A Man's Guide To Breaking Anxious Attachment - Tell Her What You Want
In this solo coaching video, Connor Beaton addresses men who identify as nice‑guys, people‑pleasers, or anxious‑attached. He first maps the typical anxious‑attachment loop: knowing what you want, yet seeking reassurance, hinting, over‑explaining, over‑giving, and testing the partner, all driven by a deep‑seated belief that you are not okay until the other person is okay. He traces this pattern to inconsistent caregiving in childhood, where expressing needs was punished or ignored, leading to a lifelong strategy of deprioritizing self and over‑prioritizing the partner for safety. Beaton explains the personal costs of staying stuck—chronic fear, rumination, low self‑worth, and a perpetual “inferior” position. He then reframes safety: you can be okay even if your partner isn’t, and you must act despite fear. The core of the video is a five‑step practical guide for anxious‑attached men: (1) name what you want to yourself; (2) state it plainly once, without over‑explaining; (3) treat the partner’s response as information, not a verdict on your worth; (4) reinforce the mantra “I’m okay even if you’re not”; (5) practice receiving your needs being met, acknowledging that receiving can feel uncomfortable and requires explicit communication of that difficulty. He encourages men to practice these steps with a trusted buddy or in a men’s group (e.g., ManTalks Alliance) and to share the video for accountability. The overall message is that change is possible, but it requires confronting fear, speaking directly, and learning to receive.
Chapters
If you are a nice guy, if you're an anxious attached man, if you are a people pleaser, you're gonna want to tune into this. Because the reality is that you and I both know that you already understand what it is that you want in your relationship. You know what you want to say. You know what you want to ask for. You know the boundaries that you need to set, when you need to say no to certain things, when you need to request certain things. And yet you don't do it. You've known for months, maybe even for years. And yet, it seems to come out as a hint. It seems to come out as a kind of secret, or you test her, or you create a fight instead of a request, instead of a direct admission of what it is that you'd like or need. And so this is the pattern that shows up with the anxious attached man. When you're anxious attached, you have an internal experience of, I'm not okay until you're okay. I'm not okay until she's okay. And so I can't really ask for what I want, what I need, what's not all right with me. And so what you end up doing is that you hint, you sulk, you overexplain, you pick fights, you complain, you criticize to try and get what it is that you want, or you go through all of the hoops of trying to prove constantly that you are good enough for her to care about you instead of just saying the thing. And what I wanna do in this video is a kind of promise that by the end of this video, you'll know exactly why you do this and you'll understand what to do in order to shift this pattern, in order to shift this behavior. Because the reality is, is that you'll never step out of that people-pleasing, nice guy, anxious attached behavior behavior until you do a few basic things. So let's talk about the pattern. And by the way, my name is Connor Beaton. This is the ManTalks show. It's not therapy, it's training. It's training to help you be a better man. So here's the anxious loop that plays out, whether you're a nice guy, whether you're a people pleaser, or whether you just have anxious attachment. You want something, you want a need to be met. Mm-hmm. You have a desire, you have a want, you have a boundary, you have a non-negotiable. And yet, for whatever reason, you end up seeking reassurance about your worth, your value. You end up seeking reassurance that it's okay for you to even have needs in the relationship. And you ask all kinds of indirect questions, or you indirectly try and hint that there might be something that you want and need instead of Saying it. And then you go quiet. You hope that she'll notice. You'll hope that she'll sort of take stock that you want something. And maybe you withdraw, maybe you kind of sulk, maybe you complain a little bit. Maybe you drop these hints that you want her to pay attention to something, and yet she doesn't really clue in to what it is that you want because you're not being direct. And this can cause you to then overgive, right? Maybe if I do enough for her, maybe if I take care of everything for her, then maybe she'll get that I need something. You over-text, you over-explain, hoping that the volume of communication, of output, of giving, of effort will substitute for the clarity of simply being direct. And then the last stage is you test. You test. You know, if she really loved me, she'd do this for me. Or if she really knew me, she'd do this for me. Or if she really cared about me, she'd know how important this is instead of saying, this is really important to me. And the reality is, is that that's not communicating. One of the biggest challenges in being in a relationship with an anxious attached person, and one of the biggest challenges of being an anxious attached person, is that when you think you're communicating something clearly, you're often giving very vague instructions and sometimes not even really telling the other person what it is that you need or want. But why does this happen? Right? Because there's a pattern happening underneath the surface. There's a behavior. There's a presupposed or preset set of beliefs and way of being that are causing you to operate this way in the relationship. And the data is pretty clear. The research is pretty clear on anxious attachment. And what it shows is that when a child's needs are met inconsistently, or if You always had to put mom, dad, or whoever your caretakers were above your own needs, or you got punished, right? Whenever you would express something, or the way that you expressed it would get criticized, shamed, ridiculed, belittled. What you learned is that it's not okay for you to have needs, or at the very least, it's not okay for you to express what you need and what you want. Now, this can show up in a multitude of ways, right? Maybe you had a mom who was, you know, super enmeshed and kind of chaotic and very emotional. And she needed a lot from you. She needed you to be her good boy. She needed you to just kind of take care of everything because she was so fragile and she was so emotional. And so you didn't actually have the space to just be a kid, to just have your own emotions, to have your own needs, to have a tantrum, to protest, because what you were Your whole nature, your whole being was turning towards catering to her needs, her wants, living up to her expectations. And you never really got to develop a sense of self outside of her expectations and her wants and needs. And so your whole identity has kind of become tailored towards ensuring that other people that you love, especially women, Takes precedence, takes priority. Now, as an adult, this can lead you to feel like it is dangerous for you to ask what you need. It's dangerous or a threat either to you personally or to the relationship for you to say no, because it might lead to abandonment. It might lead to the other person pulling away. And this protective strategy that you developed isn't something wrong with you. It's not something defective. You know, I've worked with so many anxious attached men, and oftentimes there's there's this deep shame and guilt of like, something's fundamentally wrong with me. You know, why do I get so scared when I just, you know, wanna say, hey, I actually don't wanna have pizza tonight. I just wanna have, you know, steak and broccoli. I just wanna eat healthy. And all of a sudden, just the act of saying what it is that you want, what's true, feels treacherous. You know, it feels dangerous. And it feels dangerous in your system and in your mind, because how you learned to relate was by this one simple function. So I want you to write this down, okay? 'Cause at the heart and soul of every nice guy, of every people pleaser, of every anxious attached man is this one simple equation. I need to deprioritize myself and my needs and center other people's needs, wants, and desires in order to be okay. And if I don't, the outcome could be dangerous. It could be damaging. So I need to deprioritize myself, and I need to overprioritize the other. And that's what creates safety. So for you, as an anxious attached man, this is how your body, how your mind finds safety within the context of a relationship. It finds safety by overprioritizing the other person, And deprioritizing yourself, decentering your own needs, your own wants, your own desires, your own no, your own boundaries. And so to do the inverse of that is going to feel like a threat. Now, here's one big thing I want you to know before we go any further about how you undo some of this behavior. The big thing I want you to know is that you cannot, cannot get rid of the fear Of prioritizing yourself. You actually have to be afraid and feel the fear as you prioritize yourself. Because the reality is what a lot of anxious men do, what a lot of nice guys and people pleasers do, is internally there's an agreement of, well, when I stop feeling afraid of asking for what I want, of saying what I need, of prioritizing myself, of having boundaries, Maybe when I stop feeling afraid, that's when I'll do it. And so if the fear goes away, then I can do it. But the fear's not going to go away until you begin to do it. So another way of saying this is you have to do it scared. You will be afraid, period, full stop. And I wish that more people knew that. I wish that more people talked about that because for you as an anxious attached person, for you as a people pleaser or a nice guy, It's gonna feel like death. It's gonna feel like danger. It's gonna feel like a huge threat. It's gonna feel like you might be left or abandoned or neglected by simply saying what it is that you want. That's how it should feel. Well, maybe I should say it a different way. That's not how it should feel if you were securely attached, but that is how it's going to feel as an anxious attached person. So you can't eradicate the fear. You can't get rid of the fear and then take action. You have to start to take the action afraid. You have to start to do it scared. You have to take the risk. Because the truth is that for you, as the anxious detached person, as a nice guy people pleaser, you were disincentivized from taking the risk of saying, no, I don't want to do that. Hey, that wasn't okay with me. That hurt. That That wasn't all right. I don't wanna go do that. I really wanna go do this. This is what I need. I need more of this. And so you were disincentivized from doing those things. And so as you begin to do those things in your relationship, it's gonna be scary. So know that it's going to be scary. Now, the cost of this is pretty clear and simple. One of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of content out there that talks about men that are anxious usually talks about the woman's experience, right? She doesn't get a man Does X, Y, and Z? She can't trust your da da da da. I want you to put all that aside because while it's true that our behaviors when we are anxious attached men has an impact on the women that we're with, I don't want you to focus in on that because what happens for a lot of men that I've worked with that are anxious is that they use that knowledge and information to shame themselves more. And it pressurizes your system. So I don't want you to worry about, oh, what's the impact this is having on my wife or my girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. Let's just put that aside for a moment. There'll be time and place for you to reconcile with that once your behavior changes. What I wanna talk about is the cost to you. The cost to you is that you get to continue to stay in this place of hyper levels of fear. fear, massive amounts of worry, rumination, overthinking, and you get to stay in this place of reinforcing through your actions, choices, and behaviors that you are not worthy. So this is a way for you to continue to stay in what I call the one-down position, in the inferior position. And inside of every anxious attached person, there is this deep undercurrent of, am I worthy of this relationship? I'm afraid that I'm not worthy of this, or having needs or having wants. And so I constantly have to prove myself. And oftentimes what you see when an anxious and an avoidant get together is it's so explosive, and it sort of works so well in the dysfunctional level, in a dysfunctional way, because for the avoidant, it's a superior position. The avoidant's always taking a superior position, and the anxious is always taking an inferior position. So you get to stay in this place of, woe is me, I'm the victim, I'm not good enough. It continues to erode a sense of self-esteem and self-worth. And the beautiful part of this, the sort of, you know, pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, is that as you do some of the things I'm going to talk about, you actually get to develop some of that self-esteem. Your self-worth will improve. As a man, as you do some of the things that we're going to talk about. So the cost is to you is that you get to continue to run this script and this story of, I'm at fault, everything's my fault, I can't have needs, I can't have wants, something's wrong with me, something's wrong with my needs, something's wrong with my desires. So that is the price to you. Plus you get to stay in this state of hyper-rumination, which again, for many of you has become familiar territory. Right. Right? That's the thing that you know, that's the thing that is familiar, and your brain and your body will always choose what's familiar instead of the unknown, because it puts more fear on what it can't predict and places less fear on what it can predict. So again, what I want you to know before we just get into the core of this teaching, the what do you do, is that you are going to be afraid as you go through this. You are not going to want to do the things that I'm about to lay out. That actually is normal. It's normal to not want to do these things because your brain and your body want to, quote unquote, keep you safe, AKA keep you in this anxious position of lacking self-worth, lacking confidence, lacking self-esteem, not communicating what you want, need, and desire. So part of this is step number 1, you need to understand you're gonna be afraid. You're gonna have fear. Step number 2, You need to understand that you won't want to do these steps. You won't want to take this action because a part of you actually wants to stay stuck in this old behavior set. So what do we do? Well, we start to redefine what security is, what safety is. And safety is not the absence of prioritizing somebody else. And it's not about, you know, needing to overprotect somebody else. It's about being able to say what you want and stay regulated, stay grounded, regardless of what her answer is. So safety in this context is actually being able to say, here's what I desire, here's what I want, here's what's not okay with me. No, I'm not interested in doing that. And that's what we want to develop. You want to start to develop the kind of safety that says, I'm okay to state what I need, want, and desire, regardless of how the other person responds. person feels. So a simple way of saying this is that my state, my internal emotional, psychological, somatic nervous system state, is not dependent and reliant on another person being okay, because that's the catch for the anxious attached person. I cannot, as an anxious attached person, be okay until I know that that other person is satisfied, taken care of, they feel all right, they're in an okay place, they're in a good mood, then I can begin to relax a little bit. So the behavior change is, I can be okay even if you're not. So what does this look like? Here's where we get into the Man's Guide. Step number 1, name what you want to yourself first. And if you have somebody that you're doing this work with, if you're in a men's group, if you're in the ManTalks Alliance, which I highly recommend you check out. There's 1,000+ men from around the world doing this exact work to move towards more secure attachment, to be able to lead in your life and your relationship more effectively. You can check out the ManTalks Alliance. But name what you want to yourself first. So actually say, here's what I desire. Here are the types of dates that I wanna go on. Here's what I wanna do on the weekends with my girlfriend, with my wife. Here's the type of relationship that I want to have. And try and make it as clear, as concrete, and as concise as possible. So try and put it into one sentence, no story attached to it, no buts, no what-ifs, just here's what I want. On the weekends, I want to go hiking with my significant other. I want to have a very deep, connected sexual relationship. I want to be able to express myself sexually. And, you know, and then get more concise with what that looks like. Number 2, say it plainly once without overexplaining or defending it. Now, this is the hard part because for you, my anxious men, what ends up happening— I've seen this hundreds and maybe thousands of times— is you start to bring into your relationship. Here's what I'd like. I'd like to go to that restaurant on Friday night. I want to take you on a date on Friday night to go to this place. Or, you know what? I really love to have sex more often with you. And what ends up happening is you don't just say, here's what I'd like. You start to over-explain or defend it. And so you've built this whole rational litigation of why You're justified in having this need, in having this desire, in making this request. And what ends up happening is it muddies the water. And so 9 times out of 10, the nice guy, the people pleaser, the anxious attached man, you guys are notorious and no shame on you. It's just the thing that we need to end. You're notorious for saying, here's what I want. And then confusing the living hell out of that person. By overexplaining, overdefending. You know, I want to go to this restaurant because it seems like a really great place, and Tom went to it with his wife, and she said that da da da da, and I thought it'd be a great idea for us to go there. And I know that's you know on Friday nights you usually go and hang out with your girlfriends, blah blah blah. And by that time, your partner has completely is lost in the sauce of what it is that you actually want, and it feels. There's no way around this, but it feels weaker on the recipient's end when somebody is making a request and then overexplaining or trying to justify why that request should be met. It actually creates hardship in the other person because there's something that happens within us as human beings where when somebody requests something and then they overexplain, they overjustify, they defend, It causes us to have an adverse side effect. Like, should I not be trusting you? It feels like you're really having to sell me on this. Now maybe I should be pushing back. Maybe I don't want to be doing this because it feels like you're trying to manipulate, coerce, or force me. And so all of that other nonsense is going to create more duress, more stress, more strain on having it be easeful and a yes. So say it. Plainly. Say it once without overexplaining it. And if you need, practice this with a buddy, right? If you're going through this type of work, the nice guy work, the— if you're going through my book, Men's Work, and you're doing some of that work, please go through this with a buddy. It really helps sometimes to be able to say, okay, I'm going to have this conversation with my significant other, with my wife, with my girlfriend, with my partner. About being more sexually connected. Here's what I'm going to say. And then having that man, you know, somebody that you trust, be able to say, man, that's way too much. Just say this. Just say, I want to go on a date on Friday night and have really great sex after. You know, like, just say that. So say it plainly, say it once. Number 3, let her response, let your partner's response Be information, but not a verdict about your worth or whether or not you deserve your request, your need, your want. So begin to separate her response, her emotions from your nervous system. So she can be a little upset. She can be super excited. She can be, you know, a little— worried, she can be confused, she can be whatever it is, doesn't really matter. She can feel how she feels in response to your needs. So you can say, hey, listen, I really don't want to go out to that party on Saturday night. I actually want to take you on a date to this restaurant. And she might have a whole response like, oh, I really wanted to go to that party. And like, I thought that we committed to it and da da da da, and why are you backing out? So she can have her whole response. And allow yourself to breathe, allow you to be okay, and not let it fuel the story of something's wrong with me, something's wrong with my needs, it's not okay, she's gonna leave me, she's gonna be— just reminding yourself in that moment. And if you need a good reminder, saying it's okay for her to be upset, it's okay for her to be disappointed, I'm still okay. I'm okay, even if she's not. That's the simple phrase. I'm okay, even if you're not. I'm all right, even if you're not. That's what I want you to continue to come back to. So this is the 4th step, is reinforcing this one act. I am okay, even if you're not. I'm all right, even if you're not. Now, it doesn't mean that the relationship's going to end or that person's going to leave. You need to be able to build some tolerance and some resiliency for the other person to have an adverse or seemingly negative response, whether they're upset or disappointed or not okay, or, you know, they are excited. And who knows, maybe it's hard for you to just take in That they're excited to go on this date, that they're excited to meet your needs. That might actually be a challenge. Number 5, the final thing that I want you to take in is to practice receiving, having your needs being met, to practice receiving and enjoying and allowing for your needs to be met. I cannot tell you how many anxious attached men people-pleasing men, nice guy men that I have worked with over the years, where their huge challenge, the real work, is when they start to receive what it is that they've wanted. They want more sexual connection. You know, they want to be sexually prioritized. All of a sudden, they're— you know, they do what we've talked about before, right? You name it for yourself. You bring it into your relationship. You say what it is that you want. You're direct about it. You say it plainly once without overexplaining. You separate their response from how you feel, your sense of worth, your sense of okayness. And all of a sudden, you start to get what it is that you've needed in your relationship the whole time. And then boom, it's really confronting. For a lot of guys, when they start to have the type of dates that they want, or go and have the experiences that they want, or the adventures, or the connection starts to unfold, unfold in the way that they want, whether that's emotionally or sexually, it can be really challenging to actually receive that. So much so that a lot of anxious attached men and nice guys, people pleasers that I've worked with, in specific areas, this is where you will find your defense mechanisms come up the strongest. You know, you will have asked for, you know, something sexual, right? You've like asked for a BJ or an HJ or something like that. And all of a sudden, And you're getting to receive that, and you find yourself right before picking a fight, or you find yourself getting really defensive, and like, you know, you're stressed out, and all the anxiety's there because you're not used to receiving. Or you're getting to take, you know, your partner out on this date that you've wanted to go, or an adventure, or a trip that you've wanted to go on, and you find yourself, you know, subtly starting to sabotage it because you don't know how to receive. Receive the goodness, the joy, the pleasure, the connection, the intimacy of having your needs be met. So the final step is breathing, relaxing into receiving the joy, the pleasure, the goodness of having your needs be met. And that is an actual practice that I want you to bring in. Now, you don't need to do these all at once. You need to identify where you are in this. Maybe you've been doing steps 1, 2, 3, and 4, and step 5 is like your big block right now, where every time your needs are being met, you're going out on a date that you want, you're getting to watch the movie that you want with your significant other, you are really having a hard time receiving. Something that can be helpful is if you're in a trusted relationship to really just say that to your partner. You know what? I'm having a hard time. Yeah. Receiving you. I'm having a hard time letting you meet my needs. It really is confronting for me, and I could use some support. Or, I just wanted you to know that you're not doing anything wrong when we go on these dates. It's actually, I'm having a hard time. That's it. And sometimes just the act of saying, I'm having a hard time, owning that that's what's happening for you is enough to clear it right out. So that you can receive the joy, the goodness, the pleasure, the whatever it is. So thank you so much for tuning into this one. Comment below and let me know which one you're working on. And don't forget to man it forward. This might be a great episode to share with your significant other and listen together and talk about what you want to work through, or to share with a man or two in your men's group so that you guys can hold one another accountable to the steps that I actioned out here. All right, take care of yourselves, take care of one another. Until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.
More from Connor
How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary
