Do you ever worry you could scare someone off if you tell them what you feel too early in a relationship? Our Hopeful Romantic Call of the Week is from Teddy. He expresses concerned that his girlfriend could end the relaitonship if he shares how he feels too soon. Dr. Colleen provides some information on anxious attachment styles and then gives Teddy some advice on how he can be more secure in his relationship.
Love, Unboxed: for the Hopeful Romantic
Hopeful Romantic Call of the Week is from Teddy
Subject: Understanding Attachment Styles in Relationships
Do you ever worry you could scare someone off if you tell them what you feel too early in a relationship? Our Hopeful Romantic Call of the Week is from Teddy. He expresses concerned that his girlfriend could end the relaitonship if he shares how he feels too soon. Dr. Colleen provides some information on anxious attachment styles and then gives Teddy some advice on how he can be more secure in his relationship.
I recorded this episode on Valentine's Day so I started the episode with a special message for you.
The Unboxing!
Today, we're delving into a crucial question: How soon is too soon to express your feelings in a new relationship? To explore this, we'll examine attachment styles, particularly focusing on the anxious-ambivalent attachment style.
Attachment styles, rooted in our early experiences, shape how we connect with others. John Bowlby's pioneering work highlighted four main attachment styles: secure, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, and disorganized. These styles influence how we perceive and form relationships throughout our lives.
Anxious-ambivalent individuals often fear abandonment and rejection, seeking reassurance from their partners. They may struggle with self-esteem and fear being perceived as clingy. Our caller, Teddy, exemplifies this attachment style, expressing concerns about expressing his feelings too soon and potentially driving his partner away.
For Teddy and others navigating similar feelings, it's essential to understand that expressing emotions early in a relationship isn't inherently wrong. However, it's crucial to assess whether these feelings stem from genuine connection or anxious attachment.
Building a secure attachment takes time and self-awareness. It involves being patient, allowing the relationship to evolve naturally, and giving space for mutual growth. Constant contact and seeking reassurance may hinder rather than nurture the bond.
Effective communication is key. Expressing your feelings authentically while respecting your partner's pace fosters a healthy dynamic. Remember, it's okay for your partner's response to differ from yours. What matters is creating a safe space for open dialogue and mutual understanding.
Ultimately, Teddy and anyone navigating anxious attachment can cultivate security by challenging fears, managing emotions, and fostering trust over time. Self-awareness and patience are powerful tools on the journey to a fulfilling, secure relationship.
Ep 005 How Soon Can I say How I feel
[00:00:00] Do you still hold out hope for finding love or improving the love you have? Welcome to Love Unboxed, the podcast for the hopeful romantic. Your host is Dr. Colleen Mullen. She's been a therapist for over 20 years and a lifetime hopeful romantic. She's been helping her clients find love and stay in love.
[00:00:21] And now she wants to share what she knows with you. Get ready folks, because today we're diving into a brand new unboxing adventure.[00:00:30]
[00:00:38] Hi, and welcome my fellow hope for romantics, Dr. Colleen here, and I'm so ready for this week's unboxing. I hope you are too. And if you're just joining me for the first time, cause we are still just a handful of episodes in with today being number five. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. And if you've [00:01:00] been here before and decided to come back.
[00:01:02] Thank you. I so appreciate you and hope that you find that this is helpful for you in your love life. I'm recording this episode on Valentine's Day, which can be a precariously emotional day. If you are a hopeful romantic who has not quite found what you were looking for in the love department, I want to remind you not to lose sight of what you want when you are dating.
[00:01:28] You deserve to be [00:01:30] loved as you want to be loved. You do. Even if You think your expectations are too high. You deserve to have what you want in a relationship. I'm just about to play our hopeful romantic call of the week to get our unboxing started. But before we get into that, I need to remind you that I am here providing guidance, but this is not therapy and is not expected to replace anyone's therapy.
[00:01:59] That being [00:02:00] said If you would like to ask me a relationship question, just go to loveunboxedpodcast. com to tell me what you want me to know and ask away. You get five whole minutes to set up the stage for your dilemma and ask your question. I can't wait to hear what's been on your mind. All right. But let's get on to this unboxing for today.
[00:02:29] Hey, Dr. Colleen, [00:02:30] my name is Teddy, and I had a question about how soon is too soon to tell someone that you have feelings for them? I've been dating a girl for almost four months now, um, and she's had some past relationship trauma. And most recently she was love bombed and I don't want to come on too strong.
[00:02:54] So I'm wondering when is the right time? Um, how long should I wait [00:03:00] or should I just leave it alone and let her tell me she loves me if she has feelings for me? How soon should you talk about how you're feeling about someone you've been dating a few months? Well, Teddy, falling in love does take time.
[00:03:18] That doesn't mean that what you're feeling right now is not love. The one thing I'd want you to do is to be in check with yourself. I'll err on the side of assumption here and say that [00:03:30] when someone like yourself gets anxious about their feelings and worried that they're going to be jumping the gun on how they feel, It's usually based in an anxious attachment style.
[00:03:40] I think for this to make the most sense, I need to begin with defining what I mean when I am talking about an anxious attachment style. In the field of psychology and human studies, there are four different attachment styles. And attachment means exactly that, how [00:04:00] we form and perceive our attachment to others.
[00:04:04] The four attachment styles are secure, anxious ambivalent, anxious avoidant, and anxious disorganized attachment styles. Obviously, the three styles other than secure are considered anxious styles or insecure styles. So generally, you'll hear them discussed as secure, ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized. We form [00:04:30] our style of attaching to others between the ages of six months to two years.
[00:04:35] That's fascinating to me, and I had the fortunate experience as a grad student of participating in a study that was a replication of one done a long time ago, looking at how toddlers have attached to their mother figures. Maybe I'll do a blog post on that sometime, but it was fascinating to watch the babies interact with their [00:05:00] mothers in different ways, in different parts of this facility that we were in.
[00:05:05] And what happens is that our young brains end up defining Any of the actions of our primary caregiver and decide what it means to them, like they look at the behavior all the time, not just during feedings. And then we carry that message that we took in from the primary caregiver that we made sense of before we were two years [00:05:30] old and decided that that's what that meant.
[00:05:32] And we carry it into our adulthood as we attach to friends and particularly intimate partners. Isn't that wild? The original attachment theorist was British scientist John Bowlby in around the 50s. He defined attachment as quote unquote lasting connectedness between human beings and he believed that we attach to others because we have an innate drive to [00:06:00] emotionally bond with our caregivers.
[00:06:02] This was contrary to what behaviorists would believe to be learned behavior. They meant that because the mother fed the baby, the baby would naturally attach to the mother. But Bowlby found that although a baby had sought out the mother to be fed, which does bring comfort and send signals of being cared for, it didn't guarantee that the baby would be secure in their attachment because the baby would then show That they had separation anxiety.
[00:06:28] So just [00:06:30] because a baby was getting fed and comforted by a mother at times of feeding, it didn't mean that the child felt secure in that bond. Okay, so what's the difference between the different attachment styles? Since we're going to focus on the anxious ambivalent style later, I'm going to give you a quick explanation of the secure, the ambivalent, and the disorganized attachment style.
[00:06:55] The securely bonded partner is genuinely in their relationship without fear that [00:07:00] the partner would leave them without good cause. They don't worry about what their partner is doing when they're not with them or who they're hanging out with. They do not have to be in constant contact with them. They are literally secure.
[00:07:12] They're comfortable in their bond with their partner, and they know that they love their partner and that their partner loves them, or that they're secure in wherever they are in their relationship, and they're not worried that it could all go away for no good reason. And then we have [00:07:30] the person that falls into the avoidant attachment style, and this will be the partner who.
[00:07:36] May be in a relationship, may be in a long term relationship, but they don't express themselves. They will literally not tell their partner that they love them. They will be, they can be very uncomfortable with genuine free expression of [00:08:00] emotions because of the anxiety that comes up. That person has an avoidant attachment style.
[00:08:08] And the person who has a disorganized attachment style has a bit of both the ambivalent and the avoidant. The person with the disorganized attachment style may feel things deeply and attach quickly, but then they can do things that literally will push a person away. Uh, all the while they may be expressing that they love them, [00:08:30] but they're doing things that might even be sabotaging to the relationship.
[00:08:33] It looks literally disorganized, right? And it's confusing for someone to be. on the receiving end of that attachment style. But today, our caller Teddy seems to fall into the category of the anxious ambivalent attachment style. The person who is ambivalently attached often jumps ahead in a relationship.
[00:08:57] They need to know, like, where are [00:09:00] we? If we're three weeks in, like, can you tell if you want to spend your life with me yet? Um, really is how it can feel to them sometimes. They have all these feelings that come up, um, but it's usually an often based in fear of abandonment, fearing rejection, that someone could walk away from them for no good reason.
[00:09:24] And then the dreaded word that I hear people say, Oh, I don't want to be seen as [00:09:30] clingy. The person who is ambivalently attached. Sees others as better than them. Often it's born out of a lower self esteem. And then they truly may feel because of that, that their, that their partner is truly their better half, that they are literally better than them.
[00:09:52] They can present as people pleasers, but they can also carry around resentment when they realize how much they work to accommodate a partner [00:10:00] and how little they sort of expect. And in the case of our hopeful romantic caller, Teddy. We are going to stick with a framework around the anxious ambivalent attachment, and we're going to talk about how to manage the emotions that come up and how to figure out when it is time to express yourself more freely if it is not at the time that he was asking.[00:10:30]
[00:10:30] And of course, there's going to be more to that statement than it sounds. All right, let's get into our caller, Teddy. So Teddy is a guy who's been dating a woman for three to four months. And if we listen to the message that he leaves through the framework of an anxious, ambivalent attachment style, we can hear him literally say that he is concerned about scaring away this girlfriend.
[00:10:55] He's not saying that he doesn't think that his feeling of love for her at this [00:11:00] stage is invalid. So when Teddy first poses his question, I don't want to be too much. I don't want to push her away. So if we can hear that, that he is scared that she could just walk away because him [00:11:30] expressing himself.
[00:11:31] Would be too much. That's something that I want him to look at. And if you are recognizing that in yourself, that sometimes you wanna say something, but you're like, oh, I don't wanna be too much, I, I want you to look at that feeling. People certainly can feel love in three to four months. I don't think that he doesn't feel what he's feeling.
[00:11:55] I think that he's insecure because he's scared that if he says it, [00:12:00] she could walk away. That wouldn't say that that is true, secure love that is very insecure at that moment. But if you have a history though of, you know, maybe this isn't the first time Teddy has felt love in three to four months. Uh, if you have a history of feeling love early on in a relationship, like one that really makes you feel like compelled to go, Oh my gosh, this must be it.
[00:12:28] But it fizzles out [00:12:30] in ways that you didn't expect and probably way sooner than you thought it might if it was going to go south. I would encourage you to slow down and take your time. You know, it's definitely great to be in a new relationship and all that feeling is a wonderful thing, but we know it takes longer than a few months to really get to know someone in a way that would tell you that you could consider.
[00:12:58] Um, looking at a future [00:13:00] with this person. And we also know that people are on their best behavior in the early parts of a relationship for many months. So you want to take time to get to know them. You want to understand them. You know, we know it, Oh, it does take time to get to know someone in a way where we can feel secure in the bond we have that we wouldn't think that expressing something wonderful to them.
[00:13:28] Could cause him to walk [00:13:30] away. That doesn't make sense, right? And I will address what he says about her past because I know people are going yeah, but she has trauma Yeah, but she you know has been love bombed. Maybe he is gonna scare her off That's exactly the reason why I'm saying to slow down. It's because people can go through stuff and they can still accept being told that someone is falling in love with them.
[00:13:57] So I want to give you [00:14:00] a few things to look at in the process of getting to know the person that you're dating. As you get into a more committed relationship, these are the things you'd want to look for to see. You know, about mutually falling in love with each other. So number one is, does who they say they are match up with who you are seeing them to be?
[00:14:20] If they say that they're outgoing and friendly, are you seeing that? Do they match up with who they tell you that they are? Are they [00:14:30] consistent? Uh, do they show up when they say they will? Do they call? Do they initiate contact with you and respond appropriately? Also, to keep in mind the person who is.
[00:14:41] Anxiously, ambivalently attached will often be the person who is feeling compelled to look to see if somebody contacting them, they might feel like they need to contact them to let the person they're interested in know that they're thinking of them. They may feel like if I don't, they won't know that I care.
[00:14:59] That's, [00:15:00] that's kind of classically the anxiously ambivalent person. So you also want to know. And getting to know the person, how do they handle things when they don't go as planned? And how do they manage their emotions when they're upset? How are they when you are stressed? And are you having any fun with them?
[00:15:23] Lots of people stick with people who are kind of like, okay, they're nice and stuff because [00:15:30] for whatever reason, whether it's their self esteem or they got burned before and they're scared, but this person likes them, so they'll stick with them because they're just nice enough. You know, nice enough and good enough do have categories that fit for us.
[00:15:44] And we also want to have fun with the nice enough person. So you want to, you want to make sure you're having fun. You're not just planning on moving forward and planning out this life without making sure you're having some fun together. And then other things to look at [00:16:00] is when you've had a disagreement or needed to ask for something, have you felt free to do that?
[00:16:06] And did it go well? Even if they don't agree with you. Are they easy to have a discourse about when something isn't agreeable? And then you want to look at the bigger things in life, uh, to see if you have similar values. So as you're going through life together, it doesn't matter if you sit down at the table at the [00:16:30] first date.
[00:16:31] And you say, Oh, what are you looking for? And they say, I'm looking for a serious relationship. I really want to get married in the future. I'd like to have a family, probably two kids and blah, blah, blah. If that's the same thing that you want, it doesn't make a difference that they're saying it right then and there.
[00:16:49] You still want to find out, but do you have the same values along the way? And that is something that's shown in how they treat others, how they treat you. What is there? [00:17:00] spiritual makeup, you know, what's important to them in that realm of their life. What's, what does money symbolize to them? What is family symbolized to them?
[00:17:10] What does their career mean to them? What's their identity? All of those things are your value system and you want that to be similar. You can have all sorts of different interests in each other, but as long as both of you have similar value sets, it can be a really nice compatible. Uh, [00:17:30] relationship, somebody might say, well, how come you can't just have that conversation and say, well, since we feel all the same way about things, let's just move on with things.
[00:17:40] Of course, because there's that intangible thing that happens, you want to make sure that you have some chemistry with each other, but you also need to live it out. You need to experience the person and they need to experience you. And I tell people usually, you know, that can take. Up to a year, maybe even a little longer [00:18:00] to have a chance to kind of cycle through some of these things that are just part of everyday life.
[00:18:05] You know, things that make us a little disgruntled, things that, you know, make us happy, ways that we get out of problems, what happens when we need space, how do we communicate, all of those good things. Those things take time for you to witness. about the other person and the person you're dating should be doing the same thing to you.
[00:18:27] So those are a few things to keep in mind [00:18:30] to gauge our process of falling in love with a person, developing love, which is based in trust. And we can only trust a person after we get to know them. We can assume trust, but we feel trust. After we've known them for some time, but let's get back to our hopeful, romantic Teddy.
[00:18:53] Teddy expressed his concern about how his feelings may drive his girlfriend away [00:19:00] because he thought that his fear was due to the fact that she had some kind of relationship trauma in her past. And was recently love bombed. So he thought, well if I say this, then I might come across as love bombing her.
[00:19:15] So through the anxious, ambivalent lens, we would say that his fear of abandonment has told him that his girlfriend could reject him for saying how he feels. That's kind of all we need to know that to know that he is not securely attached [00:19:30] right there. At this point, it doesn't even matter what her attachment style is.
[00:19:35] But it does suggest that he doesn't recognize feeling securely attached to her. At this point, Teddy is acting out through his ambivalent attachment style, and the anxiety shows itself in that statement that she could leave if he says too much about how he feels. It suggests that his insecurity [00:20:00] is about how well he knows her.
[00:20:03] And I would chalk his eager emotions up to anxiety and fear in that circumstance. Now, I don't think that he doesn't feel what he feels. I think he's not secure and that she feels the same way. And so he's trying to rush it to find out if he can make it move along faster so that he can just settle in and move forward because she tells him, yes, I [00:20:30] feel this way.
[00:20:30] It will calm him. Unfortunately, this can cause more anxiety later on in the relationship. So, here's the difference with a secure person. A securely attached person may tell a person that they love them when they initially feel it three or four months into a relationship, if that's the case, but they don't worry that the person will walk away without cause.
[00:20:55] A more securely attached person may take the chance and say how they're feeling [00:21:00] while also being well aware that their girlfriend may not verbally reciprocate at that time or even say that they don't feel the same way, but they like them and they'd like to see how it's going to play out. That's in direct conflict with the anxious ambivalent person's attachment style.
[00:21:16] The secure person wouldn't need the girlfriend to reciprocate those exact emotions to feel like they did the right thing in expressing themselves. So to Teddy and anyone else who is relating to this feeling, like maybe relating [00:21:30] to the anxious ambivalent makeup, I want to tell you, go ahead and feel all those good feelings.
[00:21:36] It's part of the process of being in a relationship with someone that you're really into. That's great. It's a sign that you're moving. in the right direction. And of course, you can say you're in love if you want to do that. And we've talked A lot today about that. It can't be based in being scared about not knowing.
[00:21:58] You want to say it because you [00:22:00] feel it almost like it doesn't matter. Just like a secure, a securely attached person would do. It wouldn't matter to them. Of course it would matter. It's not going to make or break how they feel because they can be secure in how they feel and they don't need you to be the, in the exact same.
[00:22:18] Head space right at that moment. As an alternative, if you're relating to that and go, yeah, okay, but then what do I say? Because I want to say something to them when I feel this way. You can always tell them how [00:22:30] great it is spending time with them, getting to know them, or how you are really falling for them.
[00:22:36] If it's love, you'll have a lot of time to tell them how much you love them. In the future. So now what can our hopeful romantic Teddy do about his anxious ambivalent attachment style? Can people really change their attachment style? Could he ever really be secure? You know, it's not an easy thing to do, but one of the things we want to do is at [00:23:00] least understand how we attach, right?
[00:23:05] Self awareness can get us pretty far because self awareness can help us change the behavior. So in being self aware. The first thing I might recommend that Teddy do is have patience in this new relationship. He can allow for some space for the connection to grow. Having constant contact with the person you're dating, [00:23:30] just like in the last episode, we were talking about location sharing and how that can Screw things up.
[00:23:35] The constant contact doesn't speed up the love building process and in lots of ways it poses obstacles and it gives a false sense of security that you are constantly texting during the day. You're not actually getting to know the person. You're making small talk through a day. And connecting over little things, but it doesn't say anything about how that person's going to be when you [00:24:00] guys have your first argument or disagreement, or it doesn't say how that, how that person's going to treat you when something happens and they want to just hole up by themselves to deal with something.
[00:24:12] Are they going to be polite? Are they going to let you know? Are they just going to disappear? I mean, it doesn't tell you anything about how they orient themselves except that they are good at the small talk during the day and staying engaged in that way. I would also want Teddy and anyone [00:24:30] else relating to this anxious attachment style to be able to say whatever you want in your relationship without worry about what they also are.
[00:24:43] Like, if they're on the exact same page as you, you have to be able to speak your needs and you have to be able to do it as you see them come up or you have to be able to state your feelings and have it be a safe place. So, even [00:25:00] if the person isn't reciprocating and going, Oh my gosh, I totally love you too.
[00:25:05] They might say, Gosh, that is so nice. Thank you. I am really enjoying getting to know you and I want to keep doing that because it does feel really good. That's a good answer. That's not one that should deflate your ego. But for the anxiously ambivalently or the anxious ambivalently attached person, that is an [00:25:30] ego deflating type of statement, right?
[00:25:32] How you manage your emotions when you don't get the exact response that you thought you would get. It's another way of learning to feel more secure. You remind yourself it's okay. They don't have to be totally head over heels wanting to spend their life with me and love with me yet. I like that they are enjoying me.
[00:25:53] I like that at least they are saying, yeah, this is a good thing and it's working for them and they'd like to see [00:26:00] what happens. So, having patience, letting the connection grow naturally, letting the person reach out to you for connection, right? You don't need to initiate all the contacts. If you find that you are, and that when you don't, they're not initiating, you want to look at that, right?
[00:26:21] So some of that anxiety stops you from seeing what could be happening or not happening. So, leave some [00:26:30] space for them to reach out to you as well, and reciprocate. And pursue you and give yourself the freedom to express yourself and remind yourself that it's okay for them to respond in whatever way they think works in response to whatever statement you're giving them.
[00:26:52] You know, changing how you attach takes, takes work and it'll take dating and [00:27:00] it'll take being in and out maybe of other relationships. If you're listening and you're in a relationship and you're like, yeah, but this is me and I get so overwhelmed when I think something's wrong in my relationship that I can't focus on anything.
[00:27:13] That's also one of those signs. Um, and you're in a relationship, you can start working on having patience too. And uh, see what happens when you give some space. You don't need to be in [00:27:30] maybe midday contact with your partner when they're at work. Or getting anxious if they haven't called yet to say what their, you know, what they would like the plans to be for the evening or any of the things that cause you to feel anxious literally for no reason.
[00:27:49] That when you saw each other in the morning and you went off to work, everything was fine. But at two in the afternoon, you're rethinking the last 24 hours of your life [00:28:00] and you're getting worked up. Start training yourself to say, no, let me take a deep breath. There's no reason for me to worry. And once you start learning some, uh, emotion management skills in that way, breathing, walking off a little bit of the energy, reminding yourself it's okay.
[00:28:20] And that you also know there is no. tangible evidence in your life that something is wrong, you'll start to get more and more [00:28:30] secure in how you orient yourself in your relationship. Cause you'll get evidence that it's okay. And that your relationship is working in the way that you think it is. And your partner does want to spend time with you and they do like you.
[00:28:44] Okay. And if you're getting the opposite, of course, you're always learning. And if your partner It's not feeling all those things, you'll find that out too, instead of you carrying along something that's cracked, that needs to [00:29:00] be mended. So to Teddy, I hope this sorted out some things for you. I would never want you to fear someone to walk away from you because you share how you feel with them.
[00:29:12] Just like the rest of us, you deserve the love that you want to have as well. And I hope that you find it. Well, this wraps up episode five of the Love Unboxed podcast for The Hopeful Romantic. Please make sure if you've got a question for me that you're going to [00:29:30] loveunboxedpodcast. com and leaving your question for me there.
[00:29:34] And if you like the show, I'd love for you to make sure that you've subscribed or followed on whatever podcast player that you're on. If you really are enjoying it or finding it helpful, uh, quick five star review. It does help get me on the map so that maybe some new listeners can find me as well. If you would like to connect with me between episodes, you can follow me over on.
[00:29:59] [00:30:00] I'm at love unbox podcast, and that's also where I'm posting the date of the week segment and on Instagram at Dr. Colleen Mullen. Okay. From this hopeful romantic to you until next time, let's keep hope alive.[00:30:30] [00:31:00]