What's going on my beautiful people? This is certified life and relationship coach, Coach Court. In today's video we're going to talk about three ways to tell a person's attachment style early on during the dating stage. Before I get into the content, I want to give a disclaimer, attachment styles are fluent. Throughout your life, your attachment styles may change many times, so this may not be concrete and set in stone. Also, my suggestions aren't ‘law’ and my advice isn't ‘law’. So you want to make sure that you're doing your due diligence. Do your homework to make sure that your specific scenario applies to you and you only.
In today's video we're going to talk about three ways to tell a person's attachment style very early on.
Number one is their texting patterns.
The Avoidant: When you text them, they'll respond, they'll be conversive, but they rarely initiate a conversation. You may send them a text message and you may not hear back from them for a couple days. Honestly, they use the “I was working” or “I was kind of busy excuse” all the time. So this is what you usually see from an avoidant.
The Anxious Attacher: They're texting early and often. Sometimes you have to cut the conversation short with them because they're just going on and on and on. They're the ones that are more likely to use the emojis like the rolling on the floor laughing emoji. They're often the ones that would do the love bombing and the double texting. Just know that it may get pretty intense, pretty early. Often I see that this gives people the ‘ick’. It makes people want to pull back and makes them confused about what is happening with this person, and ‘why they have so much time on their hands to be texting all the time’.
The Fearful Avoidant: They will be kind of like the anxious attacher. They'll be texting pretty regularly, but there may be times where they'll just leave you ‘unread’, where you were in the middle of a conversation and then they just go ‘ghost’. If you're an anxious person, this will really dysregulate you. You’ll wonder ‘what's going on’, ‘did I say something wrong’, ‘did I offend them in some way’, but the answer is ‘no’, sometimes the fearful avoidant just disappears. This is like, a guy that I was coaching, he was trying to figure out what type of attachment style the young lady was that he was talking to. He was telling me verbatim what was being said throughout the text message. Then he said she just went ghost. I was telling him really early on that he might be involved with someone who's a fearful avoidant, due to her history, some of the things that she's been through, and I don't know if this is necessarily a dynamic that's going to make you comfortable and make you feel safe. So often that happened to him, where she ended up not texting him back and he had to text her the next morning to kind of proceed with the conversation. Even in making plans, she just kind of disappeared.
The Secure Attacher: When you're texting them, it feels more calm, it feels more under control and they will be sharing certain information. If you guys are on dating apps, it's really hard to tell if a person is a secure attacher, but when you feel this sense of calm, under control and they don't double text. They may be the one that ends the conversation first, where they say ‘hey look I'm busy right now, I’d really love to talk with you and catch up later, but I have something going on, or I'm a little bit occupied right now can we talk later’.
The second way to tell a person's attachment style is by what they share on their dates.
The Avoidant: They're usually more mysterious. On occasions, I've seen that they will be more conversive, they will share a little bit more about their history, about their relationship history (we'll get to that later) and they'll talk more about their family history, but for the most part, they want to stick to the light topics. They want to talk about movies, they want to talk about music or college experiences. They want to talk about more of the surface level things and they don't really dive too deep into those heavy topics.
The Anxious Attacher: You start to ask yourself if this person's truly healed, because they'll share a lot about their relationship histories. They'll share everything about their divorce, how they were being cheated on, and this is often on the first or second date and it makes you feel very uncomfortable. Oftentimes, there are things that they share that shouldn't be shared that early on. I'm just putting it politely, I've been an anxious attacher and I've done this before, so I think I have a little bit of liberty to speak on that. I have some things that I've said and done that I wasn't really proud of. I was pretty ashamed of the way that I showed up in those dating scenarios.
The Fearful Avoidant: Those that I've met, now, I don't want you guys to come at me about this, but I'm just letting you know what I've observed, they're pretty wild. They're pretty wild in those first few dates. They're the ones that are the ‘free spirits’, if you will, and there's nothing wrong with that. They're very intune with spirituality and they'll talk a lot about spirituality. They usually have career choices that aren't your typical career, kind of like ‘off the beaten path’. Like they'll be entrepreneurs, they'll be crypto traders, they’ll be traveling nurses, all different types of careers that are more of like the exciting careers, the ones that look different from day to day. They're often pretty open on those early dates with talking about their life. They usually come from backgrounds where there wasn't a whole lot of unity in their household, it was kind of chaotic, and this is just a general rule, this isn't something that is set in stone. So don’t stone me, this is just what I've seen and this is what I'm sharing with you guys. They are often the people who get into more of the “unhealthy” and the more “toxic relationships”. I'm going to get into that in number three.
The Secure Attacher: They're fairly open about their life. They talk about the things that they've been through, but the big caveat here, that I want you guys to really take inventory on is, they usually aren't talking negatively about their exes. What you'll typically hear from them is, ‘I was in a relationship’, ‘I was married’, ‘I'm divorced, we just grew out of love, we went our separate ways’, but you rarely hear them talk negatively about their previous relationships.
Number three is relationship patterns.
The Avoidant: Typically they don't have very long relationships. They usually have short-lived flings maybe, and what that means is, one to two years, 6 months even, where they kind of downgrade it to not even being in a real relationship, like ‘yeah I was seeing someone’. Even if you come across avoidants who have been in very long relationships, they'll tell you that ‘hey I didn't really love the person, it wasn't really anything that I felt was that deep, we lived together for 5 years, 6 years, but it was more like a roommate type of scenario’.
The Anxious Attacher: Usually the ones that have a lot of scorn from their past relationships. Which means, they've been in relationships and they've often been the one that's been broken up with, they are often the dumpees, they're always the ones that's being left, that's being mistreated. They have a hard time breaking that connection even when they know deep down that this isn't the relationship for them, this isn't something that's right for them.
The Fearful Avoidant: What I've seen is they have typically been the ones that were in this unhealthy off and on, kind of toxic dynamic, if you want to call it “toxic” dynamic. What I mean by toxic is a relationship where it was dysfunctional, there may have been alcohol abuse, drug abuse, physical abuse, there may have been verbal abuse. There may have been a lot of different things in that relationship that you would want to run as far away from. For them, it felt normal, it felt like, ‘alright, I kind of relate to this person, I feel like we have a lot in common’, and they're the ones that usually get into that trauma bond type of situation. This isn't, like I said, this isn't set in stone, this is just from what I've seen. So I don't want people coming at me in the comment section saying ‘you don't know what you’re talking about’. This is just what I’ve seen and I'm sharing with you guys. I've coached thousands of people at this point and this is what I've seen.
The Secure Attacher: These people are the wild card. I've seen secure attachers book calls with me, and while we're talking about their scenario, talking about their history, talking about their childhood, they look very secure, but for some reason they've gotten into relationships with insecure attachers. Now, they have often been the ones to break their relationship off when they had gotten to a certain point where they feel like ‘I’m enabling this person, this isn't something that I should continue to be trying to pursue, this isn't a healthy dynamic for me, for my mental health, or for my well-being’.
So that's all I have for you guys. If you found this video of any value, please like, comment and share. If you want my help personally, reach out to me on my website at www.fruitfulseedz.com and always remember, when you go be love, you'll never have to find it. Namaste.