Episode 16: You Are Not Stuck With Your Attachment Style

This week, I’m talking about attachment theory — one of the psychology topics that has fascinated me for years, both from studying psychology in college and from living through enough relationships to know this stuff gets very real very fast.

Inspired by Dr. Amir Levine’s work in Attached and his upcoming book Secure, this episode goes beyond just labeling people as anxious, avoidant, or secure. We’re talking about what those attachment styles actually mean, how they show up in dating and relationships, and why the most hopeful part of this conversation is that you are not stuck.

In this episode, I talk about:

• what anxious, avoidant, and secure attachment can look like in real life
• why attachment is really about emotional safety
• how insecure dynamics can show up in dating
• the difference between chemistry and emotional safety
• why understanding someone’s behavior does not mean accepting it
• how relationships can make you feel more secure or more anxious over time
• what it means to move toward secure love
• why consistency, availability, responsiveness, and predictability matter in relationships

If you’ve ever overthought a text, felt calm with one person and completely dysregulated with another, or wondered why you keep getting pulled toward relationships that challenge your nervous system, this episode is for you.

Take the Attachment Style Quiz

If you’re curious about your attachment style, you can take a free quiz here:
Attachment Project Quiz: https://quiz.attachmentproject.com/

This is a great starting point for understanding your relationship patterns and opening up conversations with your partner or friends.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the Midlife Mess podcast. My name is Laura Thompson. I am a single, divorced, working mom. I'm 42 years old. And I just bought a house with my seven-year-old parents. Welcome to my midlife mess. Hi guys, how you doing this week? I hope you guys really enjoyed the past couple episodes with my brother. He's so fun to talk to and just banter with. And I hope you guys really enjoyed that. He continues to, you know, just get better and better. Let me know if you guys want a recurring Joel episode or recurring role in the episodes. Let me know. Usually, when I'm planning an episode, sometimes obviously it's things that are happening in my life, and sometimes it's just topics. Usually it's always going to have some kind of relevancy to what's going on right now in my life, or just information that I've learned. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I was just listening to Alex Cooper's most recent podcast from Call Her Daddy is her show. It's so good. She started out like pretty wild, and but now she has grown into an amazing interviewer. And her mom is a psychologist. So I just very much appreciate her like base knowledge of psychology. And she was interviewing Carrie Washington, and I I'm just I'm just so excited for like my daughter's generation, which have you guys heard? So she's almost eight. Her generation is called Gen Alpha. And I just think they her genera, I think they're really gonna embody Gen Alpha. But it's just so cool to see the differences in like attitudes and content that she's gonna be exposed to, like from what I was exposed to, you know, 30 years ago. I know, I know, I'm 42, but I mean like when I was a kid. So I know that we, you know, there's a lot of like heavy news right now, but their interview, you should go and listen to it on Call Her Daddy, it just really made me so excited and happy for girls and boys. Like, I really do think the key to us coming together is men empowering women. That's the way that it's gonna come together. So, what we're gonna talk about today kind of goes along with that sentiment, just as far as like understanding each other's perspectives and trying to move towards empathy and understanding. So, we're talking today about attachment theory, and this is a topic that I have loved for a long time. My degrees in psychology, and I really loved like personality study, but really I love any system that has been developed to like self-reflect and grow from. I was listening to a podcast the other day. You guys are my friends, all already have experienced this, where like all of my knowledge and pop culture is referenced from listening to a podcast. My one of my other favorite podcasts is Armchair Expert with Dak Shepherd and Monica Padman. And y'all, they do three podcasts a week. They're it's so good, they're so phenomenal, they're like ranked the number one like all the time. So each week they do an episode where there's some kind of expert. So that was the episode that I listened to. They had Dr. Amir Levine on their show, and he wrote the book called Attached. And I think it was maybe 10-ish years ago that he wrote that book, and then it really got popular like during kind of the pandemic and when TikTok became a big thing that people started sharing it. And so it just brought up a lot of like old themes that I remember like spending a lot of time thinking about when I was in school, and actually, I even wrote a paper on how childhood attachment reflects in adult romantic attachment. And I haven't done the work to find that paper, but it's probably around here somewhere. And so if I do find it, maybe I'll read an excerpt from it, and you guys will see how genius I really kidding, kidding. Dax and Monica had Dr. Levine on their show last week, and he was on the show because he has written a new book named Secure, and it just again was like, it's so hopeful. I'm so excited to tell you guys about it. The book hasn't come out yet. I've pre-ordered it on Audible. I think in about another month or so, I think it's sometime in April that it will come out. But it's all about that no matter what your attachment style is, you can progress into being more secure. And it's just such a delightful sentiment because at the end of his previous book, his previous book, Attached, you were kind of just left with like, okay, well, you're either you're either secure, anxious or avoidant, and like, well, sucks for you that you know your parents screwed you up and you're either anxious or avoidant. That sucks. And it just there wasn't much else to do with that other than having the knowledge of that. So secure, his new book is gonna be about like how you can progress. So it's just it's very hopeful. So I'm gonna take you guys through a talk about what is attachment style, and then you know, I took some notes from his interview, and I hope that you guys will feel like this is a worthy topic because I think it is something that got that has gotten a lot of play on like social media as far as you know, like identifying people's attachment style and just kind of like excusing their behavior because of that, or just labeling their behavior because of that. But I don't think a lot of us know truly what the attachment styles mean. First, we are going to, so those frameworks they can be validating, at least you're feeling like, okay, I'm not the only one that feels this way, reacts this way. But I think sometimes we stop at identification and never get to growth. Today we're going to talk about attachment theory in a more useful, more human way. And also, of course, with some real life examples from me, because this stuff is always bopping around in my head. So when I was studying psychology in college, I loved obviously anything that explained, you know, why people experience the same thing so differently. One person gets close and feels safe, and another person gets close and feels trapped. One person notices every tiny shift in tone, and then another genuinely does not notice at all. Like it's not in an offensive way, they're just are they just don't notice. That kind of stuff is fascinating to me. And attachment theory is not just about romance, it's about how we relate to closeness, safety, comfort, dependence, emotional risk. But obviously, starting in the dating in the real world, attachment theory stops being academic real fast. It's so applicable. It becomes, why am I overthinking this text? Why does this person come on strong and then disappear? Why do I feel calm with one person and completely dysregulated with another? You know, I mean, everyone has had these kinds of thoughts, right? Or no, is that just the is that just the anxious people? Attachment is really about safety. One of the biggest takeaways from Dr. Levine's discussion of his new book, Secure, is that attachment is at its core a safety system. I love that framing because that's a core need that we have as humans. Because people often talk about attachment like it's only about emotion or romance or bonding, but really underneath of that, the question is do I feel safe with you? Do I experience you as available to me? Can I count on you? Do you help my nervous system settle down? Or do you keep it activated? And don't aren't those questions the ones that we like, those are the like the root of any good relationship is when you can, you know, say yes to those questions. So that starts in childhood, yes, but it absolutely carries into adulthood, and I think that explains so much about dating. Because sometimes you can meet someone who looks good on paper, says the right things, maybe even has great chemistry with you, but your body feels confused the whole time. And then sometimes you meet someone else who is not as flashy, not as dramatic, not as intoxicating in that chaotic way, but you feel calm, clear, you just you feel okay. And that difference matters. Okay, the three types of attachment. In simple terms, anxious attachment tends to really value closeness, but also has a very sensitive radar for signs of disconnection. A delayed response, a shift in energy, mixed signals, inconsistency. Anxious people pick up on that stuff fast. And honestly, if you've ever dated someone inconsistent, this can become brutal. You tell yourself you're going to be chill. You're not going to overanalyze. You're not going to care that they took 11 hours to text back after being super into you two days ago. And then suddenly you're like, okay, but are they pulling away? Did I say too much? Did they not like, you know, my story, but, you know, answer my text? Why, why am I like this? So what I appreciate about Dr. Levine's newer framing is that he doesn't reduce anxious attachment to just being needy or too much. There can also be a real sensitivity there, an ability to notice changes and cues that other people miss. That sensitivity can become painful in the wrong relationship, but it's not inherently a character flaw. And I think that's like one of the biggest shifts from his first book attached to the second book, Secure, is that we're just stating a fact here. This is your like ground level attachment style, but it doesn't have to define you and stay stagnant. Is it working for you? If it's not working for you, then we can, you know, make some changes to move you in the direction that you want to go. Okay. Avoidant attachment, on the other hand, they also want connection because every everyone wants connection, but they often feel overwhelmed by too much closeness. So this might be the person who really likes you until it starts feeling serious. Or the person who has an amazing weekend with you is warm, open, affectionate, connected. And then by Monday, they vanish in into ghost town. If you've dated that person, it can make you feel crazy. Yeah, for sure. Because you're just left there thinking, well, did we not just have the greatest time ever? Did I imagine that? Like you're literally questioning your reality, right? I've totally been there. From the outside, it can look cold or confusing or even manipulative. But one of the things that Dr. Levine emphasizes more compassionately is that avoidant patterns are not just villain behavior. Often those people are experiencing closeness as pressure, responsibility, overwhelm, or loss of freedom. That does not mean that the impact on you isn't real. It just means the explanation is often more human than social media makes it sound. And I just want to add there that at no time do any of these things, if you're experiencing this type of behavior from someone in a relationship or you know, trying to build a relationship, just because you understand them doesn't mean that you have to accept that behavior. I think that that is one of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the last five or six years is that, you know, I'm a very empathetic person. And I understand to, you know, to maybe a slightly above average degree about human psychology. So I can see what's wrong and like where those things came from in people, but at the end of the day, one, I can't fix them, and two, it matters how they're treating me. And I think I think this is actually more of the root of the whoever loneliness epidemic in our culture right now is that women are just finally economically okay with not having to justify accepting whatever kind of behavior. So as I get down from that soapbox, let's talk about secure attachment. The securely attached attachment style is not perfection, it's not being unbothered all the time, it's not never getting hurt. It's more like you're comfortable with closeness, you don't panic over every gap, you generally trust connection. And you can use relationships as a source of grounding rather than constant threat. And yeah, wow, that sounds nice and peaceful. The psychology student in me, and maybe it's because I, you know, went to college 20 years ago, and that's before we knew that these attachment styles weren't fixed. But I'm really finding myself wanting to explain how you get to these three different attachment styles. Because maybe if you're listening to this and you have kids, you can use it to kind of reverse engineer your parenting into creating secure attachments for your kids because it is just a lot more healthy for them for the rest of their lives. So the securely attached child is someone that has had consistency. And I did also, I saw a thing, a study recently that found that it's not necessarily, and I think studies for a long time have probably been kind of tailored to show that you know a nuclear family is the best for children. But there was a new study that I saw recently that it's not that having a mom and a dad in a household is the thing that is creating a secure child, it's consistency in the household. A child is going to develop a secure attachment if they're not having to guess what will happen next. If whoever the adult is in their home that they are relying on for their emotional regulation, if that person is emotionally regulated on a you know usual basis, then they develop that expectation of like, okay, the world's okay. I'm gonna be okay no matter what happens. And that's that safety. In the instance of anxious attachment, this is when the adult or adults in the household are not emotionally regulated, and it's when the child has they don't know what to expect. They're kind of always thinking of the worst possible outcome. When you think about it as like basic human survival, they've learned that they kind of they have to expect the worst for their, you know, proverbial survive survival. And you know, if if things go good that day, then great. But they're kind of always expecting the other shoe to drop. Avoidant attachment usually results when the child has just come to expect dysregulation for whatever reason. They kind of grow to resent the caregiver when something good does happen, because in their experience, most of the connection with that caregiver has been negative in some way. It could be physically, emotionally, like just literally not being there or being there and not being emotionally connected. And you can kind of see, like, as I'm talking through these things, to me at least, it makes so much sense. And what I'm gonna try, you know, what I'm trying to convey to you guys is an intuition about these things, is that when a child learns to learns that like the world is unsafe, that like bad things are gonna happen, then that's kind of what they expect out of everyone throughout their whole lives. They're just like even when something good happens, so even when you do go away and have this wonderful weekend with someone, by the time you get back and they are out of the moment and they're reflecting, then they're like, that must have that that's gonna blow up for whatever reason, because that's their that's their basis of history, is like everything's gonna go badly. So that's avoidant. If a child doesn't know what to expect, then that's that anxious attachment when you are an adult and you're like, you you just literally don't know. Like, is it good? Is it bad? But you're always questioning because as humans, we need stability. And honestly, it's it's kind of like anxious people probably feel a lot of times like, you know, just let it be bad. At least I would know what I'm dealing with. And, you know, but God, that sounds so emotionally draining, right? To constantly be thinking, like, what's gonna happen? But in that secure attachment, when the child knows that, like, okay, like on the playground, I can go like all the way over to the other side of the playground and look back, and you know, mom or dad or whoever will be there. I know they're not gonna leave me, but I know that I can also like go out into the world. The world in this example being the playground. I know I can like go on the playground and like handle myself and that like whatever happens out here on the playground, I might fall off the monkey bar. Okay, the monkey bars are a bad example because how I'm I've so many people have like broken their arm or whatever on the monkey bars. Okay, whatever. You can just like have a little boo-boo and it's gonna be okay. Guys, I don't know. I'm trying. So thank goodness, about 50% of people in the world are securely attached, and then about 25% are anxious, and about 25% are avoidant. I don't because they didn't, because this interview was particularly focused on Dr. Levine's new book, Secure, which I love the hopefulness and all of that. I do just want to mention this other thing that I really identified with when I was reading Attached a couple years ago. I will never forget, I like read this book, and then I sent it to Mr. DoD. You know, hearken back to episode two if you don't know who that is. I sent it to Mr. DoD via audiobook, and I was like, I've figured out what's wrong with us. And his response was like, what, like I work too much and I like, you know, something else. I was like, no, I'm anxious and you're avoidant. And I asked him to read the book. This, y'all, this was not in the height of when we were like actually technically dating. This was like months into just being friends. But like I've said before, I'm just justifying my explanation right now. All of my friends, like my closest friends that have to hear about this all the time, are like rolling their eyes. They're like, oh my god, Laura, shut up about Mr. Dod. Sorry, guys. So I'm just justifying myself because anyway, there was always this like undertone of like we're gonna be together one day. Okay. Anyway, I'm I've accepted that that's not true. So I remember reading the book and just like having this very like present uh, I'm gonna call it relationship, but and I just mean from like human-to-human like interaction, having this very present relationship as an example that I needed constant reinforcement, that we were good, we were like talking, we were at least friends, and the more reassurance I needed, the more that freaked him out. And the illustration that I like to think of is I think it's called Chinese handcuffs. You know, when you were a kid and you get those things that like you put your like pointer fingers in, like both of your pointer fingers in, and it's like woven together, and then you pull, like the harder you pull, the tighter it gets, and that feels so frustrating that you like can't get out of it. That's what it feels like when one person is anxious and the other person is avoidant, is that like constant like push-pull frustration. The other thing that I really liked that Dr. Levine talked about in this interview, and you know, seemingly is what is going to be in the next book, is that we're not all like a hundred percent of one of the attachment styles for all time. Like there, I feel like there's kind of like this base that's built from the childhood attachment, but then it depends on what happens in your life, whether you start to lean, you know, towards one way or the other. Some people get really lucky and are in a secure relationship very early on, so they never learn any reason to not trust the world or you know, and then sometimes I feel like I have really a quite secure attachment with my parents, but because of especially my second marriage, I think because of what happened in that relationship, I became more and more anxious. And so by the time that I was out of that relationship, I think I had to really recover from a lot of the anxiety that was induced. The other point, and I guess just saying it a little bit more clearly, is that in adulthood you can be, you can have more so of a secure attachment with one person in your life, and at the same time have like an anxious attachment to another person or an avoidant attachment with another person. And, you know, think about your different friends. It's like you probably have one friend that you just know is always there for you. They're so solid. And it's actually even like okay that you go for like a little bit longer periods of time not talking to them because every time when you do, you just pick up like normal and nobody has any like bad feelings about it. But then you have those friends where you're, you know, a little bit more constant communication as far as like always kind of checking the checking the temperature on the relationship, you know, and it's because sometimes they're probably, you know, a little up or they're probably a little down, and you're not always sure if you can depend on them to be there for you. This is the other nuance that I think a lot of the stuff that is said about attachment, you know, in like online memes and stuff is missing, is that, you know, if you're in a relationship and all of a sudden, and it never happens all of a sudden, let's be honest. It usually like gradually builds to, you know, you've been secure and now you're checking timestamps and reading messages and interpreting punctuation and like freaking out over every interaction. That doesn't mean that you are fundamentally an anxious person. Sometimes it just means you're in a destabilizing dynamic. That distinction matters because I hate how quickly people can turn attachment theory into like identity. So instead of saying this relationship is activating me, people say, This is this is who I am, this is like I'm so crazy, I'm so anxious. No, that that can be that can be reversed, and and it's it's a learned behavior. The conversation shifts from understanding your style to actually asking, okay, so like you're saying that that can change. Like, how can we change that? You're not doomed to repeat the same pattern forever. You're not permanently sentenced to anxious spirals or avoidant shutdowns because of one chapter in your life. That doesn't mean that it's going to be easy, but it does mean that it's possible. And this is just it's something that I like got so jazzed up earlier that I just feel so hopeful for all of us right now that are still young enough to be in a mindset of that like things can change, like interpersonally. Like we don't have to think and act like our parents did. I think the millennial generation is a great example of evolving. And and I think honestly, that's a big reason why I know I did, and why most people like get obsessed with attachment theory or any of these like evaluating tools is not just what am I, but how what can come about from realizing this? How do I, you know, get better at relationships? How do I stop choosing dynamics that wreck my nervous system? How do I become someone who can actually receive healthy love? That's the real question, and that's what I really want to help you all with. I think one of the hardest lessons in dating is realizing that chemistry and security are not always the same thing. They're usually not. Sometimes chemistry is really just activation, it's making you feel all tingly because you just kind of don't know what to feel. And that that can be hard to admit because I mean that feeling can be a good feeling. And honestly, if you're one of those people that are in it an anxious attachment, this is where you get drawn in because you're used to kind of assigning good with that activated feeling. So we kind of tend to reinforce that to ourselves. And here's the thing, just just just hearing this stuff, just kind of absorbing it and taking it in is gonna help you identify this in your life and uh make changes. The secure person can initially feel quieter and not boring necessarily, but quieter. There's less chasing, less decoding, less proving to someone. You're not wondering where you stand every five minutes. Oh my god, that that I can't wait for that day. I can't wait for a day when I can like see this stuff from the other side of being in a secure relationship. And you know, again, this is that time when if you haven't had a secure attachment style, if you've had a lot of inconsistent experiences, then that steady love can almost feel unfamiliar at first. And that's just human programming, is to go towards the thing that is familiar. We've rationalized it at some point in our lives. Any of the bad experiences that you've had in your life, on some level, you've rationalized that this is normal, this is okay, because that's how you had to think to survive it. But let's not just survive. It's not wrong to feel that way, but we want more for you than that. And this revelation really got me. We overfocus on the people who trigger us. Uh-huh. I know. Let that sink in for a second. Because if we know that someone is consistent and always going to be there, we kind of like, why would I ask you if you're okay every single day? I know you're fine. Sometimes we barely notice those people because they don't set off our alarm system. Meanwhile, the person who is confusing, inconsistent, slightly unavailable, hello, triggering your like competitiveness. They get all the attention because they keep activating your radar. And if that doesn't explain half of modern dating, I don't know what does. That's that's a biggie. We become obsessed with the one who keeps us guessing and and underinvested in the one who keeps actually offering us peace. I mean, this is such an important self-check, right? Who am I giving my energy to? The person who feels secure or the person who keeps me in suspense? And then I think you know, your personality layers on top of this. So are you the type of person that like is just very talkative and you know, like what's your level of engagement that you expect? I mean, if you're if you're anxious and expect a really high level of engagement from just people in your life, if you're just used to that, then you're gonna be popping off all the time. Those are the people that like you're on a text chain with and they're just like constantly lighting up that text chain. I love that Dr. Levine is giving us a framework for how to move towards being a secure person in a relationship, attracting a secure person in any of our relationships. And I love how the way that he describes like whether or not you, when you're assessing, like, do I need to do this or do I need to change something? He just says, Well, whatever attachment style you are, is that working for you? Is that relationship working for you? Is that is that like the way that you're interacting with different people in your life? Is that working for you for that relationship? If it's not, if there's some kind of frustration there, then you need to work on these four elements. The first of these is consistency. As an adult who can kind of objectively look at this element and say, like, are you, or if you're you know, assessing the other person, are they consistently showing up? If they always call you on Monday at four o'clock, are they always doing that? And then what happens if if they don't? Or like it's the point is to be leaning in to letting the other person in the relationship know what to expect. The second thing is availability, and these those two things are so similar, really, consistency and availability. I guess because I think a lot of times we would say, like, are you consistently available to me? Um feels like the safest thing, but they are different. I think the most important thing about when you're looking at those two elements together is are you consistently available in the same way? When you put those things together, that's huge. The third thing is responsiveness. So that's that that part where, you know, what's the length of time between when you get a message and when you reply to the message? And again, it's funny because none of these four elements are mutually exclusive, they all kind of have to exist together to be effective. The most confident inducing thing is if someone is responsive in a consistent way, and obviously, like understanding about someone's life, like what influences their availability and responsiveness. So if someone works somewhere where they can have their phone on them constantly, then you know, if you're an important person in their life and you ask an important question, then there's really no excuse for them to not be pretty immediately responsive to you. Or at least to acknowledge you. It doesn't always have to be a full-on discussion, but the point of just acknowledging the question is huge. The fourth element is uh being experienced as uh reliable or predictable, predictability really, and I think that's just I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory at this point. If you've listened to this whole talk, then the whole point is for people insecure connections to know what to expect, and that's predictability. And I mean, this is such a useful dating filter, right? Because when you really strip away the fantasy that can immediately come to our minds and the projection secure love is often much simpler than we make it. It looks like they reach out, they follow through, they don't disappear, especially after like closeness, they respond like they care. You don't have to beg for clarity, you don't have to constantly manage the uncertainty. This is not asking for too much, this is baseline emotional safety, y'all. And I think a lot of us need to hear that. Like I was saying before, if you're interacting with someone who is either anxious or avoidant, and that behavior is not working for you, just because you understand them does not mean that you need to accept their behavior. Now, the other thing that I think really needs to be said is that, and a lot of reason is because I definitely understand the temptation, but attachment theory can become a very elegant way to analyze everyone else. You know, he's avoidant, she's anxious, their mom did this, their ex did that. No wonder they're like this. And again, sometimes those observations are valid, but I think the more mature use of attachment theory is not just to explain other people, it's to ask what is my participation in this? What am I drawn to? What feels familiar to me, even if it doesn't feel good? Do I know how to recognize security when it shows up? Do I know how to be a safe person? Because I mean the truth is a lot of us say we want secure love, but we'll respond strongest to emotional volatility. And I think that's the beautiful point that we're at in midlife is we've probably all experienced that and figured out that that didn't work out so well. And I think part of the comforting nature of like looking at things with this tool of attachment theory is that like you can look at your past and say, oh, okay, that's what happened. But then now we're being given tools for a framework of seeing what we didn't see before and like analyzing ourselves to become you know the partner that we want. Another really another thing I really like in this newer conversation about how to be secure is the idea that is that people can change through repeated small moments, not just big emotional breakthroughs. Yes, insight matters, yes, therapy matters. Oh, it matters so much. Naming the pattern happens, but daily life is where we can change actually what gets practiced when things are intense. So in The moment don't send the spiraling text. In the moment you ask directly for reassurance, instead of testing somebody. It's in the moment you soften instead of shutting down. In the moment you let someone help you, in the moment you stop romanticizing inconsistency, in the moment you choose the person who feels safe over the person who feels like a challenge. And guys, you can do that. The freeing thing that I want you to hear is now that you've heard this, that's the first step. If you've never taken any of these steps before in analyzing this kind of thing, just hearing it is the first step. And now you'll start to recognize it when you, you know, you'll you'll kind of have like an out-of-body experience where something is happening, you feel yourself spiraling, and you'll just kind of like see it from above, and like, oh, take a deep breath, let that activation pass. And then you can say to yourself with a more clear head, is this really important to react to? Those are the little changes that are going to end up making a bigger change in your life. And I also really want to say this. I really appreciate that Dr. Levine brings more compassion to avoidant patterns in the next book, Secure, especially compared with how avoidant attachment is talked about online and in and in his past book. Compassion is important, but compassion does not mean self-abandonment. You can understand why someone struggles with closeness and still decide they are not a healthy match for you, like I've been saying. Those two things can exist at once. Is you know, you're recognizing what's happening, and that you don't have to choose that, that you do still have a choice. That's how that's how people in general are going to become more secure, is when we stop reinforcing their bad behavior, and we say, I'm not staying for this, I'm not putting up with this. In addition to that, what does becoming more secure look like? It's valuing consistency more than intensity, not taking every delay as rejection, not taking every request for closeness as pressure, becoming clearer in communication, choosing people who are emotionally available, letting your life include more safe, steady relationships, learning that love doesn't have to feel confusing to be real. And yeah, I mean, that's I feel like I've said a lot of things are like a big lesson that I've had in the past few years, and clearly I've had several, but this one qualifies for that statement. Is I thought that loving someone was like reason enough to fight for the relationship. I didn't I think I just kind of genuinely didn't realize that you could fall in love with someone that you weren't meant to be with. So every time I felt a sparkle of love, I just thought, I've gotta do hell and high water, all I can do to make this thing work. And guys, that has not worked out for me so well in the past. Turns out the amount of effort that you put in does not equal the result of a relationship. That effort has to come from both sides, it can't just come from one side, and there's no amount of effort that you can put in that will make up for the lack of effort coming from the other side. And sometimes I think we just need to feel like we've done all that we can, and I certainly have, I guess it's in those times where once I finally feel that is when I'm able to like just walk away from something. So sometimes you have to do it, sometimes you have to get there with it. But I think in general, if you can take these different reinforcements in and internalize them into your self-belief, then you'll get to the right answer more quickly than I did. And, you know, I mean, I think that's I think that's relearning to a certain degree what love is supposed to feel like. It's it's not boring or flat, but it's safe enough that you can actually be yourself in it. There's no tap dancing, there's no heavy lifting, you can just be your silly wonderful you. So I'm told. So, yes, attachment theory has been a major thing in my life since college. And yeah, I love it. I think it's such a useful framework for understanding relationships. So I'm really grateful for the book that made it popular in, you know, pop culture. And then, but I'm even more grateful for the more growth-oriented new book that we will have. And maybe once it comes out and I read it, I'll do like a part two to this talk. Because, you know, understanding yourself and the other people in your world, that's powerful. But becoming more secure and having more secure relationships, that's the real goal. Not just labeling yourself or diagnosing your ex or blaming your childhood forever. You can't go back and change that. But actually building a life and relationships that feel more steady, safer, more supportive of who and how you want to be, that's the best. And it means you're not stuck. You're not, it's not hopeless if you are anxious or avoidant. There's something that you can do, and I think that's the most powerful thing. So I hope that you guys have enjoyed this talk. I will put a link in the show notes and whenever I post this on the socials, where you can go and take the attachment theory test to see what your attachment style is. And like we've said, I think that is just really helpful for that initial discussion. And then, you know, you can try to get the other people in your life to take to take the quiz as well. And then it will really give you a cool framework for talking. So if you don't know what to talk about with your significant other tonight, then look this up and take the attachment test and let me know what you think. I promise once you know learn about your style and other people's that you'll see it in all the things. Let me know if you guys liked this episode. I'll do some more like it. Talk to you next time. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Midlife Mess. If something in this episode resonated with you, please share with your family and friends and subscribe so you won't miss new episodes every Wednesday. Please also go to my website, themidlifemass.com, where you can connect with me and find out more about how you can support the show and get some cool discount. And of course, you can follow along on Facebook and Instagram at the midlife mask odd. And please rate and review the show on your streaming platform of choice. Thank you guys so much. Now go be your best friend. Bye.