Post by aislingt on Sept 8, 2023 17:33:12 GMT
Hello everybody,
Can anybody help me with understanding whether what happens to me is an indication that I have become more secure or merely more aware of my attachment insecurity plus a bit more avoidant?
The story, in short: I think I am FA, leaning anxious. Recently (about 6 weeks ago) I reconnected with an older acquaintance, a man whom I thought, initially, was a friend-in-the-making. Our conversations became very quickly quite deep and exciting and then, for me, started to feel intense in a good way. We seem to understand each other unusually well, both intellectually and in terms of our sensitivity, and the relationship became to appear to me more like a romantic one in terms of both the frequency of interaction and the level of interest in each other. I noticed that I started to fall for him and, since I was unsure (i.e. a bit confused) as to whether this was mutual, I felt anxious and decided to make my feelings explicit. He replied that while he likes me very much he is not himself falling in love with me.
Upon this reply, my anxiety disappeared, I felt quite blue all evening; then the sadness subsided during the following two days and now I am calm and a bit deflated. I feel that I'm able to either stop the contact, or loosen it and go back to the situation of acquaintances who may (or may not) ultimately become friends. The remaining sadness is mostly because I believe that we would indeed be a good match in very important (and for me, rare to find, ways).
In the past, I would have agonised about this much more, speculated on what I did wrong and how I could make things go the way I wanted them, etc. I am trying to figure out whether my emotional and behavioural reactions to this situation show that I made progress towards security, or whether they are just some garden variety of an FA's overactivated attachment system followed by deactivation. Can anybody help with understanding this? Thank you!
Can anybody help me with understanding whether what happens to me is an indication that I have become more secure or merely more aware of my attachment insecurity plus a bit more avoidant?
The story, in short: I think I am FA, leaning anxious. Recently (about 6 weeks ago) I reconnected with an older acquaintance, a man whom I thought, initially, was a friend-in-the-making. Our conversations became very quickly quite deep and exciting and then, for me, started to feel intense in a good way. We seem to understand each other unusually well, both intellectually and in terms of our sensitivity, and the relationship became to appear to me more like a romantic one in terms of both the frequency of interaction and the level of interest in each other. I noticed that I started to fall for him and, since I was unsure (i.e. a bit confused) as to whether this was mutual, I felt anxious and decided to make my feelings explicit. He replied that while he likes me very much he is not himself falling in love with me.
Upon this reply, my anxiety disappeared, I felt quite blue all evening; then the sadness subsided during the following two days and now I am calm and a bit deflated. I feel that I'm able to either stop the contact, or loosen it and go back to the situation of acquaintances who may (or may not) ultimately become friends. The remaining sadness is mostly because I believe that we would indeed be a good match in very important (and for me, rare to find, ways).
In the past, I would have agonised about this much more, speculated on what I did wrong and how I could make things go the way I wanted them, etc. I am trying to figure out whether my emotional and behavioural reactions to this situation show that I made progress towards security, or whether they are just some garden variety of an FA's overactivated attachment system followed by deactivation. Can anybody help with understanding this? Thank you!
