a lasting relationship.
It’s your mindset and healing that will.
When you shift your mind, everything else shifts too, and my love story is proof in the pudding, as they say.
And if you’re totally curious how I manifested my hubby from this beautiful place of surrender (and how quickly this happened), you’ll definitely want to check out my 10-day manifesting course.
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So those are my 3 big lessons to all my fellow anxiously-attached friends, you included. I’d love to hear which one of these lessons stuck out for you most by writing a comment in the section below
xo
Nancy
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