In Love Letter #1, we looked at how the anxious attachers’ loss-prevention strategies are often the very things that *cause* the loss they’re so afraid of. We looked at it under an electron microscope, so you could see every psychological mechanism (and its impact on others) with excruciating clarity.
In Love Letter #2, we looked at how to do things differently, taking a sober look at how to manage the inevitable intoxication of the falling-in-love drugs, so that you can build a real foundation for your relationship that could last your whole life long.
And in Love Letter #3, we’re going to be looking through the electron microscope once again at just one small piece of the anxious attachment puzzle: our relationship to our own desires and needs.
Let’s jump in…
When we’re really young, we have SO many needs — my god, so many needs. In a “good enough” environment, those needs are mostly met, most of the time, and it’s fine. We don’t need perfection in order to be okay — great, even. But for most of us, there was one thing or another that we really needed, that our environment couldn’t consistently provide (eg. unconditional love, safety, attunement, encouragement, etc.), or there was some part of the environment that was fundamentally broken (eg. family, home, money, sexuality, etc.).
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Sobriety in the Spike & The Two Transformations
The central point of the first “Love Letter to the Anxiously Attached” was this: anxious attachers are wired up to have stronger feelings (sooner) and to bond deeper (faster) in the beginning of a new relationship. They also tend to rush into lots and lots of intimacy, which means that the need for consistency and security is probably going to come online sooner for them than it will for their lover — which is likely going to be more than that person (or the relationship) are ready for.
A lot of these responses are baked into the nervous system, so it really isn’t a matter of stopping it from happening. Rather, it’s about learning to maintain a degree of mindfulness while it is happening — just enough so that you can make different kinds of choices. I call it “Sobriety in the Spike.”
The “Spike” is that initial stage of relationship where you can’t stop thinking about them, where you’re willing the time to pass until you can see them again, where being with them is the most intoxicatingly pleasurable thing you can possibly imagine. It’s a surge of hormones and neurotransmitters that are doing precisely what they were evolutionarily designed to do. Thing is, the Spike isn’t “like” drugs, it IS drugs, and there are some highly predictable ways that they will distort your perception of reality and compel you do all kinds of things you wouldn’t ordinarily do.
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by Crystallin Dion
My dear,
When you meet someone you really like, and when they make it clear that they really like you back, that's one of the best feelings ever (I get it). But if we’re being honest, you can sometimes be a bit quick to get physical, even to get sexual. Quick to be in a lot of communication, to spend a lot of time together, to use the language of “we, us, and our,” and “boyfriend” or “girlfriend." Quick to “choose” them, to call it a relationship, or partnership, or even love, and to peer all the way into a long and happy (imagined) future together.
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