Ep #49: Things I DIDN’T DO to Attract Secure Love

In this episode, I’m flipping the usual conversation around healing anxious attachment and attracting healthy love. Instead of focusing on what you should do, I’m walking you through the key things I stopped doing — the behaviours, patterns, and unconscious habits I had to let go of in order to create space for secure, grounded love.

I share my personal journey of recognising anxious attachment, taking an intentional break from dating, and learning how to stop chasing intensity, proving my worth, rushing timelines, and abandoning myself just to keep a connection. We talk about why chemistry can be misleading, how urgency is often rooted in fear, and why secure love requires an identity shift — not perfection.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Why I stopped dating when my anxious attachment was highly activated
• How over-giving, over-explaining, and over-performing sabotage secure love
• Why slowing down and releasing timelines builds real safety
• Why healing isn’t linear — and how to respond to slip-ups with self-compassion
• The role support and mentorship played in making secure love possible

🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript

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You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi. What. Hey friends. Welcome back to the club. Today I wanna talk to you about what I didn't do to attract secure, healthy love. I know that we are 99% of the time talking about what we. Should do, or the steps to take to heal anxious attachment, to become secure, to be a match for the type of relationship that you want to call in. And all of that is great. It's beautiful, it's helpful. But I thought I'd come from a different angle today because I was reflecting on this recently about, well, what were the things that I stopped doing or the things that I really didn't do anymore? From the moment when I truly realized that my anxious attachment was very much alive and that I had been repeating certain patterns for my whole life that I didn't want to repeat anymore, and this is gonna be really powerful because sometimes when we feel unsure of what exactly to do or what the next step is in any direction you're trying to move in. It can be helpful to look at, well, what should I not be doing? Sometimes when you're not sure what you want, you can ask yourself, what do I not want? And when we use the opposite, it creates a clearer contrast to find clarity on the things that we then should be doing or want to do that are the opposite of what we are not supposed to do anymore. And so. I'm gonna run you through the top things that I did not do in order to attract secure love. Some of this stuff you may have heard before, it might seem obvious, but I invite you to open your mind, open your ears, and let this stuff land for you in a new way because there is no harm in repetition and for me personally, when I hear things or I need to hear things like many, many times before I truly. Feel that it clicks in my body, not just in my mind, where I consciously go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I know that. But on a somatic level in my body where I go, whoa, I'm actually gonna stop doing that thing now, or I'm going to start doing that thing now. It just helps to hear it a few times. So let's get into the things that I did not do to attract secure love. Number one, I didn't keep dating when I realized my anxious attachment was highly activated. So back in 2020 was when I first fully discovered that I had an anxious attachment style and I could look back over the course of my life and really connect the dots around what had been truly happening around the patterns that had been unfolding. And. Why relationships had always been so difficult for me. I remember making a decision there and then that if I was about to get serious about healing these wounds and changing the course of my future. I needed to take a break from dating because I could sense that my attachment system, which is the part of you that wants to attach and clinging to people very quickly for that sense of validation to feel that you are worthy. All the things I could tell it was so activated that. Putting myself out into dating scenarios was basically just a recipe for disaster. I was asking to repeat the pattern if I was going to do that, so I made a decision with myself. I said, all right, we are going to take a very intentional break from dating for as long as it takes until I get to the point where I feel so solid in my self trust. I feel solid and confident enough that I'm not going to. Repeat patterns from my past, or I'm going to be as aware as or highly aware so that if it starts to happen, I can catch it and quickly redirect. Now, as someone who had been so used to being in relationships my whole life and seeking my sense of self-worth and deriving my happiness from my partner, this was hard. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. This was very challenging for me. I was also going through a breakup to add. To add, what's the the saying to add insult to injury? But I knew that this was required of me. If I truly wanted to break the reliance that I had had on people outside of myself, my whole life, to feel happy and to feel good enough. It was like I had to go. Sober on dating, basically. Um, because sometimes when the anxious attachment is really intense, it, it does feel like an addiction. It feels like an addiction to people and to getting that external validation, and I decided that I needed to almost, starve myself of that external validation almost in order to figure out a new way of deriving it, which of course comes internally. So I didn't keep dating. I didn't keep pushing through the pain. I didn't keep telling myself that I was gonna be able to heal whilst putting myself in triggering situations or potential scenarios where I was likely to get attached very quickly because I knew I was in a very vulnerable place emotionally. And when you're in that state, it's. It's your intelligence is low. We are not thinking very clearly when we are highly emotional, and so I could tell if I get back into dating now, there's a high chance that I'm going to just clinging to the first person that gives me attention and wants to be with me because that's going to distract from the pain that I'm feeling within. So that's the first one I knew I didn't need to, I couldn't date, and so I didn't, I cut myself off. I went totally sober for an entire year and focused on my relationship with myself. Number two, the second thing that I did not do is when I, when I eventually did get back into dating, I didn't chase chemistry or high attraction. Literally, I remember going on the apps and swiping through different people, and if there were people that came up that my nervous system and my sub, my body could feel that there was this very high attraction or this sense of, oh, like that chemistry, because you can kind of feel it pretty quickly from even just even seeing someone's hinge profile or whatever. I intentionally did not swipe right. I said, no way. I'm not going near someone. Where I feel that intense chemistry because from the work I had done in the year that I was not dating, I was able to recognize that when we have that very high chemistry, it's often a pattern about to repeat. It is often a trauma bond waiting to happen. Because with an anxious attachment, we get that heightened sense of attraction to someone or chemistry almost, when you can sense that you're going to have to work really hard to win that person over, which is twisted when we say it out loud. But it's, it's just how, how we're wired or it, we have been conditioned. We think that we need to. Win that person over, or we can sense that they're going to be on some level emotionally unavailable or distant, and we are attracted to that because it's part of the pattern. So I didn't chase people like that. I actually started to. Look for people where I felt, this is gonna sound weird, but I almost felt nothing like, I just felt such a sense of stillness in my body that it didn't feel like a threat or a risk to go on a date with that person. In other words, I didn't chase the spark. I really set my intentions on. Wanting to develop a slow burn.'cause I don't think I'd ever done that in my life. It was always very much, I get into dating, I meet someone very quickly, and then straightaway we're in a relationship and it's hot and it's heavy. And what I had learned from my past was that anything that burns that bright. Usually burns out very quickly. So I didn't wanna chase that anymore because I didn't want to go through the emotional rollercoaster that comes with high chemistry, high intensity sort of relationships. And one of the ways that I began to recognize if I was doing this was if there was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of confusion. Them saying one thing, doing another. I was able to recognize, okay, no, no, I'm not doing this because I, my top priority was my nervous system, feeling safe and regulated, not chasing the adrenaline that comes with those intense highs and lows because I learned that intensity is not intimacy. It's often just unhealed attachment, screaming for reassurance. So as soon as there was gaps or my gut was saying something to me, or I could feel my attachment system almost like wanting to getting activated with someone, I cut it off. I said, nah, I'm not entertaining that because I'm not gonna put myself in a situation that's gonna make this harder for me than necessary. The next thing I didn't do to attract secure love was I didn't try to prove my worth. This is a big one because in all my past relationships, I was constantly trying to prove that I was good enough, that I was worthy of being chosen. And for me, this looked like. Overgiving. So constantly being the one to give so much to my partner, like planning really thoughtful dates or doing nice things for them that I thought were really cute and thoughtful, or being,, really reassuring to them and always wanting to pander to them and just make them happy, make them comfortable over giving when I wasn't getting the same. Effort reciprocated. Another way I used to do that was overexplaining. So let's say there was something that had upset me in the relationship. There was a point of conflict. I used to fucking overexplain till I was blue in the face trying to explain why I felt that way. Why I was right, why they needed to listen to me. Why? Their behaviors were wrong or why they were harming me. I would just overexplain so much because I was trying to be heard. I was trying to prove that how I felt was valid. And half the time it got me absolutely nowhere. The other thing I used to do was over performing, and this really came, a lot of this showed up in sexuality and how I was trying to always. Be desirable. I was always trying to be quote unquote perfect in how I looked, often over sexualizing my appearance or relying on my sexuality and my appearance to feel validated by my partner and to feel connected with them. So the over ex overgiving, overexplaining, overperforming, trying to be useful, trying to be perfect, all of that. I absolutely stopped doing that. I decided that after, honestly, after a year of being devoted to myself was the best thing I could have done because I found all these new ways to feel good enough within my own life and for myself that I really started to believe that I was already worthy. I didn't need to prove that to anyone because my opinion of myself became so high. And so when I got back into dating, I stopped doing all of that. I didn't, overgive, I gave, you know, I would, I would give and I would make effort, but I wouldn't overdo it. I would give to the point where I would stop and then make sure, or see if that was being reciprocated. And if it wasn't, then it wasn't for me, but I gave space for the other person to match that effort. I stopped over explaining. So when I needed to say how I felt, I would just say it like it is, and. That's it. Short, simple, to the point direct, letting them know how it is, not trying to prove that how I feel was valid and I stopped over performing. I allowed my value to be more than my sexuality. The next thing I didn't do is I didn't rush or force timelines, so I'm gonna talk about. When my part, my then partner, so when we were first dating and you know, we were in our courtship, if you will, and he was at a point where he had been on the apps for a while. He was actually about to quit the apps right before we met. And when we met, he was like, oh my God, you're amazing. You are. Everything I've been looking for, you are all I'm interested in. And he, he got off the apps like relatively quickly. And I remember saying to him, look. I am not in a rush here. I really want to take things slow and I wanna feel absolutely ready before I decide to commit to putting labels on things or, um, making this fully exclusive. And so what that looked like was he, he had said to me like, I know that you are it, and this is what I want. And I said, great. I need more time. And so we continued to date for, I can't remember exactly how long it was. It might have been a couple of months before. I said, okay, now I know this is what I want. Now I'm ready to be exclusive and to, you know, put a label on things and technically be your girlfriend and you're my boyfriend, and blah, blah, blah. In the past, I had always been in such a rush to. Put a label on the relationship to, in a sense, like lock it down because I didn't feel safe. I was operating from my anxious wounds and I felt like if we had a label on it, then I then, then it would be safe. Then, oh my God, okay, I can sort of relax now. Now that I, now I'm chosen. Now I know that they're not going anywhere, but the problem with. That sense of urgency is you are still relying on that other person to be the one to make you feel safe. And safety is something that you need to build for yourself internally, not something that you demand from another person. And so I stopped. I stopped leaning into urgency. And I allowed myself to go as slow as I needed to go and decided for myself that if this person is right for me, they will absolutely respect the pace that I need to move at. And it's my job to make sure I'm honoring my truth and upkeeping my boundaries and being intentional about the way that I'm dating. I also stopped clinging to potential, so. I didn't, when I say I didn't force timelines or force the relationship, I also mean that I didn't, yeah, I didn't clinging to the potential of the people I was dating or this person. I made sure that I stayed rooted in reality and focused on who this person actually was, the way they were showing up in their behaviors now, not who I thought they could be or wanted them to be, or thought with enough time and effort on my part that they would eventually become. The next thing I didn't do to attract secure love was I didn't abandon myself to keep a connection. And this is, this is a big one, my friends, because I know that for a lot of you listening who are still in your anxious attachment, this is very common because you would rather some connection over nothing. You would rather a relationship, even if it's not quite good enough, even if you actually don't feel very good in it. Over not having a relationship at all and needing to sit with yourself and face the, what comes up in the silence in between connection. So, but this is before I met my, my then partner. But when I was dating different people, I started listening to the discomfort or the feelings I had in my gut. Very early on, and I didn't override it. I didn't ignore the red flags that were showing up for me and tell myself, oh, it's fine. Like it'll go away. It'll get better, because that's what I used to do. I used to see red flags and my whole body would light up telling me, ah, like abort, abort, abort. But I would override it with my brain. Out of, purely, out of fear, out of survival, out of wanting that connection. And I would just straight up lie to myself. I would just tell myself, it's fine. You know, this is, this is all gonna work itself out once we get into the relationship. Like this is just, this is just what happens at the start of every connection. There's always gonna be red flags, but you know, I can make it go away. I'll just, I'm gonna be so lovable and so great that they're just going to stop playing around and they're gonna completely devote themselves to me. That's what I used to do, and it never ended well. So I started walking away when something felt off or I would call it out and I would name it and communicate it with that person, and that was always very insightful to. If I was gonna continue seeing them or not by the way they responded, if there was any sense of downplaying, deflecting, um, gaslighting, not taking accountability, not wanting to talk about it, I was outta there because I knew that's definitely not the kind of relationship I'm entering into. I started letting go of something I might have been excited about or hopeful about, even when feelings were present. Even when maybe a little bit of attachment had began to form, I didn't stay and abandon myself just to keep that connection and the moment I stopped betraying myself in these ways, secure love had space to meet me is as I always say to my clients, when you stay true to yourself, no matter what that looks like. You're going to become so magnetic to the right people, and you are also going to repel the wrong people because they will sense that in you. If you are wavering on your boundaries or your standards, or you're leaving the door slightly open for someone to manipulate their way into your world, it's going to happen. So you have to be very discerning and. Firm in your commitment to not betray yourself in order to create space for the right people and the the right relationships to come in. The next thing I didn't do is I didn't beat myself up when I slipped back into an old pattern or make it mean that I was a failure or doomed, or all the work I had done was suddenly undone. I've said it before and I will say it again. Healing is not a linear journey. As you are out there in the world trying to implement and embody all that you have learned around attachment, around dating, around secure dating, you're, you are bound to slip up because you are trying to shift patterns that have been operating you're entire life. So those neural pathways and those nervous system responses are very ingrained in you. And we need to leave room for that. We need to leave room to be human as we try to shift the way we operate in the world. And I remember there were a few occasions where this happened. I had done so much work on myself and I was, I was dating and I remember there was this one guy who I don't think I recognized it at first. But he was actually very emotionally unavailable and there was a very high chemistry and high attraction, like from the fucking get go. I'm talking from the, the very beginning of our chat in Hinge our conversations. I remember the first message I ever received from him was a five minute voice note of him going through my profile and like decoding my hinge profile. And I remember thinking it was so entertaining and funny and different. And there was just something about it, something about the way he spoke that I felt very attracted to. And this connection, it didn't last long. It was maybe five weeks or four, four to five weeks, but there was a moment where I, I could feel myself getting almost attached to him. And then. Um, he had a conversation with, with me where he told me that he actually didn't think he could do this because he was still hung up on his ex, and he could feel me wanting more from him than he was able to give. And I do remember at first feeling really disappointed in myself because I thought, fuck, like, how did I, how did I get into that situation? I thought I had outgrown that stuff. But in that moment I stopped myself and I said, you know what? Yeah, we are not gonna beat ourselves up here because you're human. It's okay that you had a slip up. What matters now is how you treat yourself moving forward. What lessons can I learn from that experience that I'm gonna take with me moving forward? What will I do differently next time? What do I need to change? Maybe I need to move even slower. Maybe I need to pay more attention to the signals and the signs my body's sending me about something that's not feeling right. Beating yourself up when you have a slip up is not productive. It's definitely not gonna help you to move forward. It's going to reinforce negative self-limiting beliefs of, Ugh, I'm not good enough. I can't do this. I'm not worthy. See like, this is just how I am. This is what I always do. We need to cut that shit right out because compassion is the way forward. So. I let it be okay. When I had slip ups, when I had moments of anxiety, when I had moments of questioning myself, it's okay. I let it be okay. And I also reinforced that just because I had a slipup, it does not mean that all the work I had done was for nothing or that it was in vain. Absolutely not. If anything, these slipups just strengthened and further reinforced the things I had learned. The next thing I didn't do is when I met my secure partner, I didn't sabotage the relationship. In moments when it felt calm or even boring and trust me, there were a few times where I really wanted to. I remember it was early on in our connection and it was maybe a month in, and it was such a new experience for me, right? Because. All my relationships in the past I had, I had never felt this sense of calm and reassurance. I'd always felt anxious as fuck. So uncertain, chasing that person, wanting to win them over, like it was awful. But with this relationship, it was calm. He was integral. He did what he said he was going to do. He was consistent. He was a great person. He was emotionally available, and I'm not gonna lie, it freaked me out. My nervous system was not used to this and I wanted to sabotage. I remember talking to one of my best friends and I was like, I don't know, like I just, I don't know if I'm actually that attracted to him. I am I getting the ick? I don't know if I actually want this. I don't know if I can do this. But then I caught myself and I reminded myself, hang on a second. This is what you have always wanted. This is what you have been asking for. This is what you have been working towards is this safety and this healthy relationship. So we are not going to sabotage. We are going to lean in. We are going to. Challenge ourselves. I dunno why I'm talking about myself in the third person, but I said, I'm gonna challenge myself to expand my capacity to hold this healthy relationship. And so I started using all the tools I had learned for self-regulation, for remaining grounded thinking clearly, and teaching my body that this was safe, that it's okay to feel safe in a relationship. And I am so glad that I didn't self-sabotage because it went on to be the most beautiful life-changing relationship I've ever had. And lastly, this is probably the most important point. I didn't try to do it all on my own. I didn't try to heal all on my own. I didn't try to navigate the nuances of dating all on my own, and yes, I'm talking about the power of getting support when I was going through my healing journey. Truly, I can look back and the things that made the biggest impact in my ability to develop self-trust and confidence in dating. Was investing in mentorship and investing in coaches and support experts in this space who could help keep me accountable to the changes I was wanting to make, who could give me the support when I needed it, when I was highly emotional, when I was activated, when I was questioning my worth, when I didn't know how to move forward. It was having that safe space with someone who. Gets what I was going through, who could support me and hold me through that wave of emotion. That absolutely helped me get to the other side. I gave myself the tools, knowledge, accountability, and support and connection that I knew I needed. If I was serious about changing who I was and changing the way I showed up in relationships and in life in general. I didn't tell myself, it's fine. You don't need that support. I didn't tell myself, oh, I just need to think about it more. I didn't tell myself, oh, I can't afford it. I knew I can't afford not to do this because the way that I've been showing up in romantic relationships in general, impact your entire life. When I didn't have control of the way I was operating in relationships. My life was totally dependent. My happiness, my fulfillment, my joy was totally dependent on whether that relationship was good or bad. When things were good, I was on cloud nine. I was riding a high in my life. I felt so confident. I felt so worthy. I was buzzing with happiness. And then when things were bad, it was a complete 180. I felt like a shell of myself. I didn't wanna socialize, I didn't wanna interact with people. I felt depressed. So I knew this is such a top priority.'cause if I don't fix this, my whole life is gonna continue to be one giant emotional roller coaster. And I knew I didn't have the, I didn't yet have the capacity or the ability to stay accountable to my word on my own. And so I invested in support and it was the best decision I ever made. So to tie this all together, the real shifts of what did change was that I became emotionally regulated. I learned to sit with uncertainty. I trusted myself and my inner compass more than the potential of what I saw in other people. I chose my relationship with myself to be the top priority. Before anything else, I chose alignment over attachment. I stopped outsourcing my safety to other people, and I invested in support that was going to help me develop my sense of belief and trust in If you've been listening to this episode, nodding along, maybe feeling a little exposed, a little called out in the best way, I want you to hear this. Clearly none of what I shared today happened by accident. I didn't just wake up one day magically secure. I didn't think my way out of anxious attachment, and I definitely didn't. White knuckle my way through dating, hoping things would somehow change. The reason secure love became possible for me is because I stopped trying to do this alone and I learned how to actually embody everything I've been talking about in this episode. And that is exactly why peacefully attached exists. It's not just another course where you learn why you are anxious. It's not therapy that takes years without giving you structure in dating, and it's not surface level mindset work. Inside, peacefully attached. We do the real work around healing the attachment wounds that keep pulling you into intensity, confusion and over attachment, teaching your nervous system how to feel safe without needing reassurance from another person, building deep self trust so you stop abandoning yourself just to keep a connection and giving you clear. Grounded tangible dating frameworks so you actually know how to move through dating differently. This is how you stop repeating patterns and how you become the woman who can hold that secure, healthy love when it shows up. The February, 2026 intake of peacefully attached is now open for enrollment, and if something in this episode stirred in you, if you can see yourself in these patterns and you're ready to do something about them. This is your next step. You don't need to be more healed to apply. You just have to be willing to stop doing what hasn't worked and commit to something that actually will. You can apply via the link in the show notes. If you have any questions, jump over to Instagram and send me a DM and I'll be happy to add to them. I read every application personally and if it feels aligned, we will take it from there. You don't have to keep doing this alone and you don't have to keep doing it the hard way. My friend, there is another way and I would love to walk you through it. Alright, my friends, you have a beautiful, beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.