Our culture reinforces the problem. Dating advice promotes “playing it cool” and strategic ambiguity, behaviors that run counter to what actually builds secure relationships. The available, direct person who gets written off as “not exciting” is often the best possible partner. Rejected for exactly the qualities that make them so.
The part of this conversation that often gets left out is that attachment security is not fixed. The brain is plastic. What shapes it is the environment we immerse ourselves in, including the one we create in dating.
Adjusting to the dating app era
In my clinical work, I’ve developed an approach based on neuroscience and attachment that focuses less on analyzing the past and more on building security in real time. Central to this is learning what I call the five pillars of secure mode: consistency, availability, responsiveness, reliability, and predictability.
A patient of mine met her now-husband on what was supposed to be a one-night stand. They had a lot of fun, and that one night turned into two. But in between, he wasn’t very responsive over text. The second morning he left, she told him: “Listen, I like you, but I need people in my life to be consistent and responsive. If not, it doesn’t work for me.” He told her he was notoriously unresponsive. But he promised to try.
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