I didn’t always have such a secure attachment style.
I used to have a very anxious attachment style because I used to have low self-esteem.
Back in those days, if I got into a relationship, I’d start clinging onto my girlfriend at the time, desperately hoping that she would never leave me. Of course, that made those girlfriends more inclined to leave.
When I started to work on myself and started swinging the pendulum more toward the middle, I noticed a few lingering anxiously attached habits, even if I felt secure for the most part.
I wouldn’t put much thought into my own boundaries.
- I gave those girlfriends tons of attention even when I was too tired to do so.
- I gave them my time even when it conflicted with my schedule.
- I gave up hobbies and passions just to focus more on them when there were signs that they wanted more from me.
I had these anxious habits from past trauma in some form or another. And girlfriends have benefited from me being such a pleaser.
These days, I know how to set my boundaries and I communicate very well in my relationships.
- I give girlfriends ample attention in a way that also invigorates me, not at the expense of my energy.
- I am generous with my time, but know how to set appropriate limits.
- And, while I do the emotional labor necessary to maintain healthy relationships, I do not compromise on anything that’s actually important to me.
It looks the same on the outside.
The women I date now are functionally benefiting from almost the same things that the women I dated before have benefitted from, just with less self-sacrifice on my part. Or, rather, the self-sacrifice aspect transformed into something healthier.
In all my years of having every kind of intimate relationship you can imagine with more than a hundred women, I have also benefited from some habits or behaviors that could have been the result of their trauma.
For example, I have expressed before that dating women who have “ugly duckling syndrome” is great. They put in effort to make themselves attractive, but they’re still down-to-earth because they know what it’s like to be unattractive. In that way, they’re similar to me.
There are times when beneficial trauma-based behaviors and personalities persist after healing.
This is when they are behaviors that can also be arrived at by healthier means, and a personal revelation or reframing of such behavior happens.
I have recently learned about something called “eldest daughter syndrome” in which women — who are the eldest daughters in their families — become people-pleasers as a coping mechanism to manage their anxiety.
If you have a girlfriend who is a people-pleaser as a coping mechanism for anxiety, enabling such behavior is likely to perpetuate that anxiety. However, if she has worked through those things, and chooses to still act generously from a place of empathy and compassion instead, I believe that will exercise said empathy and compassion rather than the anxiety.
In the contexts I’ve mentioned so far, is it OK to benefit from your partners’ behavior that resulted from trauma?
I would say yes, as long as they have transformed the motivation behind the behavior into something healthy, and as long as that actual behavior is healthy.
Sometimes, that just takes a simple wake up call. Sometimes, it takes years of therapy. Everyone moves at their own pace.
Not all such behavior can be healthy, though.
From my male perspective, when I had lower self-esteem, there were times when I thought some twisted things.
I liked the idea of a woman also having low self-esteem because, if they did, they’d be more likely to give me a shot, right?
This is the thinking of a man who sees himself as unworthy of women’s attention. A man with low self-esteem himself. A man who hasn’t worked through his own inner demons. A man who hasn’t realized that he can still be attractive to stunning supermodels with just his personality even if he’s (insert excuses here).
My own trauma made me have low self-esteem, which caused me to be drawn to women who also had low self-esteem without recognizing the downsides. This short-sighted preference could not manifest as anything healthy.
As I gained more confidence in myself and adopted more of a secure attachment style though good communication practices within my relationships, I was better able to see past the convenience of low self-esteem in women and identify the inherent problems that it brought to the table.
At the same time, if those women overcame low self-esteem through the work of mental self-care, and kept a generosity of spirit that expressed itself similarly to how they behaved when they had low self-esteem, all I saw was beauty.
In the end, I believe it’s important for all of us to strive toward adopting a secure attachment style when it comes to our relationships.
It will help you stop worrying about the things you shouldn’t worry about.
It will help your partners understand your desires and boundaries.
It will help you to love fully.
It’s why I emphasize the importance of the attachment style model in the chapter about relationships in my book, Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women.
Throughout the book, I talk about healing as a common theme in every aspect of your love life, from seduction to long-term relationships. Developing a secure attachment style will not only help you heal, but it will also help heal the hearts of your partners.
Let’s all strive to be lovers who can offer that.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Savannah B. on Unsplash