To Avoid or Not to Avoid: 8 Tips You can do NOW to Learn to Love!

To avoid, or not to avoid! That is the question, for I have done it all my life because I just can’t meet the right person, or the person I do meet wants me to be “tied down” immediately. Oh, never have I reached down and searched my soul to determine if it was me that could not, would not love.

That is about the change. These 8 tips will help avoidant attachment style individuals take that one step closer to achieving true intimacy instead of relying on severe loneliness, a major accident, or a life changing event to get you there.  Before you begin to practice these steps while you are dating or in a relationship, you will have to acknowledge and understand that you are avoiding love first before you begin. These steps will be a little challenging at first because  it will require that you live in the moment and acknowledge these behaviors in order to change them.

1. Know and understand what deactivating strategies you use. – Look back and figure out why a relationship(s) ended. If you need to speak to your past boyfriends/girlfriends. When these strategies come up again, you will have to stop and think, “Am I doing it again.”
2. Stress mutual support with your partner. If you have a partner that falls into the anxious category, you will have to work so you partner steps back and creates a more secure base, while you  work on not trying to distance yourself. Knowing your styles is crucial at this moment.
3. Find a secure partner. – The more secure the better. It will mean less defensiveness, less fighting and less stress.
4. Don’t always focus on the negative. – When you have a tendency to want to gt out of a relationship, you will focus on any negative behavior in order to get out of it. When you recognize this, remind yourself that your partner isn’t perfect and that you are choosing to live with them as part of what makes them special.
5. Focus on what’s right about your partner daily. At any moment, you are ready to pull the parachute on the relationship. By focusing on what is right about your partner, will help shift your thinking more positively.
6. Stop using your EX as a pawn! They have moved on. – When you are in a different relationship it easy to compare the positive qualities your ex to your current partner. The problem is, while you where in the relationship with your ex, you never acknowledge their positive qualities, so why do it now.
7. “The one” isn’t going to fall out of the sky. A person becomes the one by choosing that person and actively engaging in their life and allowing that person to do the same.
8. Focus on activities and not just emotions. Allow activities to fuel your feelings of love. By doing things together that you both like, will allow your feelings of intimacy to bubble to the surface.

If you implore these coaching tips, you will be on the path of love in no time.

Coach Keith