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The Short Version: Do you constantly overanalyze texts or find yourself emotionally exhausted in your relationships? Anxious attachment patterns could be the source. Relationship expert and coach Melissa Josue speaks with us about anxious attachment patterns, how they can affect dating relationships, and tips for breaking the cycle.
There’s no better way to approach dating than with an open mind and authenticity. But these two things can often get lost or buried under feelings of anxiety or need to impress, making this approach much easier said than done.
Daters with anxious attachment patterns know this feeling of anxiety all too well. In an effort to maintain a connection, overanalyzing and expending emotional energy in relationships can become so familiar that they may seem impossible to overcome for many daters.
But navigating your relationships and dating journey without these patterns hitching along is possible. You can ask Melissa Josue. Melissa is a relationship coach who helps women break free from the cycle of anxious attachment and find empowerment in the process.
“My focus is helping women engage with their dating journey in healthy and sustainable ways so they can eventually create secure, fulfilling relationships. That involves connecting with their inner wisdom and getting a solid alignment with their sense of self-worth and tools to make conscious relationship decisions,” said Melissa.
Anxious attachment manifests when love feels uncertain or conditional. This type of attachment typically results from adverse childhood experiences or other forms of trauma and can reveal itself in adult relationships in various ways, including lack of trust, low self-esteem, or fear of intimacy.
Melissa spoke with us about her journey with anxious attachment and how women can spot and overcome their own attachment patterns, so they can attract fulfilling relationships and feel confident expressing their needs.
Before Melissa was a dating coach, she was a journalist, who, in her personal life, was navigating her own dating challenges. Like her clients, feeling ungrounded and uncertain was a state of mind Melissa was all too familiar with in her relationships as she struggled with anxious attachment.
“There was a time I was compromising my own needs just to maintain a connection. And I did that for years before I got married and went through a personal healing journey,” said Melissa.
To seek healthier ways to form relationships, Melissa worked with licensed professionals and also partook in her own self-help assessments to learn her patterns. Going through this journey allowed her to transform these anxious patterns at their core.
Melissa’s career as a relationship coach wasn’t exactly preplanned. In fact, as a writer, Melissa created a blog and sought to share resources on the web about navigating relationships to fill a gap. Within six months, she began receiving requests for advice from her readers.
“I saw an opportunity there. There’s a need for this information, but at the time, I didn’t have the training or tools to help those who were asking for that kind of help. So at that point, I decided to get training for conscious dating principles and tools to help women,” said Melissa.
Although it wasn’t what she planned, being a relationship coach has changed not only Melissa’s life but the lives of the women facing the same struggles she once did. Melissa told us many of her clients had the underlying traits of anxious attachment — which is why it became her focus over time.
Anxious attachment patterns can do harm in more than just relationships. Melissa said their effects can spill out into every area of a person’s life. Constantly ruminating and strategizing to maintain connections — even connections that may not be serving you — can expend a lot of your mental and emotional energy, causing your mental health to suffer.
Doing the work to achieve healthy attachment patterns can help women prevent these feelings of anxiety and find empowerment, creating positive ripple effects throughout their lives.
“When women learn to date consciously and overcome anxious attachment patterns, they don’t just attract healthier relationships, but they also discover their voice. They get in deeper touch with their power and can show up authentically in every area of their life,” said Melissa.
The first step to overcoming anxious attachment is noticing you have those patterns. Melissa gave us a great example that depicts anxious attachment in action. She said people can think of anxious attachment as oversensitive smoke alarms in relationships.
These alarms are so sensitive that they wail and ring at the smallest hint of smoke as well as for real fires. In dating, these alarms exist when someone has a deep desire for intimacy but also holds intense fear of abandonment.
“So what happens is that this creates an exhausting internal pattern where we’re constantly scanning for signs of rejection,” said Melissa.
Signs of oversensitivity include overanalyzing texts and experiencing really high highs and low lows in relationships. It’s like being on an emotional rollercoaster where the ride never ends, leaving you exhausted.
You can see this in the fact that anxious attachment often comes when daters overwork themselves to be the “perfect partner,” and hyperfocus on meeting their partner’s needs, thinking this is the only way to maintain their connection. But Melissa said many women lose themselves while doing so.
Anxious attachment isn’t a character flaw. It’s a natural response born out of past experiences.
Melissa emphasized that anxious attachment isn’t a character flaw or personal failure. It’s more of a natural response — one developed due to an earlier encounter, childhood experience, or social conditioning. The good news is these patterns can shift with the right awareness and support.
“Once we know that this programming is running in the background, then we’re empowered to make a different conscious choice. But we need to become aware of these patterns through therapy, coaching, or a combination of both,” said Melissa.
To overcome these oversensitive alarms, daters can work to rewire their thought patterns.
Through support, women can gain the skills and resources to manage dating anxiety, build confidence in their self-worth, and create healthy boundaries while maintaining a natural desire for a romantic connection.
Of course, Melissa wouldn’t be the relationship expert and coach that she is without giving us a few relationship tips. She shared with us the underlying groundwork needed to embark on your journey toward healthier relationships.
With anxious attachment, the smallest shift in behavior or availability from a partner can cause immense worry and overthinking. This is why, Melissa says, pursuing connections from a grounded place is an important first step.
“What this is about is learning to pursue love from a grounded place where you can stay true to yourself. Staying true to yourself is the foundation for creating secure and fulfilling relationships that we’re all ultimately seeking,” said Melissa.
One of the foundational principles Melissa teaches her clients is reorienting their role in their dating journey. Waiting to be picked is a common stance many women often take in dating. But Melissa wants women to evolve from that mindset and see themselves as the choosers.
“This fundamental shift helps women reconnect with their own agency in their dating journey rather than chasing that validation from others,” said Melissa.
Women can implement this principle into their dating life by seeking clarity in their relationship requirements, including deal breakers, functional and emotional needs, and wants. Understanding these requirements can help you screen and evaluate your relationships in a conscious way.
Melissa also took us back to the basics. She shared that before you do anything, you should identify your anxious thought patterns. Looking at your relationship history can enable you to see how your past or childhood has informed or affected your dating journey and interactions.
“One thing that readers can start doing right away is take a relationship inventory. List out what made your significant relationships work and not work. Usually the things that ended the relationships will give you clues as to what your deal breakers are. You’ll see the patterns,” said Melissa.
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