Rethinking Attachment Styles: What Everyone Gets Wrong

So there's a well known assessment known as your attachment style. And everyone, every relationship coach, dating coach, therapist, they'll talk about this. And both Gary and I agree that this is a fantastic database, research based way to understanding why it is that we do what we do in relationships. But one thing that Gary and I have in common is that we think that there's something about this assessment that literally everyone gets wrong. And we're here to set the record straight. And I think this is going to really help you be able to understand yourself a little bit better and give you a little bit more confidence when you're getting out there and finding love. Welcome to the Love Strategies podcast where we help successful women attract high value men, date with a strategy and improve their relationships. Now, whether you're single or dating or in a new relationship, we're here to help you dive into the male mind and provide raw insights found nowhere else, backed by science, psychology, and our own personal experiences. Your hosts today are myself, Adam Lodolce, professional dating coach and founder of Lovestrad Strategies, and Dr. Gary Lewandowski, a relationship scientist, professor, and our head relationship coach here at Love Strategies. Please share with a friend and enjoy. This would be a good one, Gary.

Yeah, I think the what's your attachment style is this generation's what's your sign? Right. Like, I, I feel like attachment style is kind of having a moment. And I blame to some extent TikTok. There's a ton of attachment related content on social media, which is great. Like, I love anything that gets relationship science stuff out into the world so people can use it. Unfortunately, people are using it incorrectly. That's, that's the bad news for sure. And so what I love about what we're doing today is setting the record straight. And not only setting the record straight, but I think what we're going to talk about makes attachment easier to use and gives people hope who may not be as securely attached as they hope. Yeah.

So why don't we do a quick debrief of what an attachment style is and break down each of the four real quick. Gary, this is your area of expertise, so why don't you just jump in?

Okay. I'm going to hold myself back from going on and on and on about all these because I feel like our timer. There we go. Lightning round. So because I feel like people have a general sense of what attachment is. So four different styles. Generally, when people talk about this, the first is secure. This is the good one. You're comfortable with intimacy, you're comfortable with Independence. This is the Goldilocks of relationships where everything just feels kind of just right. Like, this is the one. This is 70% of people are thankfully secure. Second one, anxious, also known as preoccupied. Crave closeness, but there's like a clinginess. It's a constant worry that your partner's gonna leave. Lots and lots of need for reassurance and attention. Third one, fearful, avoidant, also sometimes called disorganized. You want close relationships, but you're terrified of getting hurt. You put up walls. You kind of have this push, pull dynamic where it's like, I want, I want, I want this relationship. But then as things start getting good, it's like, oh, no, alarm bells. Put up the walls, danger. And then you keep people at a distance. And then the last one is dismissive. Avoidant. This is just fierce independence. Like, you are just comfortable being on your own, by your own. You still actually want connection, but not at the expense of your awesome, amazing life on your own. Yeah.

And with attachment styles, a lot of the research shows that this is typically. Our attachment style is typically based on our relationship with our caregiver. So our parents typically how it is that they raised us. We may turn out to be a little bit more anxious or a little bit more avoidant depending on our caregivers growing up. And this translates to how we show up in relationships. So there are plenty of online quizzes that will tell you you are an avoidant, you are anxious, and this is who you are. But I think today our goal is to kind of reconfigure this a little bit to give you a little bit more hope.

Yeah. And I think this comes down to exactly what you said. Like, people take these quizzes and then they get themselves into these labels like, I am avoidant, I am anxious, I am this. And I think this is the number one thing that people get wrong and it's something that we do with our high end clients is we put them through this training where there's lots of different mindsets that they start understanding relationships better. And this is the thing that I think you want to get right about attachment is this idea of starting to think in continuums instead of categories. Now. Yes. The research originally three attachment styles, infancy, as Adam indicated, through adulthood. They kind of map onto each other. The Original research was 1987. You ended up being secure, avoidant, or anxious. Now, that study and that style was basically, here's three descriptions of attachment. Pick which one is you. Now, I've given this in classes and talks and every single time you Give that traditional measure of attachment. Someone says, wait a second, I fit a couple of these. Like, it's hard to pick. To which I always say, shut up. Pick one. No, I don't say that. I say, you listen to me.

I'm the professor. You are one of these, and that's it.

Hazan and Shaver, 1987 say, you must pick one. No, I say, you're right. Like, of course you don't fit neatly into a category. No one in life does. And so this is where you need a different mental model. And the mental model that we encourage our clients to think about relationships in is this idea of continuums instead of categories. Categories is, you're either this or you're that. You're either secure or you're insecure. You're either secure or you're anxious or avoidant categories. The problem is we don't fit neatly into categories. Smart people think in continuums instead of either or. You think in terms of less and more. And so that's going to be super important because when you start thinking in terms of less and more, you start thinking in terms of tendencies, which makes you a lot more accurate and gives you a lot more hope for shifting your attachment in the directions that you want.

I agree. And I think when you give yourself a category or a label, it in many ways takes away ownership of your behavior. So if you say, well, I'm anxious, therefore I need to text him 10 times a day to get validation from him, you're already setting yourself up to display the wrong behavior because of your category. And that's not very healthy. Right? I am this, therefore I do that. And I think it's true for a lot of these different assessments where it tries to put people into these unique individual boxes, and therefore they can just be aligned with both the positive and negative behavior of that particular assessment. And the reality is, humans are incredibly complex creatures. We don't just fit nicely into these little boxes. These are very helpful to understand, okay, I might have these tendencies, but it doesn't mean I am this very thing. So the better way forward, and this is something Gary and I put a lot of work in when we developed our brand new program for our clients with, you know, we have an app and we have a way for all of our clients to connect with each other and meet locally. It's incredible. But we also have a very special attachment style that doesn't exist anywhere as far as we're aware. And it's much more based on a continuum. So this is much more thinking in terms of less and more, not either or. I tend to be a little bit more anxious rather than, you know, avoidant. It's more of a dimmer switch. It's much more nuanced, it's more precise, and it's much more accurate. And that's what I love about it because it changes the conversation from I am this attachment style to I tend to be this. Therefore, what can I do to work on this and change this continuum?

Yeah. And so, you know, when we developed this measure on our own, we. It's research inspired. Right. And so this was not, you know, my or Adam's brand new idea to do it this way. There's research that shows you can look at attachment through two different continuums. One continuum.

Yeah, I, I came up with this.

Okay. That's how I remember say, like, we, this is research. But how we utilize this and put this into practice is very much just us.

Gary. This was so not my idea. Like when we were putting together attachment. You're. No, no, no, we can't do it like everyone else. We have to make this 10,000 times more technically challenging to make.

We did make this complicated. The back end of this is quite complicated, but for the client experience, super simple. But it's like that's how everything in life is. Anything that seems really simple on the outside, it's like, it's a lot of work that goes into making things look simple.

Exactly.

But, you know, this, this boils down to two different continuums. One is comfortable with closeness, like, just how comfortable are you being close emotionally with somebody else, like opening up, being vulnerable, that kind of thing. And the other dimension is anxiety over abandonment. How much are you concerned about people leaving you? And so other researchers have used these dimensions to help put people into these four different attachment styles. Now, so what we did with this is use these dimensions, created a bunch of items that help assess these dimensions. And our clients take this evidence based assessment where they get to answer a bunch of questions and then we generate a visual report for them where it shows specifically where they fall in the four quadrants. You got two continuums. I know this is not going to make sense visually, but you have continuum one, continuum two. You end up with four quadrants. And then their specific score shows up as a little red heart. Adorable. Right in the middle there. That shows exactly where they're at. And now this is important because you get to see, okay, for example, I might fall in the preoccupied or anxious quadrant. But the benefit of the visual system is, is you see that you're not fully preoccupied and anxious. You actually like, okay. I'm highly comfortable with closeness. What I really need to work on is my anxiety over abandonment. If I can just shift and work on my anxiety over abandonment and shift that a little bit, pretty soon I'm gonna start falling in the secure quadrant. And it's like with our clients, it's just. It creates such a different mental dynamic when you get to think like, oh, I can shift this little by little versus, oh, my gosh, I'm avoidant. I've always been avoidant. I shall always be avoidant till the end of time. And that's just like, a defeatist attitude. And I don't know. When you start learning about attachment and doing it this way from the start, it really. And I see it all the time in the clients. It's like, oh, my gosh. They'll say, gary, I just retook the attachment thing after a month. I'm secure now. Like, good. I said, but are you secure? And they'll be like, no, no, no, no. I'm more secure than I was before. I'm like, yes, yes.

That's the way it's. It's true. So many things in relationship dynamics where it's so much more in a continuum than it is just a category. Like, how many clients, when they first start working with us, will say, well, I'm. I can't flirt. I don't flirt. And it's not a matter of, like, there's two binary categories. People who flirt and people who don't flirt. It's a continuum. How bad at flirting are you versus how good at flirting are you? And guess what? You can move up the continuum. And it's like, there's so many examples of that sort. And anytime you put something on a continuum, it is so much more empowering. And so I just. I really urge everyone listening right now to think about some of these binary statements you might make about yourself, whether you know anything about attachment style or not. Just think about these statements we make about ourselves that might be putting us in a box that. That is hurting us. And once you can recognize that type of language and start to say, okay, for example, another one might be, I'm shy. I'm a shy person. Well, that might be a continuum of how shy are you? And can we move into a category of being more socially open when we're on meetups? It's not like you necessarily want to become extroverted if you don't want to be, but it's. It's all continuum. And so I really, really challenge everyone to be thinking about that because I think that that's something I used to do in kind of a lazy fashion in my 20s. I tried to always categorize myself into these various little boxes because it, it just, it's easy, right. Versus actually taking a hard look at that. It's like, okay, can I actually move up this continuum? Yeah.

I mean, oversimplification is enticing, right. It makes everything in life seem a little bit simpler, a little bit easier. It's just you lose a lot of information along the way. What I think really is a benefit of this, which is, you know, one of the things that people get wrong about attachment is people think attachment is permanent. Like, if you are avoidantly attached as a 5 year old or a 10 year old, based on your caregiving and upbringing, that means you're going to be avoidant for the rest of time. Now, thank. Thankfully, that is false. But to be honest, attachment is stubborn and it is tough to change. But the thing is, you can change it. It just takes work, it takes some support, and it takes, you know, a little bit of oversight, let's say. And so one of the things that I see with our clients all the time is because they are trained by us to think about attachment on a continuum, they will say things you just, and you just said something about language. And I think that language and use of language is so important. They'll say things like, at the moment, I'm anxiously attached. Perfect. Because that shows. It's like, this is how I am now, but this is not how I shall always be. Somebody just recently on a Mastermind this week said, I'm an avoidant. For now. It's like, yes, yes. We have one client who always words it this way. She'll say, I am a recovering anxious person who is currently secure. Like, how sophisticated. But it's like, yes. Like, this is just. It's a recognition of the person you used to be, but also who you are now. And that there was a journey, there was progress that was made from one point to the other. And this is the thing is like, your attachment can change when you think about continuums. This makes it all so much more obvious. Now. Will your attachment accidentally change? No. Will just learning about this and listening to this one podcast just be like, yep, okay, now I'm gonna start suddenly be more secure again? Probably not. And now you might look around and say, well, you know, I, I know a lot of people and it doesn't seem like their attachment has Changed. And yeah, probably because most people don't work on relationships. Most people don't spend the time learning about relationships, being an intentional about relationships, being purposeful about their journey. And so, yeah, it's like, you know, when you see that person from high school, what's the most common thing you say? Oh, my gosh, you haven't changed a bit. Of course they haven't. Most people aren't growth oriented. And so a lot of people won't. But it doesn't mean just because a lot of people haven't changed and don't change their attachment, it doesn't mean it can't change. There's a very big and important difference. Right.

Well, I think on this note, another thing that I think a lot of people get wrong is that your attachment applies in all contexts. And there's this assumption that seems to be that secure people are always secure, anxious, or are needy in all situations. And this is just patently false. I mean, you can have very, very different attachment tendencies with different people in your life. Your mom versus your dad. You might be more anxious with your mom, even avoidant with your dad, or vice versa, or your best friend or your romantic partner. But ultimately the one that we want to always aim for is, you know, the attachment that you'd have with your best friend. A secure attachment where you can be open and vulnerable in a healthy way, but you're not always feeling like you're pulling them in or certainly avoiding kind of those difficult conversations. And I would say just on the same note, like, you can feel more secure on one day and less secure the next day. You can be more secure depending on your past relationship. You were in, I think, of a relationship that I left in my early 20s, Gary, after that relationship, I was the most avoidant guy you've ever met. I was like, no way. Commitment. Not for me, dude. Like, if I took our continuum, I'd be like in the deep red on avoidant.

But I think we were in the same relationship.

What's that?

I think we were in the same relationship. I had a similar experience.

Exactly, exactly. And then, you know, if you talk to my wife, I mean, I don't know, I don't want to put words in her mouth. She probably just said, I'm cuckoo. No, I'm just kidding. But it's more about just being in a secure relationship where it just kind of works. So I think it just depends on many different contexts and the relationships you have with people.

Yeah. And I think that thing that you said about, you know, look, at your relationship with your best friend. I'd venture to guess that 90 plus percent of people have a very secure relationship with their best friend. And so I. I talk about that a lot with clients who are not feeling very secure. They're like, oh, I just can't imagine being secure with a romantic partner. It's like, well, wait a second, I. I bet you already are secure. Like, wait, what? How. How am I already secure? It's like, look at your relationship you have with your best friend. Okay, well, what do you mean? Well, you share with her. You open up to her. Oh, yeah, of course I do. Do you expect her to hurt you at every. No, why would I expect that? Exactly. Right. It's like, that's what a secure relationship looks like. And it's just, can we transfer some of those feelings over to romantic partners? And it goes, you know, it's a whole other podcast. But, you know, we talk about a lot. It's like, your romantic partner should be like a best friend. And, you know, this is yet another way that that happens. And so, Adam, you just said that Jess would probably say that you're secure. Is that true? You lean pretty heavily secure, according to my assessment.

I am very secure, Gary. So now are you more secure?

Are you secure in every possible instance? Do you ever feel like you slip occasionally into something else?

Of course.

Yeah.

We're human.

Yeah. And that's the thing is, like, I think that's another misconception that people have about attachment, is that once I start feeling secure, I'm set. Good. Mission accomplished, Problem solved.

Sometimes I text you on the weekends and you don't respond back to me for a few hours, and I get very anxious. What is Gary doing without me? Does he have a different podcast host? Who is he hanging out with? What is he doing?

I am secretly hanging out with other podcast hosts, other executive love coaches. Yeah. I just, I don't want to tell you, Me and Joe Rogan and other people just hanging out. Not at all. But I think, you know, this is. It's something we hear from our clients all the time, is like, hey, I got an issue. I'm like, okay, what's going on? Like, I've been feeling really secure, but I had this thing that came up, and now I was just like, I was feeling a little lost. I was feeling a little clingy. Does this mean I'm no longer secure? It's like, no, no, no, no, no means, like, we're all going to have, like, little slip ups. Like, you can be a healthy Person who occasionally eats a donut. It doesn't mean all of a sudden you eat one donut and you're not a healthy person anymore. It's like you're still a secure person that has their anxious or avoidant moments. Like, that's okay. It doesn't disqualify you from being secure. It just shows that you're human. And we're gonna have a range of feelings and you're gonna bounce around from time. What happens when you're secure, though, is that when you have. You have moments of insecurity and then you kind of reset to your default, which is secure. Right. You kind of return to baseline, so to speak.

Gary, correct me if I'm wrong, and this might be a kind of a strong statement, but I find this with our clients, and I would say the vast majority of our clients, we should actually run that report. We could find that out now, our percentage breakdown of various attachment styles. But I find that it are clients who have an anxious or avoidant attachment style in many scenarios, they need to override their initial instincts. Whereas someone who has a secure attachment style, they tend to be able to listen to those instincts more. So someone who's secure is feeling anxious. That's something actually to listen to and lean into, because there's probably a reason why. Whereas a client who tends to be. Who isn't avoidant far on the continuum, they are strong avoidant if they start to get that tendency to lean back and run away from a relationship. Many. Much of our coaching is to actually not do that and avoid. Don't listen to those instincts because those instincts are based on basically a lot of your childhood, perhaps childhood trauma and the experience you've had through life. Would you say that that's a fair assessment to make?

Yeah, and I think that's 100% correct in the sense that this is exactly why we encourage so many of our clients. At first, it's like, focus on yourself, kind of get yourself set solid. Like, understand your attachment. Not that, you know, you don't have to necessarily be fully secure before you go out and date that. It's not that. It's that you have to understand what your current patterns and defaults are so that you can, you know, appropriately gauge your feelings. Right. Just like you said, if you. If you are kind of at a default avoidant place right now looking for problems, finding problems, finding every possible reason to keep people at a distance, you have to realize, like, oh, wait a second. And you hear our clients say, it's like, oh, that Was my avoidance flaring up? It's like, yes. When you start talking about things that way, it means you're starting to understand that, like, this is not a permanent state. This is a temporary tendency that you can see it like, wait, wait, wait. Me finding every possible problem with this perfectly solid guy is not that he's problematic, it's that I'm being a little avoidant. And so what I need to do is not freak out. I just need to stay still. And sometimes that's all it takes. It's just a little bit of knowledge and practice. Right. And it's not going to be perfect from the beginning, but it's like a little bit of repetition, a little bit of practice takes you a long way.

Right. And I would just end. This whole concept of what people get wrong when it comes to attachment styles is something I hear a lot, at least on social media and just across kind of the, the, the spectrum is it's a lot of blaming the partner. Like, I'm anxious because of him, or he made me avoidant, or men made me avoidant. And there's a lot of good stuff on social media. I'm not gonna poo poo all of it, but there's a lot of really bad stuff out there. And I would really encourage everyone to move away from the they made me feel way of dealing with people. Like, guys don't make you feel anything. You're in control of your emotions, your reactions. That's empowering. If it's always putting the blame. Where you put the blame is where you give the power. So if you're always putting the blame on your partner for making you feel a certain way, well, suddenly there's nothing you can do about that. You can't change that other than, of course, leaving that partner. And perhaps that is the right answer to do. But again, that would be within your control. So at the end of the day, it's really important to not always put the onus on your partner or men that you're dating and realize that you are ultimately the common denominator of all your relationships.

Yeah, you can't blame other people for making you less secure, because if you start doing that, you're not going to become reliant on other people to make you feel. Feel more secure. The problem is, if you start feeling insecure, a lot of the guys you're going to attract are guys who are attracted to insecure partners who might be the worst possible group ever to rely on to become more secure. And it becomes this vicious cycle and so you can't rely on the men in your life to solve these problems for you. It's got to start with you. And as Adam said, like, that's extremely empowering, because we can't wave a magic wand to fix all the men in the world. We don't have a magic wand big enough. But you can start with yourself, control the controllables, take the power in this situation, and start making the change.

Amen. And I know that this podcast in particular is a very technical podcast. This is not like a very, like, seven simple ways to know if he likes you type of podcast. And we're doing that intentionally because we want to show you the thought and the research and everything we put into working with our clients. There's a lot of nuance, and there's a lot of just understanding the intricacies of this stuff so that you can take the appropriate action in your love life. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I want to go deeper on this. I really want to understand this, then what I'd recommend is heading out on over to loveapply.com you can apply to speak with someone on my team who is. They're known as a love strategist. They're trained on this stuff. They can understand your unique situation and be able to see whether or not we can help you and guide you on your journey to love. So, again, that's loveapplied.com and go check it out. I just want to give you that resource so that if you are feeling lost right now, that's a great next step. Or if you're just like, I want to go deeper on this stuff, that's a great way moving forward. So anyways, Gary, with that said, why don't we jump into strategies for change, how to become more secure, how do we move up on that. That continuum?

Yeah, And I think what's important is when we're talking about continuums, how do you become more secure? This applies to everybody. So even if you're thinking, like, I'm already secure. Okay, are you perfectly secure? The answer to that, I'm telling you now, is, no, you're not. No one is. Right. And so everyone can work at becoming a little bit more secure. And that's super important, because being insecure sucks. It makes everything about dating more difficult. It makes everything about the relationships that flow form from your dating worse if you're not secure. And so you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to be more secure. And so that Starts very simply with believing in change. Like, you just have to get out of the mindset of, like, I am what I am. This is. I'm a finished product. And it's like, no, we're not. You're not a finished product. And there's even research on this. Like, there's research on something called earned secure attachment, which is essentially what it sounds like. Which researchers don't often do that. But it's like, this actually is exactly what it sounds like. Okay, so maybe your upbringing wasn't so secure, maybe your caregiver relationship wasn't secure, but they basically find that you can be different from your childhood attachment. You can rise above the malevolent childhood experiences and develop into secure relationship patterns in adulthood. Now, again, that's not going to happen by accident. It's going to take some work. It doesn't mean, though. And this is saying you can change attachment, right? And you should work to improve your attachment. Just one side note. Caveat is this does not mean it's your job to try to change your partner's attachment style. That's their job. So, like, you worry about you. You can support them in their journey. But, like, this is not license to say, well, you know, Dr. Gary and Adam said I should try to change you because you should change. You should earn secure. No, no. Focus on yourself.

Yeah, change can happen. It really can. I mean, I've worked with clients. Gary, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but, like, I'll hear clients that we work with, and this is kind of a hot take, so prepare yourselves. I'll hear clients who are in their 60s and 70s who are still talking about their father who's been dead for 30 years and how that person has ruined their lives. And I'm not lacking empathy for what someone went through.

Through.

I'm not. But at what point do we just move forward in our lives? Like, at what point do we just say, he's dead, he's been gone. I mean, I mean, to be like, I don't mean to be harsh. Is this. Is this too hard? But, like, we have to move past this. And if we're saying, well, I'm avoidant because of my father, then that gives him all the power. He's still. He's still controlling your life at this point. So at what point are we just going to make a decision to change? You know? And look, at the end of the day, it may not change completely internally, but we can at least change our behaviors and the actions that we're taking on a daily basis, we still might feel anxious or avoidant based on our upbringing, but it doesn't mean we need to act anxious or avoidant based on our upbringing. There's a huge, huge difference. And the second part of all of this is becoming more secure is also just being patient. If our clients, they'll go through a very in depth process of kind of reconfiguring their thought process. And it's going to take some time for some of our clients, I mean, some of our clients that come in and like six weeks later, they're like, oh my God, I meant to love my life. I'm like, that's amazing. Fantastic. We have other clients who, you know, it's kind of like working with someone who's never been to the gym before their entire life. And we're starting to do some air squats and we got to get them in shape and we, you know, that requires some patience. It requires some understanding. And it requires understanding that like, this is an exponential curve, like it compounds on itself. Every time you make an improvement, it just continues to compound. So, you know, don't expect to just suddenly, just because you listen to this podcast, just suddenly become drastically more secure in a week. Like, recognize that you might need some accountability. You might need some reminders, you might need some people in your life who are telling you, like, look, let's continue to move towards more secure behavior. Which is not something most girlfriends will say, but it does require some patience and it requires some grace. You know, if you do slip up and you text the guy 10 times in a given night because he didn't respond to you, okay, my, that was an anxious flare up. Now I'm going to focus on getting back to secure again. Patience is key.

Yeah, I mean, I think we forget sometimes that whatever your current attachment tendencies are, you've had several decades to work on that. Like, it didn't just start yesterday. And so it's going to take a little bit of time to unwind some of the previous patterns. But when you start looking at all this on a continuum, you can start seeing progress quickly. Right? You can see progress in the first couple weeks. Now it's not going to be a complete switch from anxious to fully secure. Like, that's unreasonable. It's just like, you're not going to drop £50 in two weeks. It's just not going to happen. But if you do this in a slow, intentional way, it also encourages lasting change. One of the things that we encourage our clients to do too, to help build towards that change is find a secure partner and trust them. Now the good news is out in the world, there's about 70% of people are secure. And so it's training yourself to notice and follow through with the men who are displaying secure tendencies. Secure tendencies aren't terribly flashy. They're not the guys often that are going to come up to you when you're out and use a pickup line. It's not necessarily a secure tendency. Secure guys are consistent, they're reliable, they're stable, they're trustworthy, they follow through, they're predictable. They call, they check in, they share, they're vulnerable. Now, those are all good traits. And I think anybody listening be like, yeah, those are good. Those are what we want in a long term partner. And I think everybody does want that. But it's not always what you optimize for in a short term relationship. And so it's that. That's some of the shift that's taking place. The other thing that happens when you find a secure partner is they're gonna act in a trusting way. You can just start watching them, how they act, their behaviors and start mimicking some of those behaviors yourself. Because as Adam said, it's so much of psychology is realizing that behaviors by doing the thing, you start shifting the way you think about it. Too often people wait. Like I'm gonna wait around to be motivated. I'm gonna just decide to be more secure and that's gonna change things. And it's like, that's actually not how it works. And so something I say to clients all the time and then they start saying it, you know, to each other too, is like, what would a secure person do in this situation? What would a secure person do? And so we know from the research, again, it's like you start doing those behaviors that a secure person would do do that will change your attitude, that will start making you feel more secure. That will change, you know, how you do things in the future just by wait in this situ, like so he hasn't texted me in a little bit. What should I do? Oh, what would a secure person do? Okay, let me do that.

Those are always like, that's something we encourage all of our coaches to do as much as possible. When someone asks a question is to just ask the question in return, which is either what would a secure person do? Or what would a high value woman do? You know, like, what would a person who's got this kind of figured out, what would they do? And 95% of the time they get it Right, right. Like, what would a secure person do? They would start dating. They wouldn't wait and wait and wait to be ready. That would be more of an avoidant behavior. They would make dating a priority. They wouldn't be making excuses all the time like, oh, I'm busy with work, I'm busy with all this stuff. Nah, they're making a problem priority because they know how important this is. They wouldn't have too many rules or restrictions or like a one strike policy. He does one thing wrong and he is out. No, they wouldn't do that. Instead, you know, they would again, they would be kind of like open minded and communicative. They would also be comfortable with building emotional connection through openness and vulnerability, being comfortable kind of being vulnerable in those moments. And they'd be okay without constant, constant contact all of the time. Right. All of these things are many behaviors of what a secure person would do. And again, we can just take action with these types of behaviors even if inside we're feeling differently. Even if you're like, oh, I don't want to make dating a priority. Okay, that's fine. So long as you are making dating a priority. You know, like, I don't care. So long as you're doing the thing, you know, and pushing through it. Sometimes I wake up and I don't want to go to the gym, but I'm. So long as I go to the gym, I'm cool. That's all good. You know, I think of like, what would a healthy person do? Okay, I'll just do that. All right. Easy enough.

Yeah, just do the thing. Just. You just have to start doing it. Right. Speaking of doing the thing, you want to do an activity? I do this activity every once in a while in a mastermind with our clients. That I think is really revealing. Yep. 4.

Sure, let's do it.

See if you get this right. So I think one of the things that makes relationships and dating and psychology in general kind of difficult is we like to think that there's just one right way to interpret everything. Or it's like if a guy does blank, this must mean blank. It's not that simple. And so here's a common behavior. One of the most common things that people ask about. A guy hasn't texted you in two days. Okay. That's the behavior. This is what this guy has done. Now, depending on your attachment style, you're gonna interpret that behavior drastically differently. So if you're avoidant, guy hasn't texted in two days. Adam, how do you feel?

Next, moving on. He's out. Sorry. I deserve better. No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, he's terrible. Like, and you see this? Like, that's all it took. He. You know, it's been 17.2 hours since I've heard from this man. Done. Un. Not 10. Can't have him. Bye. Right. That's very avoidant. And who knows why he hasn't texted? We don't, but it's just like avoidance. Just the reflects is like, no bad. Danger, danger, danger gone. Right. Same exact behavior. Guy hasn't texted in two days. What would an anxious person do?

Text him about 23 times, asking him, where is he and what's he doing? Is he with another woman? What's happening?

Yeah, and it's like, you know, while you're texting, anxious gonna like, you okay, everything fine. But. And I've heard this too. It's like, I just, I worry about him because I had been hearing from him. It's like, he must be in danger. He must not be okay. And I always joke like, yeah, maybe he's trapped under something heavy. And it's like it starts to get just like a little bit. Like, we start coming up with all these stories and it's the anxiety and the worry and it's like, I have to reach out. I have to reach out. It's like that's. That's exact. Classic anxious. Classic anxious. So now here's the key one. Same scenario, hasn't texted in two days. What would a secure person do?

I don't know. I'm sure he'll reach out, but if not, then he probably wasn't interested or he just isn't really ready for love, you know, his loss, whatever. Moving on.

Right? Yeah. Like, okay, this guy, not ready for a relationship, not willing to make this a priority. Just. Or I said something that made it clear to him that I. We weren't going to be compatible. Okay. Too bad, so sad. Bye. Like, okay. And that's fine because a secure person's also going to think, you're not the only one out there. I can connect with lots of people. And so it becomes less intense with any one person. And so I came up, this one actually just talked about this about two weeks ago with clients. And one of the clients, you know, on the mastermind, said, you know, I had this recently happen. And she said, and I quote, the old me would have been freaking out that he hadn't texted in two days. And I immediately stopped and said, wow, you know what I love about that? There's a couple words in there that I love to hear it. Every time I hear it, it gives me just such joy, which is the old me, because that's what progress is all about. It's about change. It's about improvement. And she was talking about attachment. And so this meant that she saw attachment on the continuum. She saw that it could change. She saw that by dating a guy. He wasn't texting her all the time because he was secure. He didn't feel the need to have to constantly check in because he had a very busy career. She had a very busy career. And now, rather than freaking out about this all the time, it's just like, no, no. Like, you're gonna have to do your thing, I'll do my thing, and, you know, it's all gonna work out. And like that. Like those little improvements, those experiences. The old me would have done this terribly toxic, counterproductive thing, but now the new me knows better. Adam. I don't know. Like, that always gives me, like, the little. I get. I get a little emotional, because that's what we're here for. That's what we. That's why we do what we do.

Exactly. And look, most of our clients, they are in their 50s, 60s, 70s. I mean, we have some clients in the 40s, 30s. But, you know, you can change at any age, and you can change it. You can change your behavior at any stage, anytime you decide. Never again. Not for me. And that's what we do around here. And we would love to. Again, for those who are interested in this topic and really transforming your life, changing your continuum, and therefore kind of changing your. Your family tree in many ways, moving forward. Then I really invite you to again, head on over to loveapply.com. love to have a conversation with you, see how we can help and see if. Whether or not you're fit for our incredible community. So thank you, Gary. That was a fantastic one. I hope you all enjoyed, and we'll speak to you again. Again, that's loveapply.com. let's go. Thanks, Gary. Talk soon.

Thanks, Adam.