Ep #55: How to Date Like a Secure Woman (Even If You’re Anxious)

In this episode, we’re calling out one of the most frustrating patterns anxious daters get stuck in: dating the same person with a different face. You know the one… the chemistry is insane, it’s hot and heavy at the start, you’re on cloud nine — and then the moment you want depth, clarity, or commitment… they pull away. 😵‍💫

I’m breaking down why this keeps happening, and the one thing that will change your dating life forever: slowing down and setting the pace yourself. We talk about why anxious attachment makes you more likely to get swept up in someone else’s intensity, how your nervous system confuses familiar patterns with “safe,” and why moving slowly isn’t boring… it’s actually the fastest way to filter out emotionally unavailable people and choose a relationship that can go the distance.

If you’re done with situationships, done with pedestal energy, and ready for something real — this episode is for you!!

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Why anxious attachment makes you more likely to attach to potential instead of reality
• How getting “swept up” early on leads to fast attachment and missed red flags
• Why you can’t truly know someone in the first few weeks and what time reveals that chemistry can’t
• The 3-phase Dating Roadmap and how it stops you from rushing into the wrong people
• How to regulate the anxious part of you so you can date from self-trust, not urgency

🎧 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. Are you in a place in your life right now where you are finding yourself dating the same person with a different face? Where you are getting caught up in the rush and the spark and the high of a new connection. Every time you meet someone new who you're attracted to, who you like, and maybe things are hot and heavy and they're amazing. For the first few weeks, for the first month, two months. But then something happens. Maybe there's a bit of conflict and you have to have a more serious conversation, or you start to get more intense feelings for them, and you wanna know where the relationship's going, and you want something serious and the other person. Shuts down, they pull away, they go cold and distant, and you are left scratching your head, asking yourself, what the hell? What did I do wrong? Why does this keep happening? I can't keep dating like this anymore. And what you really want is a beautiful, healthy relationship that is safe, that is secure where you are compatible, where it goes the distance. Because you're at a stage in your life where you wanna start building a life with someone. You want to start laying the foundations of a beautiful relationship that you might wanna start a family from. Are you finding yourself in this place? And are you finding that you are putting people up on a pedestal really quickly? When you start to catch feelings for them? Are you projecting this fantasy of someone in your mind and getting attached to who they could be as opposed to seeing them for who they really are? If this is you, then today's podcast episode is for you because we need to break this pattern. We need to break this cycle because I know what it's like to be stuck in this perpetuating loop for years. It's exhausting, and quite frankly, we have not got time for this anymore because it's 2026. This is a brand new year, and it's time to step it up. It's time to break the cycle because you deserve more. And we're gonna talk about how to get it. So my friends, let's dive the fuck in. This episode, of course, is dedicated to my fellow anxious girlies, the beautiful women, the beautiful people, I should say in my audience here who are moving through life with an anxious attachment style. Now, I'm gonna guess that you already have a decent understanding of what your anxious attachment style is. What that means, and maybe even some of the ways that it is showing up in your life I remember having a conversation with a beautiful woman probably six months ago, and this woman was, is I should say very intelligent. She's well-educated, she's self-aware, she's done a lot of work on herself, in the area of relationships. And outside of that, and. When I was initially talking to her, she sounded like she would have all the answers. She was in this pattern, she said, of getting into sort of three month long situation ships, things would feel really good and really promising at the start. And then after a couple of months or a few months, it would fizzle out and this was the pattern that she'd been finding herself in for quite a long time. And. When I dug a little bit deeper, I asked, well, how are you pacing things when you're first, dating someone? And she said, well, I try to ask the right questions and I try to take it slowly. But it is true that often when the other person is, if they are really forthcoming and they're really invested and they're coming on hot and heavy and they wanna move quickly. I sort of just allow myself to get swept up in it. And if they're on board, I say, okay, I'm on board. And I tend to just completely give myself over to them. And I said, ah, ah, my friend. There is th answer in a sense to thy problem. Because when we are not holding down firm boundaries around the pace at which we are letting ourselves. Uh, how do I say intertwine with another person? The pace at which we are opening ourselves up to them physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, we are going to get swept up in the pace that they want to move at. And this is specifically for those of you with an anxious attachment because you know, and I know as I am a formally anxiously attached person that. We are craving love. We are craving to feel, chosen, to feel validated, to feel seen so much, and probably more than someone who is securely attached because we experienced such a lack of those emotional needs being met in our formative years. This is the general theme with our anxious attachment. We did not feel seen, heard, understood, and loved in the ways that we needed to, which then left a wound internally that we didn't have the, uh, ability or tools or knowledge to know how to properly address and heal as we were growing up. And maybe you're still at that point where you haven't fully figured that out yet, which is why I'm here. But. When you haven't healed those wounds, you are going to be looking for the answers in other people. And what happens is our subconscious is designed to seek out more of what is known and what is familiar. So if you grew up in a dynamic with your parents, let's say when you were young. Your primary attachment figures where you didn't get your emotional needs met. Maybe your parents were physically present but emotionally distant, or maybe they were not so physically present, they were absent physically and emotionally. And this could have been in a big way or even in small subtle ways Then. You are going to be taking that dynamic which is stored in your nervous system, in your body, and you're going to be carrying that into your adult romantic relationships. Because when we are children, our parents are our primary attachment figure, meaning they are the person who we look to as, our means for survival in terms of we need to have love from them because we are reliant on that. To survive, like literally to survive as children. And then when we grow up and we can take care of ourselves and survive, we then shift the focus, of the primary attachment person onto a romantic partner. Because that's, much more intimate than it would be from friends and family. So we are shifting our gaze from one attachment figure to the other. And we are carrying that same dynamic and projecting it onto the people around us, or in other words, your subconscious is going to be seeking out people who it can tell and remember, this is happening almost unconsciously. Subconsciously, it can tell that they are going to create the same dynamic where maybe at first it will feel good and you'll feel close to them, but then before you know it, they're going to pull away. There's going to be distance. And you might ask me, how the fuck does your subconscious know that? And the best answer I can give you is that your subconscious carries and picks up on so infinitely much more information than your conscious mind. Can grasp. Okay, I just had to Google this because I really want to give you some numbers to get your head around this. So it says, the subconscious mind processes vastly more information than the conscious mind. Roughly 11 million bits of information per second compared to just 40 to 50 bits. Of information by the conscious mind. It estimates, oh, sorry. Estimates suggest that up to 95% of all cognitive activity, including decision making and sensory perception occurs sub subconsciously. With that, I'm saying that your mind, your subconscious mind can remember patterns of behavior and, behavioral cues, instinctual feelings, all of this stuff so much more than your conscious mind can. So. That's why someone might present as great to your conscious mind on the surface, but your subconscious can feel or sense that, Ooh, there's something else here. There's a familiar sort of essence about this person. I've navigated this kind of person before and when we are not careful. We will be led straight into that trap as the anxious attachment goes. We are often seeking out people who are emotionally unavailable or more on the avoidant end of the spectrum because again, it mirrors the dynamic we had with our parents as children. So, wow. I've really been rambling and ranting that. I almost forgot my point, but let me circle back to Yes, the conversation I was having with this woman. And so when she said that to me. Oh, I just, I tend to go with the pace at which the other person wants to move. In the connection, it all made sense. I was like, right. Uh, so that is what's happening. That is why you are repeating this pattern, and I see this all the time. And again, I used to do this right. We meet someone who takes our fancy. No other, fuck I just said that. I sound like a 90-year-old woman who we are attracted to and we instantly start to put them on a pedestal and we are fantasizing about the relationship and we are flooded with all of these. Hormones and these love drug hormones and these feel-good chemicals, and we think, oh my God, like this person is amazing. Like I've just met the one you wanna start telling everyone in your life about this person. You get all excited and you are on cloud nine and colors are brighter and food tastes better, and the whole world is shining out your ass. And then, as I said, after a few weeks or after a few months, there's this whole other side to this person that comes out that you didn't anticipate. Or they trigger you. And when you voice that concern, they completely shut down. They don't want to hear it. They get defensive. They can't handle you being emotional. They all of a sudden are really busy and don't have time for you. And oh, I'm just stressed with work and oh, I have to do this and that, and you are left, of course feeling disappointed and hurt. So we want to look at one of the most important ways that we can slow. Or sorry that we can break this cycle and this pattern because I truly do not want this for you anymore. I know what this feels like and I know how painful it is, and you deserve more, right? So how can we begin to, number one, filter out people who are part of our pattern and not what we actually want for our future? And two, start to create more healthy. Grounded relationships with people who are actually compatible with you rather than people who are just where there is a, a lot of chemistry, right? Where there is that spark and that intensity that burns bright in the beginning, but burns out quickly. The way that we are going to be doing this is slowing down the pace of the connection and you being the one to set the pace as opposed to getting swept up in the pace the other person wants to move at. Now, why is this so important? This is critical because when you do not set a pace, the prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is the part of your brain that is in charge of making decisions. Who can think ahead? Who has foresight? When you don't make that boundary and stick to it, you are going to be letting the emotional part of your brain, of your body take charge. And when we are still working with an unhealed wound with our attachment style, it is going to be, running towards whatever it deems as the person or the thing that's going to be giving us love, attention, validation. However, when we are moving into secure attachment, we need to be the ones giving ourselves that deep sense of validation, of love, of attention, and groundedness. And it is only from this place that we can have healthier relationships. We cannot be relying on the person we are dating, especially in these early stages. To be our main source of happiness and joy and fulfillment. If we are doing that, we are looking at that person as something to fix us. We are looking to attach rather than genuinely connect with this person and get to know them. So we need to set boundaries. Think of this as. Boundaries for a toddler. Now, I'm not saying you are a toddler, but I'm saying there is a part of you that is like a toddler in a candy store. It wants all the candy that it can see, and it doesn't have the self, regulation abilities to stop itself or slow itself down because it can't necessarily see that. If it just eats all the candy at wants on the other side of it, it's gonna feel really sick and like shit. So in this instance, the part of you that wants to rush and go fast is the toddler. And the part of you that is setting the boundaries and controlling the pace is the adult. So maybe you have a child or children, or you don't. Think about the decisions that you have to make for children because you know that it's actually going to serve them. You know that it's in their best interest to not gouge themselves on all of the candy, but to slow down and eat a proper nutritious meal first. And then maybe you can have some dessert afterwards. But we're gonna, we're gonna moderate that. Yeah. You can see that this is setting them up for health and longevity and success. They're gonna feel better, their mood's gonna be better, in the long run. The other reason it's so important to really slow down the pace of a connection is because. You cannot truly know who someone is without adequate amount of time for all of the parts of themselves to be revealed. We are always presenting the best version of ourselves when we're first dating someone, right? Think about it. You are not putting a foot out of line. You looking your best. You are being your most charming, you're most confident. You are wanting to shower them with love and attention because it feels good you're getting that. Back. You're not arguing'cause you're not at that place in the relationship yet. Like it all feels amazing and this is natural that we do this because we are humans and we want to find a mate like we are wired to do this. However, the person you're dating is doing this as well. So in the first, honestly, like even in the first few months, you are getting the quote unquote best version of them, which isn't necessarily the most authentic version of them or the truest version of them. You're not seeing all of the intricacies. And the, the parts of them that might be difficult or challenging or that you might not actually like or be compatible with. Over time there's going to be certain situations, life stresses, challenges in the relationship, which are going to reveal how they handle conflict, if they make you feel safe to express your emotions or not, what their true communication style is. What their relationship with their family is really like. How they interact with your family, your friends, all these parts of them that if you are looking to choose a life partner and build a life with someone, you wanna know this stuff before you fully give yourself over to them. Yeah. You want to be sure that this person is right for you. Not just that it feels amazing in the first few months and the sex is great and the chemistry is off the charts. No, we've done that. Okay. We've done that enough times to know it doesn't work. So I'm not saying you can't have chemistry in great sex. You absolutely can. But there are other factors that are really important to set the foundation for a great relationship that we need to be taking into consideration. And those things are only revealed over time. So to do this, one thing that I teach inside of peacefully attached my signature program is what we call a dating roadmap. And this is where we are using the prefrontal cortex, so the part of our brain that can think ahead and plan and make decisions ahead of time that you know are going to serve you. We are using that too. Essentially cast, a timeline at which you want to move when you meet someone you really like and you're interested in getting to know. The dating roadmap consists of three phases. So we have the connection phase, the trust phase, and the commitment phase. And there are different elements in each of these phases, but essentially it's about. The connection phase is when you're really just feeling this person out. You're really starting to see, do I like spending time with them? Do we get along? Do we tend to have things in common? Do I feel good around them? How do I feel about the ways that we are connecting? Are they asking questions? Are they making an effort? Is the effort mutual and reciprocal? And then how long do you wanna be in that phase? Four? Maybe that's a month, six weeks. Then the next phase is the trust phase. So this is when you are slowly starting to open up your heart a little bit more. You're letting that person in to see different parts of yourself and how they handle your heart a little bit more. So looking at how do I feel emotionally with this person? Do I feel safe to talk about things that are quite vulnerable for me? Are they opening up about their vulnerabilities? Are we able to have more deeper, meaningful conversations? Looking at this stuff that really matters. It's not just the boxes they tick on paper. It's how are they handling your heart? And then the commitment phase is how long do you want to be dating someone before you decide to commit to an exclusive relationship? It. And when you're answering this question, really thinking about, well, okay, what have I done in the past? Maybe in the past you have dated someone for five weeks and then you're in a committed relationship or less, even less than that three weeks and you're like, yep, we're together. We are all in. And then how has that worked out for you? What has been revealed to you over the later months that you. Didn't realize at the beginning, and you thought, oh my God, I, I rushed into this way too quickly and I should have taken my time. So if that's the timeline you're used to, maybe you say to yourself, okay, moving forward, I'm not going to be exclusive with someone and really say I'm in a committed relationship until four months, five months, six months even. There is no rush. Honestly, there's no rush. You can take your time and I recommend that you take your time. Really give it space to. Evolve organically. What this is also going to do when you have these clear boundaries for yourself and you're able to communicate them to the other person, it's also going to filter out people who are serious about this and who want the same things as you versus the people who don't, because people who are actually emotionally unavailable and who. Aren't ready to commit and give that much to something, they're not going to be probably sticking around for that long. Because typically people who are avoidant, they wanna win you over. Or if they love bomb you, they're trying to win you over and claim you as quickly as possible. So they get their ego stroked. So if you say, no, I'm not committing, I'm not ready to commit to a relationship. I really wanna take this slowly. I wanna take my time and truly get to know each other. Those kinds of people probably aren't gonna stick around. And the sooner you know that the better. But the people who are on the same page and who are serious are gonna be okay with taking time because it's also important for them to get to know you properly and there's no rush. As long as you're consistent with each other and you're respectful about each other's feelings, and you are having open communication as you go, then there's no need to rush. So really taking your time now within this timeline. It also recommends setting boundaries around things like how often you're going to be seeing someone. So in the first month of dating, maybe it's only once a week, I'm only gonna be dating someone going on a date with them once a week because this person is still essentially a stranger and I need to. Also stay focused and maintain all the other aspects of my life that are really important to me, my friends, my hobbies, my career, my downtime, keeping myself regulated and grounded. Slowing the pace is going to help your attachment system slow down. Another boundary is how often are you talking to people in between those dates? So if you're someone in the past who has been, a texter, like you're texting 24 7 and you are up all night talking to each other and you're saying all these things, let's slow that down. Because you and I both know how easy it is to get carried away texting, and we would usually say things that we might not actually say in person to that person's face because we realize, oh, it's actually too soon to say this stuff. Or would the secure version of me really be saying all this stuff right now? Maybe not. Keeping the majority of getting to know each other for your in-person dates and then slowly building the time you spend together, slowly building that up over the months and over that time, this is the adult part of you taking responsibility for your future self and taking care of the toddler part of you that is craving that love and reassurance and validation. And now this is the other piece of this. In the timeline where you are slowing things down and maybe you are setting boundaries, which means you don't see or speak to that person as frequently as you really want to. You are going to be left with some residual emotion. Maybe there's a bit of anxiety there. There's this sense of urgency that you want to win that person over. You want to say all this stuff to them because you're trying to receive that validation back. That is the work that you then get to do with yourself. This is also part of what we do in peacefully attached, is learning how to regulate and self-soothe these parts of yourselves. This this inner child part that is afraid. That is afraid of abandonment, afraid of not getting that love. And so we need to learn how to give that to ourselves so that we are not desperately seeking it from people outside of ourselves who we barely know because that is how we are ending up in these same cycles and same patterns that really don't serve us. Looking at ways to regulate the anxious part of you, the emotion that you are carrying that is making you feel like you have to rush, like you are unsafe. Going from anxious to secure is really about becoming your own safe space. It is about expanding your capacity for discomfort because discomfort is definitely going to arise if you are not used to moving slowly. It's gonna be uncomfortable. You're gonna feel like you're gonna wanna rush and jump in, and becoming secure is about noticing that discomfort and allowing it. It is about connecting in with the part of you that needs attention and asking it what it needs from you. How can you be there for that part of yourself and give it what it needs, and really starting to nurture it and become your own safe space because when you date from that energy. You are no longer going to be looking at people as the solution to your pain or as the only source of joy that you are not feeling in your life. You're going to be dating from a lens of I already have so much love in my life. I already love myself. I value myself. I respect myself. I feel good in my life. And so how are you going to contribute? Do you enhance what I've already got or not? And if the answer is no, and if you're not compatible, then I'm not gonna waste my time. But if you do, then that is a beautiful bonus to the life you already have and the relationship that you already have with yourself. This might seem simple. I'm sure you've heard it before, but I do hope that. The way that I've spoken about this today has given you a new insight or a new perspective, or even a reminder of just how important this one thing is in dating to slow down and remember that you can't truly know who someone. Is just from dating them for a few weeks or a month. And if you want to break the pattern of dating the same person with a different face, people who are emotionally unavailable, who are avoidant, who truly aren't gonna meet you where you're at, and give you what you truly deserve and want, then we need to be slowing down, taking our time. And expanding our capacity for discomfort and becoming your own safe space. If you would like support on working through this and getting all the tools that you need as well as the guidance, then send me a DM over on Instagram because this is the work that I do with my clients inside of peacefully attached, and I would love to support you if this is what you're looking for. All right my friends, I'm gonna leave it there. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will 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.