Attachment Styles and Some Personal Growth

I'll openly admit to not being the best at texting.

Unless I reply right away to the other person, I will forget to get back to them until the next time I pick up my phone. I am also very bad about keeping people updated on things through text, and will tell myself "oh, I'll tell them next time I see them or talk with them" and then three months have passed and I realize I forgot to reach out. 

I'm better about texting with a few of my close friends and in the early stages of dating with someone new. However, even with these few people sometimes either I or they will drop out of the conversation for a few days.

These silences have turned out to be times of growth for me when it comes to my attachment style.

Attachment style is something that was discussed at length in several of my classes as I earned my master's degree in counseling. John Bowlby theorized that early experiences directly influence later relationship development and can predict behavior. Mary Ainsworth later did a series of experiments observing toddlers and their mothers during short separations and reunions to identify the main attachment styles.

The four main attachment styles are secure, ambivalent-insecure (also known as anxious), avoidant-insecure (also known as dismissive), and disorganized-insecure (also known as fearful). While a person will develop a specific attachment style in their early childhood as a result of their interactions with primary caregivers, it is possible for them to develop a different attachment style as an adult through a lot of personal work and safe relationships.

                                                                                                                                Source: Infographics created by Hunter for Guess Who’s Coming

As a child my attachment style was anxious. I reacted to separations from my parents and siblings with excessive crying and was constantly worried my family or friends would choose to leave me. Thankfully, as an adult I have had friendships, personal counseling, and experiences that have allowed me to move closer to a secure attachment style.

This is where those previously mentioned texting silences come in. I used to worry not receiving a response from someone within a certain amount of time meant they weren't going to respond or they were gracefully removing themselves from the friendship/relationship. Sometimes this was the case. However, more frequently as I've grown up I've found that if I'm patient, the other person will come back. A few great examples of this are my best friends/college roommates, with whom I worried I'd lose contact or connection after I moved across the country and lived away from them for six years, and another friend from college who I only text maybe once a year, but just had dinner with two months back.

Due to these relationships and friendships where I've learned silences and gaps in communication don't mean they don't care about me, I stopped panicking when I don't hear back from someone right away. Which is a very good thing when it comes to dating.

My third date with Anna* is coming up, and neither of us are very good about keeping up a texting conversation. A full week can go between when I text her and when she replies. While I still get a little nervous about the gap, I don't go into panic mode and I don't assume she's ghosting me. So far she's always gotten back to me (usually with a cute picture of her cat) and she always seems excited to see me again. 

It's been pretty cool to apply my counseling knowledge and experience to my new dating life, and I'm excited to see how I continue to grow during this process. Stay tuned for next week's blog post, when I talk about love languages and how they've impacted the early stages of dating!

*As always, any names used are pseudonyms.